Tomorrow, December 2, 2023, marks 200 years since President Monroe addressed Congress at the State of the Union and articulated what would become the Monroe Doctrine. This doctrine shaped the United States’ foreign policy for the next century.
In the address, President Monroe outlined a new foreign policy with three main concepts:
- “separate spheres of influence for the Americas and Europe,
- non-colonization,
- and non-intervention.”
Additionally, the doctrine served as a warning to European powers against interfering with the newly independent Latin American states.
Although initially largely ignored outside the United States and invoked rarely, this doctrine was expanded under President Polk to the idea of Manifest Destiny and President Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, expanding Monroe’s original ideas.
For more information, the Library of Congress has a research guide with great primary sources and a search result on our website brings up many interesting perspectives including editorial cartoons and rebuttals.
Subscribe to In Custodia Legis – it’s free! – to receive interesting posts drawn from the Law Library of Congress’s vast collections and our staff’s expertise in U.S., foreign, and international law.