dollar diplomacy

n.

1. A policy aimed at furthering the interests of the United States abroad by encouraging the investment of U.S. capital in foreign countries.
2. A policy intended to safeguard a nation's foreign investments.

For more information on Dollar Diplomacy, visit Britannica.com.

Dollar Diplomacy involved arrangements by which insolvent foreign governments gained access to U.S. private bank loans in return for direct U.S. financial supervision or for acting as part of an economic consortium of great powers. Often U.S. financial experts tied to the loan process assumed the tasks of fiscal reorganization and administrative management within the client country, while U.S. government emissaries orchestrated the arrangements. Imposed fiscal reforms included adoption of the gold standard, "scientific" tax reform, and administrative rationalization.

The phrase is a loose one, indiscriminately applied to decades of economic policies ranking from trade with British and Spanish colonies to penetration by multinational corporations. In its most conventional sense, it focuses on the presidency of William Howard Taft. In his first annual message, dated 7 December 1909, Taft said, "Today, more than ever before, American capital is seeking investment in foreign countries." In his final annual message, dated 3 December 1912, he boasted that his administration was characterized as "substituting dollars for bullets." Secretary of State Philander Knox, an avid promoter of dollar diplomacy, well articulated such goals on 15 June 1910: "The problem of good government is inextricably interwoven with that of economic prosperity and sound finance." According to Taft-Knox tenets, loans from U.S. business, or at least from multinational groups in which U.S. business participated, could expedite the repayment of crippling debts while launching prosperity. In the eyes of their framers, who envisioned "every diplomat a salesman," the loans-for-supervision arrangements would aid the U.S. economy by alleviating overproduction, supplying needed manufactured goods to underdeveloped nations, and offering monopolized spheres for American investors. Eventually, economic progress, political stability, and the spread of Western, indeed U.S., "civilization" would result. Of necessity, the policy often involved U.S. competition with Europe and Japan in the developing countries, centering on such matters as buying bonds, floating loans, building railroads, and establishing banks. When the contemporary press first used the term "dollar diplomacy," Taft took umbrage, saying the label entirely ignored "a most useful office to be performed by a government in its dealing with foreign governments."

Caribbean

The Caribbean served as a major focal point, for there the United States had its eye on strategic as well as commercial interests, particularly in light of the ongoing construction of the Panama Canal. Knox remarked that in the Caribbean "the malady of revolutions and financial collapse is most acute precisely … where it is most dangerous to us."

Soon after he assumed office in 1909, Knox wanted American bankers to assume the debt Honduras owed to British investors. In 1911, he signed a treaty with the Honduran minister allowing American bankers to refund that nation's foreign debt and establish an American customs receivership. The Honduran government, however, refused to ratify the convention. Knox was more successful in Haiti in 1910, persuading four New York banking firms to invest in Haiti's national bank to aid in currency stabilization.

Nicaragua, however, remained the classic case of dollar diplomacy. In 1909, the United States supported a rebellion against the dictator José Santos Zelaya and his successor José Madriz, sending marines to the Nicaraguan city of Bluefields to protect foreign nationals and property. In 1911, because of U.S. backing, Adolfo Díaz, the former secretary of the United States–Nicaragua concession, became Nicaragua's president. On 6 June 1911, Knox signed a treaty with the Nicaraguan minister establishing a U.S. customs receivership and enabling two New York banking firms to refund Nicaragua's foreign debt. Democrats in the U.S. Senate, however, blocked ratification of the Knox-Castrillo Treaty. While the Senate was debating the matter, American bankers began to rehabilitate Nicaraguan finances. At the State Department's request, New York bankers advanced $1.5 million, receiving in return majority control of the state railways and the National Bank of Nicaragua. Later in the same year, the banking houses appointed an American receiver-general, who was approved by both governments.

Díaz, however, lacked popular support. In 1912, Zelaya and his Liberal Party launched a revolt. Amid widespread disorder, insurgents seized U.S. properties, and thirty-three Americans and more than a thousand Nicaraguans were killed. Zelaya would have succeeded had Taft not sent 2,700 marines and several warships to suppress the uprising. These marines remained for many years, intensifying anti-U.S. feelings in Latin America.

East Asia

The objectives of dollar diplomacy in East Asia were nearly as ambitious as those in Central America. In Asia, Willard Straight, a former U.S. diplomat who represented various banking groups in China, was highly influential in pressing for a more active American role. In 1909, because of the crucial role played by railroads in China's economic development, Straight and Knox demanded that American financiers be allowed to join a major British-French-German consortium. The group had contracted with the Chinese government to build a network of railroads, including a route between Beijing and Guangzhou (Canton). Despite the hostility of the European powers, Knox got his way, and an American banking syndicate formed by J. P. Morgan and Company was admitted. The entire project, however, eventually was aborted. Knox also proposed a multilateral loan aimed at currency reform, but the overthrow of the Manchu government in 1911 terminated the scheme.

The efforts of Straight and Knox to neutralize Manchuria in 1909 and to open it to the commerce of all nations also were unsuccessful. The two Americans sought to form a consortium of American, European, and Japanese bankers who would lend China sufficient funds to purchase the Chinese Eastern Railroad, owned by Russia, and the South Manchurian Railroad, owned by Japan. In January 1910, however, Russia and Japan vetoed the plan. The British also opposed the plan, as they were encouraging Japanese expansion in Manchuria to keep Japan safely away from their own sphere of influence.

Dollar diplomacy had few successes. As seen in Honduras, Nicaragua, and China, it gained none of its objectives. At the same time, it deepened the antagonism of both the Latin Americans and the Japanese.

Bibliography

Munro, Dana Gardner. Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1964.

Rosenberg, Emily S. "Revisiting Dollar Diplomacy: Narratives of Money and Manliness." Diplomatic History 22, no. 2 (spring 1998): 155–176.

Scholes, Walter V., and Marie V. Scholes. The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1970.

Trani, Eugene P. "Dollar Diplomacy." In Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy: Studies of the Principal Movements and Ideas. Vol. 2. Rev. ed. Edited by Alexander DeConde et al. New York: Scribners, 2002.

—Justus D. Doenecke

In his final message to Congress on 3 December 1912, President William Howard Taft looked back at the foreign policy followed by the United States during his administration and noted: "The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims."

Taft's remarks gave formal definition to the term "dollar diplomacy," a phrase synonymous with the diplomacy his administration pursued between 1909 and 1913. During those years the goal of diplomacy was to make the United States a commercial and financial world power. It was a narrowly constructed view of foreign relations, arising in great part out of the natural alliances between the corporate lawyers who came to people Taft's administration and the bankers and businesses that were their clients. Thus, the Taft administration concentrated on assisting American businessmen in the protection and expansion of investment and trade, especially in Latin America and the Far East.

The idea of protecting American commercial interests around the world was not new and had been part of the diplomacy of the United States since its earliest days. Efforts to trade with British and Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere, defense of the rights of neutrals to trade in wartime, and support of the most-favored-nation concept were all predecessors of dollar diplomacy. Yet dollar diplomacy was the subject of much controversy during the Taft administration and in the years that followed.

Much of the contemporary controversy over dollar diplomacy stemmed from the fact that Taft, the handpicked successor of Theodore Roosevelt, had embarked on a policy that differed from the one Roosevelt had followed. Roosevelt was an expansionist and had supported the American move into world affairs. For a variety of reasons, Roosevelt believed expansion necessary for the United States, with benefits for the rest of the world. He viewed foreign affairs in strategic terms, with Europe as the center of world power. He felt an affinity for Britain and based much of his diplomacy on cooperation between Washington and London. To be sure, Roosevelt supported the expansion of American business throughout the world, but he was much more concerned with the balance of power and improving the Anglo-American relationship. As a result, Roosevelt mediated the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) and the conflict between France and Germany over Morocco in 1906.

Taft came to office with a different view. Ever the lawyer, he viewed foreign policy in terms of legal institutions. He thus came to support arbitration treaties. He had differences with Roosevelt over Europe, feeling that the United States had little or no interest in events there. Taft kept the United States out of the second Moroccan crisis in 1911, and, while supporting mediation, he was not willing to mediate the Italo-Turkish War (1911) nor the first Balkan War the following year. Taft believed that the most important relations with Europe occurred in developing nations where the United States and Europe shared interests.

Taft's view of the role of American business in foreign policy also differed from Roosevelt's. Taft long had been concerned with foreign trade. He recognized that by 1909 the United States was producing more goods than Americans could consume and therefore had to increase exports. It was perhaps symbolic that during the Taft administration, in 1910 to be exact, that the United States began to export more manufactured goods than raw materials, changing the focus of trade from industrial nations in need of raw materials to lesser developed countries that required finished products. In this regard the developing areas of Latin America and East Asia seemed particularly important. A concentration on economic opportunities in Latin America and East Asia, especially China, would have many benefits. Such a policy would help the American economy by solving the problem of overproduction. It would benefit recipient nations, bringing economic progress, which in turn would mean political stability; and stability would guarantee American strategic interests in underdeveloped areas. It was not surprising that in Taft's first annual message (7 December 1909) he stated: "To-day, more than ever before, American capital is seeking investment in foreign countries, and American products are more and more generally seeking foreign markets."

While Taft had ideas as to the diplomacy the United States should follow, he had no interest in serving as his own secretary of state, further distinguishing his administration from Roosevelt's. The man whom Taft chose to carry out his foreign policy, after refusals by Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge, was Philander C. Knox, a wealthy conservative Pennsylvania lawyer then in the Senate. Knox had been attorney general between 1901 and 1904; and this fact, in the president's view, more than made up for his lack of experience in foreign affairs, since Taft wanted lawyers in his cabinet. Knox had been what is now known as a corporation lawyer, the Carnegie Steel Corporation being one of his clients. He was thus sympathetic to big business.

Knox shared Taft's views concerning the goal of American diplomacy—protection and expansion of economic interests. A State Department memorandum of 6 October 1909 pointed out that all developed countries were seeking trade and noted that trade was essential to American prosperity. There could be no more important task than expanded investment and trade. Diplomacy had to support American financiers and businessmen by finding opportunities abroad. The State Department appeared to anticipate the activities of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce in the 1920s, when Herbert Hoover was secretary of commerce, although Hoover strenuously objected to the concept of dollar diplomacy, making it a priority following his election to the presidency to eliminate its effects, particularly in Latin America. But locating commercial opportunities abroad was not enough for Knox and Taft. As the 1909 memorandum indicated, the United States would insist that Americans compete with Europeans in the developing countries by buying bonds, floating loans, building railroads, and establishing banks.

So it was that the State Department during the Taft years turned to dollar diplomacy. The policy gained support throughout the diplomatic corps, a fact that was especially important as Knox concentrated on policy and allowed subordinates to run day-to-day operations. Francis M. Huntington Wilson, first assistant secretary of state, presided over the daily activities of the State Department and carried out a reorganization of the department into geographical bureaus. Huntington Wilson, Willard D. Straight, and Thomas C. Dawson, the latter two the initial heads of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs and the newly created Latin American Division, respectively, all shared the views of Taft and Knox on trade and investment.

When the administration talked about dollar diplomacy in Latin America, it was almost always referring to the Caribbean, which had strategic implications because of the soon-to-be-completed Panama Canal. Concerned over the general instability of the Central American governments, Taft and Knox set a goal of stable governments and prevention of financial collapse. Fiscal intervention would make military intervention unnecessary. As Knox told an audience at the University of Pennsylvania on 15 June 1910: "True stability is best established not by military, but by economic and social forces…. The problem of good government is inextricably interwoven with that of economic prosperity and sound finance; financial stability contributes perhaps more than any other one factor to political stability."

Such statements did not mean that Taft and Knox were unwilling to use military power in the Caribbean. They did use it. They thought that fiscal control would lessen the need for intervention. They believed that the United States and nations of the Caribbean would both benefit. For the United States, an increase in trade, more profitable investments, and a secure Panama Canal would result. For the local inhabitants, the benefits would be peace, prosperity, and improved social conditions.

Taft and Knox believed that the way to control the finances of the Caribbean countries was to take over customhouses, following the example of the Roosevelt administration in the Dominican Republic. According to the Taft-Knox doctrine, it was important to get the Caribbean nations to repay European debts by means of loans from American businessmen or at least from multinational groups in which Americans participated. In Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti, the United States pushed refunding schemes. The State Department believed that these sorts of reforms would end political instability in the Caribbean.

Nicaragua proved the classic case of dollar diplomacy in the Caribbean. While the American economic interest in Nicaragua was small, the country had been an alternate route for the trans-Isthmian canal. The United States was sensitive to activities in Nicaragua. The longtime dictator José Santos Zelaya had never been popular in Washington and was seen as the cause of much instability in Central America, the result of his efforts to dominate the area. When Knox took control of the Department of State, he ordered withdrawal of the chargé d'affaires from Nicaragua, began to press private business claims against the Zelaya government, and sought, albeit unsuccessfully, to discourage a Franco-British consortium from making a loan. In cooperation with Mexico, the United States also sent warships to stop Zelaya from filibustering in Central America.

In October 1909 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. Estrada. Foreign money, some of it American, bankrolled the revolutionaries. While declaring itself neutral, there was little question as to which side the U.S. government supported. 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 1909 was not enough. Huntington Wilson pushed for expulsion of the liberal party from power, hoping the rebels would take control. U.S. forces landed at Bluefields to make sure fighting did not damage American interests. Successes followed for the insurgents, and by the end of August 1910 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 1911, 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 1912, along with a similar treaty with Honduras.

Another revolution broke out in Nicaragua in July 1912, and this also brought American intervention. Approximately 2,700 marines landed to protect U.S. citizens and property and to suppress the revolution, which was over by early October. Although the majority of the marines was soon withdrawn, a legation guard remained as a symbol of intervention until 1925. The Taft administration went out of office in March 1913, 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.

In the years after 1912, political leaders in both Latin America and the United States attacked Taft's policy toward Central America. 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 1905 to 1909. In 1913, President Woodrow Wilson made clear that he would not support special interests trying to gain advantages in Latin America. The Bryan-Chamorro Treaty, finally approved in 1916, contained provisions similar to the second treaty Knox had worked out with President Adolfo Díaz of Nicaragua in early 1913. Even so, Wilson and Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan were much less interested in protecting U.S. businesses in Latin America than Taft and Knox. Dollar diplomacy as a policy was at an end in Latin America. Criticism of the policy continued. Like President Hoover, President Franklin D. 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 1895 and Russia in 1905, 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 1905 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 1905. 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 1909, shortly before Roosevelt left office. He noted that Japanese-American relations were of "great and permanent importance." While immigration to the United States had to stop, the United States should "show all possible courtesy and consideration." The Taft administration had to understand that "Japan is vitally interested in China and on the Asiatic mainland." Since the Pacific coast of the United States was defenseless and "we have no army to hold or reconquer the Philippines and Hawaii," the country had to avoid war. Roosevelt felt that American interests in China were insignificant in American Far Eastern policy.

Even as his administration came to an end, forces were at work that would change Roosevelt's policy in East Asia. In 1908 Root had established the State Department's first geographic unit, the Division of Far Eastern Affairs. Headed by Willard Straight, the division opposed Japanese expansion in China, and this opposition was to dominate the division in the years between 1909 and 1941.

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 1900, 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." The State Department persuaded a group of investors to assume part of the loan. 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. In the fall of 1909, Knox proposed that American, Japanese, and European bankers lend China enough money to repurchase the Chinese Eastern Railroad, held by Russia, and the South Manchurian Railroad, in the possession of Japan. 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 1910 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 1910, 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 1911 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. The Taft-Knox policy succeeded in causing distress, irritation, and even anger in London, Paris, Berlin, St. 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. Roosevelt opposed the policy, writing to Taft in late 1910 that the Open Door in China could only be maintained by general diplomatic agreement. He noted that "as has been proved by the whole history of Manchuria, alike under Russia and under Japan, the 'Open Door' policy, as a matter of fact, completely disappears as soon as a powerful nation determines to disregard it, and is willing to run the risk of war." Roosevelt was convinced that Japan was one such nation, and that the United States ought not to try to bluff the Japanese on the mainland of Asia, especially since Americans would never agree to fight a war there.

Wilson later withdrew government support from American investors planning the reorganization loan, charging that the loan violated Chinese sovereignty and threatened China with intervention. The American investors backed out of the loan, and the last of the dollar diplomacy schemes came to an end. In the long run, Wilson reversed his position, approving participation in a consortium in 1918. But Japan remained the dominant power in China until World War II, and Roosevelt's policy seemed valid in retrospect. Taft and Knox failed in their goal—to dislodge Japan from the Asian mainland.

There were other areas to which the Taft administration tried to apply dollar diplomacy, such as in Turkey. Breaking sharply with the traditional American policy toward the Ottoman Empire, which centered on protecting the rights of American citizens, the Taft administration attempted to share in the mining, irrigation, and railroad concessions then being negotiated by the Turkish government. Taft hoped that the United States would obtain a larger share of the commerce of the Near East. He was to be disappointed. The United States found the European powers too entrenched, and dollar diplomacy failed in Turkey. But Central America and China were the most spectacular examples of the doctrine.

The controversy over dollar diplomacy lasted well after 1913. Generally recognized by students of international relations as a failure, dollar diplomacy has engendered controversy concerning its motives and the people responsible for carrying it out. Some writers have argued that the policy was primarily economic, while others have contended that it was dominated by strategy, especially in Latin America. Others have defended the desire of the Taft administration to "do good" in Latin America and Asia, in some cases noting that its failure was probably owing more to diplomatic bumbling than imperialistic urges. The most recent writings of scholars have additionally argued that the logic of imperialism undermined the logic of "dollars for bullets," which ended up relying on military intervention to protect the interests of businesses and individual investors. In effect, dollar diplomacy created, rather than mitigated against, havoc. The most balanced account of dollar diplomacy, that of the historians Walter and Marie Scholes, has combined these motives and also noted that Taft's diplomacy anticipated U.S. foreign policy after World War II. Taft and Knox chose private capital as their instrument, whereas President Harry S. Truman used public capital. In both instances, the most important consideration was preservation of vital American interests abroad by helping underdeveloped countries establish viable governments and integrating them into the twentieth century.

Debate as to responsibility for the policy has taken two directions. Historians have argued over the roles of Taft, Knox, the State Department, and American businessmen. Straight has especially been the subject of debate. One account has convincingly argued that Straight's role in the Far East has been exaggerated. The most reasonable conclusion would seem that there was a common purpose among the advocates of dollar diplomacy.

Another direction of the debate over dollar diplomacy has been whether it was only one aspect of a continuous policy followed in the twentieth century by the United States—to expand American economic opportunities abroad. It is clear that Taft's predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt, and his successor, Woodrow Wilson, as well as the rest of the American leaders in the twentieth century, supported the expansion of American business, up to and including the Clinton administration's crafting of the NAFTA agreement and approaching foreign relations with China on economic, rather than human rights, terms, to the dismay of many Americans and their congressional representatives. Indeed, the term "dollar diplomacy" was revived by the media to describe the thrust of U.S. foreign relations during the 1990s. There has, however, been no extensive scholarly investigation into the validity of using the policy of the Taft administration to define the economic foreign policy being carried out by the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. No president, other than Taft, has made such a policy the principal goal of diplomacy. As a result, the term "dollar diplomacy" remains synonymous with the diplomacy of 1909 to 1913.

Bibliography

Bemis, Samuel Flagg. The Latin American Policy of the United States. New York, 1943. Although dated, the work is still valuable.

Cohen, Naomi W. "Ambassador Straus in Turkey, 1909–1910: A Note on Dollar Diplomacy." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45(1959).

Coletta, Paolo E. The Presidency of William Howard Taft. Lawrence, Kans., 1973. Gives a comprehensive study of Taft's administration.

Collin, Richard H. "Symbiosis vs. Hegemony: New Directions in the Foreign Relations Historiography of Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft." Diplomatic History 9, no. 3 (summer 1995), 473–497. An excellent historiographic article.

Drake, Paul W., ed. Money Doctors, Foreign Debts, and Economic Reforms in Latin America from the 1890s to the Present. Wilmington, Del., 1994.

Esthus, Raymond A. "The Changing Concept of the Open Door, 1899–1910." Mississippi Valley Historical Review 46 (1959). Important to see how the Taft administration tried to change the meaning of the Open Door policy.

Gardner, Lloyd C. "American Foreign Policy 1900–1921: A Second Look at the Realist Critique of American Diplomacy." In Barton J. Bernstein, ed. Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History. New York, 1968. Argues the importance of economic motives.

Hunt, Michael H. Frontier Defense and the Open Door: Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895–1911. New Haven, Conn., 1973. Disputes Straight's importance in the formulation of America's East Asian policy.

Israel, Jerry. Progressivism and the Open Door: America and China, 1905–1921. Pittsburgh, 1971. Stresses continuity in America's Far Eastern policy.

Kahn, Helen Dodson. "Willard D. Straight and the Great Game of Empire." In Frank J. Merli and Theodore A. Wilson, eds. Makers of American Diplomacy: From Theodore Roosevelt to Henry Kissinger. New York, 1974. Portrays Straight as architect of dollar diplomacy in East Asia.

Minger, Ralph E. William Howard Taft and United States Foreign Policy: The Apprenticeship Years, 1900–1908. Urbana, Ill., 1975. Gives extensive treatment to Taft's involvement in foreign affairs before he became president.

Mulhollan, Page Elliott. Philander C. Knox and Dollar Diplomacy, 1909–1913. Austin, Tex., 1966.

Munro, Dana G. Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900–1921. Princeton, N.J., 1964. Cites the importance of strategy as the motivation of dollar diplomacy in the Caribbean, and is very comprehensive.

Nearing, Scott, and Joseph Freeman. Dollar Diplomacy: A Study in American Imperialism. New York, 1966. A socialist view in an update of a 1926 work.

Rosenberg, Emily S. Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930. Cambridge, Mass., 1999. Goes beyond the defined period of 1909–1913.

Scholes, Walter V., and Marie V. Scholes. The Foreign Policies of the Taft Administration. Columbia, Mo., 1970. The best study of the diplomacy followed by Taft.

Smith, Robert. "Cuba: Laboratory for Dollar Diplomacy, 1898–1917." Historian 28(1966). A revisionist account of relations with Cuba.

Varg, Paul A. The Making of a Myth: The United States and China, 1897–1912. East Lansing, Mich., 1968.

Vevier, Charles. The United States and China, 1906–1913: A Study of Finance and Diplomacy. New Brunswick, N.J., 1955. A generally balanced treatment.

— Eugene P. Trani

by William Howard Taft, 1912

In his message to Congress of December 3, 1912, in the course of a review of his foreign policy actions of the preceding year, President William Howard Taft characterized his program as "substituting dollars for bullets." The phrase was picked up by his critics and converted into "dollar diplomacy," a highly uncomplimentary term to describe Taft's dealings with other countries. Taft's encouragement of American business, especially in the Caribbean, where he felt that investors would have a stabilizing effect on the shaky governments of the region, came in for the sharpest criticism. The paragraphs from his last annual message reprinted here are Taft's defense of his policies.

The foreign relations of the United States actually and potentially affect the state of the Union to a degree not widely realized and hardly surpassed by any other factor in the welfare of the whole nation. The position of the United States in the moral, intellectual, and material relations of the family of nations should be a matter of vital interest to every patriotic citizen. The national prosperity and power impose upon us duties which we cannot shirk if we are to be true to our ideals. The tremendous growth of the export trade of the United States has already made that trade a very real factor in the industrial and commercial prosperity of the country. With the development of our industries, the foreign commerce of the United States must rapidly become a still more essential factor in its economic welfare.

Whether we have a farseeing and wise diplomacy and are not recklessly plunged into unnecessary wars, and whether our foreign policies are based upon an intelligent grasp of present-day world conditions and a clear view of the potentialities of the future, or are governed by a temporary and timid expediency or by narrow views befitting an infant nation, are questions in the alternative consideration of which must convince any thoughtful citizen that no department of national polity offers greater opportunity for promoting the interests of the whole people on the one hand, or greater chance on the other of permanent national injury, than that which deals with the foreign relations of the United States.

The fundamental foreign policies of the United States should be raised high above the conflict of partisanship and wholly dissociated from differences as to domestic policy. In its foreign affairs the United States should present to the world a united front. The intellectual, financial, and industrial interests of the country and the publicist, the wage earner, the farmer, and citizen of whatever occupation must cooperate in a spirit of high patriotism to promote that national solidarity which is indispensable to national efficiency and to the attainment of national ideals. ...

The diplomacy of the present administration has sought to respond to modern ideas of commercial intercourse. This policy has been characterized as substituting dollars for bullets. It is one that appeals alike to idealistic humanitarian sentiments, to the dictates of sound policy and strategy, and to legitimate commercial aims. It is an effort frankly. directed to the increase of American trade upon the axiomatic principle that the government of the United States shall extend all proper support to every legitimate and beneficial American enterprise abroad.

How great have been the results of this diplomacy, coupled with the maximum and minimum provision of the Tariff Law, will be seen by some consideration of the wonderful increase in the export trade of the United States. Because modern diplomacy is commercial, there has been a disposition in some quarters to attribute to it none but materialistic aims. How strikingly erroneous is such an impression may be seen from a study of the results by which the diplomacy of the United States can be judged.

In the field of work toward the ideals of peace, this government negotiated, but to my regret was unable to consummate, two arbitration treaties which set the highest mark of the aspiration of nations toward the substitution of arbitration and reason for war in the settlement of international disputes. Through the efforts of American diplomacy, several wars have been prevented or ended. I refer to the successful tripartite mediation of the Argentine Republic, Brazil, and the United States between Peru and Ecuador; the bringing of the boundary dispute between Panama and Costa Rica to peaceful arbitration; the staying of warlike preparations when Haiti and the Dominican Republic were on the verge of hostilities; the stopping of a war in Nicaragua; the halting of internecine strife in Honduras.

The government of the United States was thanked for its influence toward the restoration of amicable relations between the Argentine Republic and Bolivia. The diplomacy of the United States is active in seeking to assuage the remaining ill feeling between this country and the Republic of Colombia. In the recent civil war in China, the United States successfully joined with the other interested powers in urging an early cessation of hostilities. An agreement has been reached between the governments of Chile and Peru whereby the celebrated Tacna-Arica dispute, which has so long embittered international relations on the west coast of South America, has at last been adjusted. Simultaneously came the news that the boundary dispute between Peru and Ecuador had entered upon a stage of amicable settlement.

The position of the United States in reference to the Tacna-Arica dispute between Chile and Peru has been one of nonintervention, but one of friendly influence and pacific counsel throughout the period during which the dispute in question has been the subject of interchange of views between this government and the two governments immediately concerned. In the general easing of international tension on the west coast of South America, the tripartite mediation, to which I have referred, has been a most potent and beneficent factor.

In China the policy of encouraging financial investment to enable that country to help itself has had the result of giving new life and practical application to the open door policy. The consistent purpose of the present administration has been to encourage the use of American capital in the development of China by the promotion of those essential reforms to which China is pledged by treaties with the United States and other powers. The hypothecation to foreign bankers in connection with certain industrial enterprises, such as the Hukuang railways, of the national revenues upon which these reforms depended, led the Department of State, early in the administration, to demand for American citizens participation in such enterprises, in order that the United States might have equal rights and an equal voice in all questions pertaining to the disposition of the public revenues concerned.

The same policy of promoting international accord among the powers having similar treaty rights as ourselves in the matters of reform, which could not be put into practical effect without the common consent of all, was likewise adopted in the case of the loan desired by China for the reform of its currency. The principle of international cooperation in matters of common interest upon which our policy had already been based in all of the above instances has admittedly been a great factor in that concert of the powers which has been so happily conspicuous during the perilous period of transition through which the great Chinese nation has been passing.

In Central America the aim has been to help such countries as Nicaragua and Honduras to help themselves. They are the immediate beneficiaries. The national benefit to the United States is twofold. First, it is obvious that the Monroe Doctrine is more vital in the neighborhood of the Panama Canal and the zone of the Caribbean than anywhere else. There, too, the maintenance of that doctrine falls most heavily upon the United States. It is therefore essential that the countries within that sphere shall be removed from the jeopardy involved by heavy foreign debt and chaotic national finances and from the ever present danger of international complications due to disorder at home. Hence, the United States has been glad to encourage and support American bankers who were willing to lend a helping hand to the financial rehabilitation of such countries because this financial rehabilitation and the protection of their customhouses from being the prey of would-be dictators would remove at one stroke the menace of foreign creditors and the menace of revolutionary disorder.

The second advantage to the United States is one affecting chiefly all the Southern and Gulf ports and the business and industry of the South. The republics of Central America and the Caribbean possess great natural wealth. They need only a measure of stability and the means of financial regeneration to enter upon an era of peace and prosperity, bringing profit and happiness to themselves and at the same time creating conditions sure to lead to a flourishing interchange of trade with this country.

I wish to call your especial attention to the recent occurrences in Nicaragua, for I believe the terrible events recorded there during the revolution of the past summer - the useless loss of life, the devastation of property, the bombardment of defenseless cities, the killing and wounding of women and children, the torturing of noncombatants to exact contributions, and the suffering of thousands of human beings - might have been averted had the Department of State, through approval of the loan convention by the Senate, been permitted to carry out its now well-developed policy of encouraging the extending of financial aid to weak Central American states, with the primary objects of avoiding just such revolutions by assisting those republics to rehabilitate their finances, to establish their currency on a stable basis, to remove the customhouses from the danger of revolutions by arranging for their secure administration, and to establish reliable banks.

During this last revolution in Nicaragua, the government of that republic having admitted its inability to protect American life and property against acts of sheer lawlessness on the part of the malcontents, and having requested this government to assume that office, it became necessary to land over 2,000 Marines and Bluejackets in Nicaragua. Owing to their presence the constituted government of Nicaragua was free to devote its attention wholly to its internal troubles, and was thus enabled to stamp out the rebellion in a short space of time. When the Red Cross supplies sent to Granada had been exhausted, 8,000 persons having been given food in one day upon the arrival of the American forces, our men supplied other unfortunate, needy Nicaraguans from their own haversacks.

I wish to congratulate the officers and men of the United States Navy and Marine Corps who took part in reestablishing order in Nicaragua upon their splendid conduct, and to record with sorrow the death of seven American Marines and Bluejackets. Since the reestablishment of peace and order, elections have been held amid conditions of quiet and tranquillity. Nearly all the American Marines have now been withdrawn. The country should soon be on the road to recovery. The only apparent danger now threatening Nicaragua arises from the shortage of funds. Although American bankers have already rendered assistance, they may naturally be loath to advance a loan adequate to set the country upon its feet without the support of some such convention as that of June 1911, upon which the Senate has not yet acted. ...

It is not possible to make to the Congress a communication upon the present foreign relations of the United States so detailed as to convey an adequate impression of the enormous increase in the importance and activities of those relations. If this government is really to preserve to the American people that free opportunity in foreign markets which will soon be indispensable to our prosperity, even greater efforts must be made. Otherwise the American merchant, manufacturer, and exporter will find many a field in which American trade should logically predominate preempted through the more energetic efforts of other governments and other commercial nations.

There are many ways in which, through hearty cooperation, the legislative and executive branches of this government can do much. The absolute essential is the spirit of united effort and singleness of purpose. I will allude only to a very few specific examples of action which ought then to result.

America cannot take its proper place in the most important fields for its commercial activity and enterprise unless we have a Merchant Marine. American commerce and enterprise cannot be effectively fostered in those fields unless we have good American banks in the countries referred to. We need American newspapers in those countries and proper means for public information about them.

We need to assume the permanency of a trained foreign service. We need legislation enabling the members of the foreign service to be systematically brought in direct contact with the industrial, manufacturing, and exporting interests of this country in order that American businessmen may enter the foreign field with a clear perception of the exact conditions to be dealt with and the officers themselves may prosecute their work with a clear idea of what American industrial and manufacturing interests require.

Congress should fully realize the conditions which obtain in the world as we find ourselves at the threshold of our middle age as a nation. We have emerged full grown as a peer in the great concourse of nations. We have passed through various formative periods. We have been self-centered in the struggle to develop our domestic resources and deal with our domestic questions. The nation is now too mature to continue in its foreign relations those temporary expedients natural to a people to whom domestic affairs are the sole concern.

In the past, our diplomacy has often consisted, in normal times, in a mere assertion of the right to international existence. We are now in a larger relation with broader rights of our own and obligations to others than ourselves. A number of great guiding principles were laid down early in the history of this government. The recent task of our diplomacy has been to adjust those principles to the conditions of today, to develop their corollaries, to find practical applications of the old principles expanded to meet new situations. Thus are being evolved bases upon which can rest the superstructure of policies which must grow with the destined progress of this nation.

The successful conduct of our foreign relations demands a broad and a modern view. We cannot meet new questions nor build for the future if we confine ourselves to outworn dogmas of the past and to the perspective appropriate at our emergence from colonial times and conditions. The opening of the Panama Canal will mark a new era in our international life and create new and worldwide conditions which, with their vast correlations and consequences, will obtain for hundreds of years to come. We must not wait for events to overtake us unawares. With continuity of purpose we must deal with the problems of our external relations by a diplomacy modern, resourceful, magnanimous, and fittingly expressive of the high ideals of a great nation.

Source
[United States Department of State] Papers Relating to Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington, 1912, pp. vii-xxvii.

Quotes
"There can be no fifty-fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are American and nothing else." — Theodore Roosevelt.

Quotes
"The 100 per cent American is 99 per cent an idiot." — George Bernard Shaw.

The use of diplomatic influence, economic pressure, and military power to protect a nation's economic and business interests abroad. The term was first used to describe the exploitative nature of United States involvement in Latin America.

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