In October the situation became complex with the outbreak of civil war in Nicaragua. Insurgency centered on the eastern coast in Bluefields, a city dominated by foreign businessmen and planters.
These foreigners and conservative politicians in Nicaragua followed the lead of General Juan J. Foreign money, some of it American, bankrolled the revolutionaries. While declaring itself neutral, there was little question as to which side the U. Formal neutrality disappeared when Zelaya executed two Americans captured while fighting with the rebels. The United States broke off relations, asserting that the revolutionaries represented "the ideals and the will of a majority of the Nicaraguan people more faithfully than does the Government of President Zelaya.
Washington made known that Zelaya's resignation in late was not enough. Huntington Wilson pushed for expulsion of the liberal party from power, hoping the rebels would take control. Successes followed for the insurgents, and by the end of August they had taken the capital, Managua. The United States expected fiscal reform in Nicaragua, and refused to recognize the new government until it had agreed to American control of the customhouses and to the refunding of the debt owed to British bankers by means of a loan from American financiers.
Dawson went to Nicaragua to negotiate the terms of recognition. This did not end the difficulties, for the American demands were unpopular. The United States went ahead with its financial program, even though the Senate delayed action on the treaty known as the Knox-Castrillo Convention worked out between Washington and Managua in June , which called for refunding of Nicaragua's internal and external debts and administration of the customs by a collector approved by American officials.
While the Senate debated, bankers went ahead with the rehabilitation of Nicaraguan finances, making a loan with the national railroad and the national bank as collateral. American citizens also began to collect Nicaraguan customs and to serve on a mixed claims commission, all in anticipation of Senate action. Much to the distress of Taft and Knox, the treaty died in a Senate committee in May , along with a similar treaty with Honduras. Another revolution broke out in Nicaragua in July , and this also brought American intervention.
Approximately 2, marines landed to protect U. Although the majority of the marines was soon withdrawn, a legation guard remained as a symbol of intervention until The Taft administration went out of office in March , convinced that the policy it had followed in Nicaragua was correct. Intervention had proved necessary, the administration admitted, but it was only for a short time and continued fiscal intervention would make further military intervention unlikely.
The Taft-Knox policy toward Nicaragua, and for that matter toward the rest of Central America, was unquestionably offensive to Latin Americans. Even a goodwill visit through the Caribbean by Knox could not overcome suspicions. Knox said the United States did not covet an inch of Latin territory, but such utterances were not accepted south of the Rio Grande.
Elihu Root believed that dollar diplomacy rekindled Latin fears and suspicions of the United States that he had worked so hard to overcome while secretary of state from to In , President Woodrow Wilson made clear that he would not support special interests trying to gain advantages in Latin America. Dollar diplomacy as a policy was at an end in Latin America. Criticism of the policy continued.
Roosevelt renounced dollar diplomacy. Both presidents attempted to construct what became known as the Good Neighbor Policy in dealing with Latin America, and the concept of the Taft-Knox doctrine was all but dead by the time of the Hoover administration. In the long run, of course, American businessmen did increase trade and investment in Latin America, but it was World War I, not dollar diplomacy, that decreased European economic interests in that part of the world.
If the results of dollar diplomacy were meager in Latin America, where the United States was the dominant power, they were a disaster in China, the target for the Taft-Knox policy in East Asia. Of course, the situation in the Far East was difficult. In the late nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century much change had taken place. With victories over China in and Russia in , Japan had become the major power in the Far East. Theodore Roosevelt had supported Japan's new prominence in East Asia.
He decided that Japan did not threaten American interests there. He saw the Japanese as a barrier to Russian expansion; a preserver of the balance of power in East Asia; protector of the Open Door; and stabilizer of China, a nation for which he had little respect.
Roosevelt had backed Japan in its war with Russia and in had mediated the peace. Roosevelt had hoped to arrange a balance of power between Russia and Japan after the war, but the Japanese victory was so decisive and other events in Japanese-American relations so important that he gave up on the Open Door in China, especially in Manchuria, which the Japanese began to close after Because of the need to protect the Philippines, which Roosevelt believed was the "heel of Achilles" of the United States, and the war scare that resulted from the Japanese immigration crisis, Roosevelt accepted Japanese expansion on the mainland of Asia.
He came to feel that the Open Door was not worth war with Japan. The United States should do what it could to preserve interests in China, but should recognize Japan as the dominant power on the Asian mainland. In short, he gave a green light to Japanese expansion.
One of the best expressions of this belief appeared in a letter to Knox on 8 February , shortly before Roosevelt left office.
He noted that Japanese-American relations were of "great and permanent importance. Even as his administration came to an end, forces were at work that would change Roosevelt's policy in East Asia. Headed by Willard Straight, the division opposed Japanese expansion in China, and this opposition was to dominate the division in the years between and Roosevelt's East Asian policy thus was reversed. With urging from the State Department and because of a combination of motives—economic expansion, suspicion of Japan, faith in the future of China—the Taft administration decided to challenge Japan in China.
During the Taft years, the Open Door Notes, which had frequently changed in meaning after , assumed new importance in the Far Eastern policy of the United States.
In Far Eastern policy, department officials now proved important. Taft and Knox did not need convincing. Both believed China was the country of the future in the Far East and that if the United States desired influence with that emerging nation it had to increase its financial interests there.
If the president and secretary of state had any doubts about such policy, they were overcome by State Department advice. Huntington Wilson, who had served in Tokyo, and Straight, who had been consul in Mukden, Manchuria, were both hostile to Japanese ambitions in China.
They had tried unsuccessfully in the last days of the Roosevelt administration to enlarge the Open Door to include investment and trade. With Taft and Knox they had more success. The Taft administration came to see investment in railway development and loans to the Chinese government as the means to increase influence in China. Knox demanded that American financiers be given the opportunity to join the.
British, French, and German consortium in lending money to China to finance railroad construction in the Yangtze Valley, the so-called Hukuang Railway loan. When the demand met with European hostility, Taft appealed to the Chinese head of state: "I have an intense personal interest in making the use of American capital in the development of China an instrument for the promotion of the welfare of China, and an increase in her material prosperity without entanglements or creating embarrassments affecting the growth of her independent political power and the preservation of her territorial integrity.
Knox grudgingly got his way, but only at the price of irritation in Britain, France, and Germany. In the long run, this project was a failure. From the Hukuang loan the State Department turned to Manchuria.
The result was the Knox neutralization policy, which more than any other proposal epitomized dollar diplomacy in China. Manchuria would be neutralized and open to all commercial activities. Washington feared that southern Manchuria was being closed to non-Japanese influences. Knox realized that the Japanese would be difficult, but he thought the proposal would be supported in Europe. Britain, France, and Germany eventually decided to defer to the wishes of Japan and Russia, and in January the latter two nations rejected the plan.
Only the Chinese showed interest, but that soon turned to concern when Russia and Japan agreed in July to cooperate in guaranteeing the status quo in Manchuria. Knox had only succeeded in driving the former enemies into a virtual alliance to prevent American interference in Manchuria. A companion proposal by Straight, who had left the State Department to head the American consortium planning a railroad that ran parallel to portions of the South Manchuria line, met a similar fate.
By the fall of , Knox recognized defeat in his railroad plans for Manchuria. Throughout the rest of his term as secretary of state, he continued to work for increased American involvement in China, but through plans that did not contest the Japanese and Russians in Manchuria.
He became involved in plans for a multinational currency reform loan, but the Chinese revolution that began in put an end to that scheme.
The government that overthrew the Manchu then negotiated with a six-power consortium for a reorganization loan. Negotiations dragged on until the Taft administration left office. Dollar diplomacy in China stimulated international controversy. Petersburg, and Tokyo. Knox's clumsy attempts to help China only weakened the empire, since Japan and Russia agreed on a policy.
The policy aroused controversy in the United States, where bankers were reluctant to participate. The strategy which President Theodore Roosevelt would first implement, and President William Taft would continue during his presidency is now known as Dollar Diplomacy.
Eventually, Dollar Diplomacy would come to identify a partnership between private US investment banks and the US government in which customs collections within a Latin American state would be transferred over to a US-appointed company.
Therefore, in the Dominican Republic became the test subject for a new means of transforming the failing financial system, Dollar Diplomacy. Within the US in the late nineteenth century, there was a rise in investment banking which provided an avenue to move investments abroad and receive higher foreign interest rates. Taft wearing a crown. Likewise, the United States had clearly marked its interests in Asia, although it was still searching for an adequate approach to guard and foster them.
The development of an American empire had introduced with it several new approaches to American foreign policy, from military intervention to economic coercion to the mere threat of force. All around the globe, Taft sought to use U.
In Asia, Taft tried to continue to support the balance of power, but his efforts backfired and alienated Japan. Increasing tensions between the United States and Japan would finally explode nearly thirty years later, with the outbreak of World War II. Skip to main content. Age of Empire: American Foreign Policy, Search for:. Read this brief biography of President Taft to understand his foreign policy in the context of his presidency.
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