When Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley as President in 1901, he was aware that America was in a different international position than it had been a few years earlier. The United States had been a continental empire from its founding, but following the Spanish-American War of 1898 it had ventured beyond its land borders. He claimed Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines as U.S. territories, made Cuba a U.S. protectorate, and annexed Hawaii.
America was now an overseas empire, and Roosevelt believed it was important for the United States to wield the kind of power in world affairs that European empires had. He believed that American interests were global interests, and that it was in fact good for “civilized” nations – among which he counted the United States – to intervene in the affairs of other countries.
“He believed it was the burden of ‘civilized’ nations to uplift ‘uncivilized’ nations,” says Michael Patrick Cullinane, professor of history at the University of Roehampton in London and author of Theodore Roosevelt’s Ghost: The Story and Memory of an American Icon.
Moreover, Roosevelt feared that if the United States did not “to play a greater role in world affairs would effectively amount to no longer being a world power,” Cullinane says. To avoid this, the 26th president ensured that the United States played a greater role in international diplomacy while reminding other countries that it was building a great navy – a foreign policy he described as “talk gently and carry a big stick”.
READ MORE: How Teddy Roosevelt’s belief in racial hierarchy shaped his policies
Courting Panama to build a canal
Theodore Roosevelt sits in the trolley of a crane at the Panama Canal, as workers look on. Roosevelt, the 26th American president, promoted the construction of the Panama Canal.
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Roosevelt was the driving force behind the construction of the Panama Canal, a waterway that allows ships to travel between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans without circling the tip of South America. American construction of the canal officially began in 1904 and continued until 1914, five years after Roosevelt’s departure.
When Roosevelt started trying to get the land for the canal, Panama was part of Colombia. America attempted to negotiate with Colombia to lease Panamanian land, but the Colombian congress rejected the terms.
Roosevelt responded by siding with Panama in its fight for Colombian independence. Shortly after Panama officially separated from Colombia in 1903, the United States signed a lease for the land to build the canal. Notably, Roosevelt’s 1906 photoshoot at the construction site made him the first president to leave the United States while in office.
Siding with Panama in its war with Colombia was a controversial decision, as the United States was interfering in the affairs of a sovereign Latin American nation. Shortly after leasing the land in Panama, Roosevelt formulated a foreign policy in which he saw the United States taking an even more active role in Latin American affairs.
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Addition to the Monroe Doctrine
In 1904 and 1905, Roosevelt presented what is called the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. President James Monroe’s 1823 doctrine had declared that European countries should stay out of business in the Americas, where they (and the United States) had long colonized indigenous nations. According to the Monroe Doctrine, the Western Hemisphere was part of the sphere of interests of the United States, not that of Europe.
The Roosevelt Corollary advanced the Monroe Doctrine. In it, Roosevelt said that the United States had a responsibility to protect the countries of the Americas from recolonization by European powers, and that the United States would intervene militarily if it deemed it necessary to do so. This was motivated in part by Venezuela’s failure to repay debts that European powers claimed the country owed them, and fears that those powers could use the debts as an excuse to recolonize the land.
At the same time, Roosevelt was strengthening the colonial spheres of interest. He believed that Britain’s sphere of interest was East Africa and India, France’s was West Africa, and Japan’s was the Pacific (although with Guam and the Philippines, America had begun to penetrate this region). Roosevelt’s corollary further marked America’s claim to the Western Hemisphere.
Roosevelt’s precedent for intervention in Latin America influenced the presidents who came after him and “led to a kind of very unfortunate economic colonialism in Latin America”, explains Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt: An Exhausting Life. Although Roosevelt did not use the corollary to take military action in Latin America, many 20th century presidents did.
Negotiate the end of the Russo-Japanese War
In addition to being the first sitting US president to leave the country, Roosevelt was also the first US president to win a Nobel Peace Prize. He received the award for negotiating the treaty that ended the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905).
Roosevelt’s role in the negotiation represented a major shift in the American presidency. Previously, most presidents viewed American interests as “continental or hemispheric,” Cullinane says. “Roosevelt believed that America’s interests were global and that something happening as far away as Japan…would have a real impact on American interests.”
It also signaled a new role for the United States in international diplomacy.
“In 1900, the United States was the greatest manufacturing power in the world,” says Dalton. “So the fact that the United States is excluded from power conversations in Europe is somehow embarrassing for the United States.” That changed with Roosevelt, whose diplomacy with European countries “helped make the United States a respected world power.”
After Roosevelt helped negotiate an end to the Russo-Japanese War, he also intervened to prevent war between Germany and France over their colonial claims in Morocco.
Make a “gentlemen’s agreement”
Prior to the last quarter of the 19th century, there were no federal laws generally stipulating who could enter the United States and how, and thus no “legal” or “illegal” immigration. This changed with the Pages Act of 1875 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which together restricted almost all immigration from China.
During Roosevelt’s presidency, he signed laws that further restricted who could immigrate to the United States. The Immigration Acts of 1903 and 1907 prohibited (in the parlance of the time) the immigration of anarchists, idiots, imbeciles, morons, epileptics, and paupers, among other categories. Additionally, the Expatriation Act of 1907 stated that American women who married non-American men would lose their citizenship.
However, the immigration policy for which Roosevelt became most famous was not really law; it was an informal diplomatic agreement aimed at easing international tensions. At the time, Japanese officials resented the discrimination and violence that Japanese immigrants in America faced. In 1907, Roosevelt brokered an agreement with Japan in which San Francisco would rescind its new policy of segregating Japanese students from white students. In return, Japan would prevent most Japanese workers from emigrating to the United States.
The Gentlemen’s Agreement, as it became known, helped preserve America’s diplomatic relations with Japan while continuing to restrict the immigration of East Asians to the United States. Over the following decades, these restrictions became even more severe. The Immigration Acts of 1917 and 1924 banned almost all immigration from Asia, severely limiting all migration from the continent until 1965.
