A couple of days ago, a Pulse post written by Anthony Scaramucci caught my attention. The post can be found here.
The reason why it interested me was because I live in Argentina, one of the countries mentioned in the post. The other reason was the mention of the so called Monroe’s doctrine that has usually been resumed in the following phrase: “America for Americans”.
I have an endless curiosity about some aspects of history, so I decided to find out the origin of that phrase. Why? Because, as I commented in the above mentioned post:
“One of the greatest mistakes both in writing, editing and interpretation of a speech or statement must be Monroe”s phrase “America for Americans”.
This phrase, from a US point of view has a completely different meaning if read from outside of the US.
The reason is that in the US, people employ the term America an the noun American as synonyms with United States.
So something is anti American if i’s anti US, and so on.
For non US living persons America means a set of three continents: North America, Central America and South America, being the US one of the countries that are part of North America, along with Canada and Mexico.
So the Monroe doctrine can be interpreted in different ways:
- America for the Americans meaning the US for US Citizens?
- Or America (the whole continent) for US citizens?
- Or America (the whole continent) for Americans (like Argentineans, Brazileans, Chileans, Bolivians, etc)?
I think that the implications of how the US foreign policy has been understood in the continent has deep connections with the ambiguity of the Monroe doctrine.”
After all, who has really read the original transcript of the Monroe’s doctrine? And who was Monroe?
James Monroe was the fifth president of the US, he held this position from 1817 to 1825. He was the last member of the so called Founding Fathers (the ones who led the revolution against the British Empire) and member of the Republican-Democrat party which was opposed by the Federalist party.
You are reading this correctly, once upon a time, there was a Republican-Democratic party in the US. But that’s another story.
Monroe won the 1816 elections easily and went through the 1820 elections without any opposition. Again, you are reading this correctly: nobody opposed Monroe for his second term. Of course he won the election.
During Monroe’s administration, the US acquired Florida and signed a treaty with the British Empire that increased the territory of the US drastically.
Also, his administration took place at the time when most of the Spanish colonies located in Central and South America obtained its independence from the Spanish Empire. Those colonies, became independent countries largely due to the fact that Spain was in a complicated situation because of the Napoleonic wars and could not face the revolutions at her colonies with adequate means.
Monroe was quick to realize that the fall of Spain as a colonial power opened the doors for other colonial empires to set a foot in the Americas. Russia, England, France, would happily proceed to do so.
Monroe’s doctrine states that the foreign policy of the United States was to uphold republican institutions and to seek treaties of commerce on a most-favored-nation basis. The United States would support inter-American congresses dedicated to the development of economic and political institutions fundamentally differing from those prevailing in Europe.
So the idea was to support the republican governments of the newly born American countries, and to create what we would call a Free Trade Market treaty between the US and the newly formed American countries.
In this way, any colonial empire would be dissuaded to mess around with any American country, as long as it remained to be republican and democratic.
In fact, in the original text of the Monroe’s Doctrine, the phrase “America for Americans” does not appear at all. Shame on me!
History is fascinating.
The current American leaders at that time, such as Venezuelan Libertador Simon Bolivar were sympathetic towards the doctrine, although they knew that in those years the actual strength of the US was by no means comparable to the forces of the European colonial monarchies.
A curious fact was that Monroe’s doctrine was not written by Monroe, but by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams.
So, where does the famous phrase comes actually?
After some research, I found out that the first time the phrase was employed was in a speech made by Theodore Roosevelt in St. Lois in May 131, 1916. In this speech he talks about the United States specifically, dealing with the issue of the large number of immigrants that were arriving to the US at that time. He curiously employed the terms America and Americans as synonyms for US and US citizens. The point of the speech was that US citizens were equal no matter if they were US born citizen or immigrants from Ireland, Germany, England or Italy.
Teddy Roosevelt also mentions that he didn’t care if the US citizen was Jew, Protestant or Catholic, as long as he had the right stuff, whatever this may be.
The speech ended with the famous words: AMERICA FOR AMERICANS, the capitals are not mine, they were written like that in the original transcript.
So that is the origin of the phrase. But what is the origin of the US tradition of using America and US as synonyms?
After some additional research, I found out the first time the term Americans was used in reference to the United States:
In his 1796 farewell speech, George Washington wrote: “The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation.”
What Washington had in mind was that the members of the original thirteen colonies should use the common term Americans when talking about themselves and not the noun based on the name of the colony, such as Virgineans, South Carolineans or New Yorkers. In this way he looked for a sense of unity and belonging.
But in fact the first ones that used the term Americans in reference to US nationals were the British colonial officers.
The Declaration of Independence talks about “[the] unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America” adopted by the “Representatives of the united States of America” on July 4, 1776. The official name of the country was established on November 15, 1777, when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Articles of Confederation, the first of which says, “The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America'”.
Finally, the confusion seems to be explained. But its long term consequences linger on. In fact, the usual feeling of any South American or Central American or even North American towards an US citizen calling himself American is one of disdain.
Mirko Torrez Contreras is a freelance Process Automation consultant who likes History. He is also interested in quite a few other things, so in order not to alienate readers focused on Process Automation stuff, he has just started this personal blog, where you’ll find posts, articles and notes not related to the PA world.