This US President established America's isolationism

It was a bit megalomaniacal what the US President was saying. On December 2, 1823, James Monroe delivered the seventh (and penultimate) State of the Union address of his tenure. This is the only occasion in the United States constitutional system when the head of state (who, unlike in most European nations, is also the head of government) regularly addresses both houses of parliament at the same time.

Monroe, 65, announced: "We therefore owe it to the openness and friendly relations of the United States with these powers (meaning Europe, ed.) to declare that we accept any attempt on their part to extend their system to any part of this hemisphere." to expand as a threat to our peace and security.” In other words, the powers of the continent that has hitherto been dominant in the world should henceforth stay away from both Americas.

The President added: "We have not and will not interfere in the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power." That was intended as a concession, but at the same time a self-commitment to get out of the eternal territorial and dynastic conflicts in Europe to keep out. This passage of the speech, which incidentally was not written by Monroe himself but by his Secretary of State (and successor in the White House) John Quincy Adams, became the basis of US foreign policy in terms of isolationism for more than a century. However, the name "Monroe Doctrine" was not coined until 1850, not entirely coincidentally after the death of Adams.

More specifically, the not-yet-so-called doctrine meant that the US would view any effort by European nations to colonize land or intervene in states of North or South America as an act of aggression. However, this did not refer to the existing colonies, neither British Canada nor the Spanish possessions of Cuba and Puerto Rico, nor Alaska and Greenland. Most other European possessions had shaken off domination in the preceding years: Haiti in 1804, Paraguay in 1811, Argentina in 1816, Chile in 1818, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Venezuela (in one state for the time being) in 1819, Mexico and Peru in 1821, and Brazil in 1822. When Monroe delivered his speech, the independence wars in South and Central America were largely, if not entirely, over.

"For the time being, however, there was still a significant discrepancy between this rhetorical claim and the actual influence of the Americans in Central and South America," said historian Hermann Wellenreuter, who died in 2021. Because at the end of 1823 the USA did not have anywhere near the economic and thus also not the military capacities to enforce this doctrine. The first guarantor power was therefore the former (and thoroughly unpopular) motherland of the United States, the Kingdom of Great Britain.

Ironically, the last US president from the circle of the "founding fathers" relied on the influence of the leading world power. Monroe, born in Virginia in 1758, proved to be highly intelligent at an early age, but he was unable to complete his schooling because, after the early deaths of both parents, he became the eldest son of his siblings in 1774.

Just a year later, young Monroe led a rebellion against the British governor of Virginia. In the beginning of the Revolutionary War, he joined a volunteer regiment and joined the Continental Army under George Washington. In 1776, when he was just 18, he became a captain, a major the following year, and a colonel in 1780. He was one of the youngest senior officers. Although he himself did not sign the declaration of independence of the 13 former British colonies on July 4, 1776, he was undisputedly one of the founding fathers.

In the 1780s he became politically active while also qualifying as a lawyer. After the United States was formed, Monroe served in the first Senate. In the first major internal political conflict of the new state, the dispute over Alexander Hamilton, his great ability for polemics proved. In 1794, the first President Washington sent him to France as US ambassador. He was successful in this function, but became a victim of political intrigues at home and had to return in 1797.

Two years later he ran successfully for governor of his native state of Virginia, but after one term he aspired to go abroad again, this time as ambassador to London. In this function he negotiated the "Louisana Purchase", the sale of the French possessions in (except for the then Spanish Florida) southeastern North America; the price was seven US dollars per square kilometer. With 2.144 million square kilometers sold, it was the largest real estate deal in history.

In 1808 he ran for the presidency for the first time, but was defeated by James Madison, who was supported by the outgoing President Thomas Jefferson. Despite a humiliating defeat, the ex-candidate joined the cabinet of his former competitor two years later – as foreign minister. The two Virginians worked together in the Second Revolutionary War, and Monroe's re-election in 1816 was successful.

By 1817, the White House, which had been burned down by British troops three years previously, had been rebuilt true to the original. In 1819 he traded the Florida peninsula for lands that had fallen to the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. He also campaigned for the takeover of the Midwest - at the price that the inhabitants there were partly expelled, partly oppressed, partly at the mercy of death. In addition, he attempted to mend the antagonism between slave-holding states in the Southeast and anti-slavery states in the North; however, it failed.

In 1825 Monroe left office; He was succeeded by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, author of the December 2, 1823, speech that became known as the Monroe Doctrine. It fixed US foreign policy (with the deviation under Woodrow Wilson during and immediately after World War I) on isolationism until 1939; only Franklin D. Roosevelt freed the United States from this corset. James Monroe died, impoverished and lonely because of several strokes of fate, in 1831 at the age of 73 - coincidentally on the US National Day, July 4th.

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