Arrogant Diplomacy: U.S. Policy Toward Colombia, 1903–1922 by Richard L. Lael (review)

120 Shorter Book Reviews Richard L. Lael. Arrogant Diplomacy: U.S. Policy Toward Colombia, 19031922 . Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1987. xix + 194 pp. On 2 November, 1903, the U.S.S. Nashville, then anchored at Colon, Panama, was ordered by the Theodore Roosevelt administration to "maintain free and uninterrupted transit on the Isthmus. If interruption threatened by armed force, occupy the line of railroad. Prevent landing of armed force with hostile intent, either Government or insurgent, either at Colon, Porto Bello, or other point." The following day, Panamanian rebels rekindled a secessionist action that within a few days effectively ended Colombian political and military control of Panama. With unseemly haste, the Roosevelt administration recognized the rebel junta; only fifteen days after the outbreak of revolt the administration negotiated a canal treaty with Philippe BunauVarilla , who spoke, with some question to the claim, as Panamanian Minister to the U.S., thus paving the way for the completion of the Panama Canal under U.S. financing and control. The events of those two short weeks constitute one of the most contentious periods in United States-Latin American relations; they poisoned Colombian-American relations for more than two decades, long after the conclusion in 1922 of the Thomson-Urrutia Treaty of reconciliation, and they have coloured the image of the United States in Latin America to this day. As recently as the late 1960s, one of Colombia's most prestigious theatres, La Candalaria, produced a play entitled I took Panama. Lael's study constitutes a detailed, thoughtful and analytical account of the period from the Panama "incident" in 1903 through the extended negotiations, aborted and ultimately successful, which absorbed ColombianAmerican officials during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson on the U.S. side, and the presidencies of Jose Marroquin, Rafael Reyes, Carlos E. Restrepo, Vincente Concha and Marco Fidel Suarez on the Colombian. In preparing a larger work on the diplomacy of these years, I have worked through most of the archival and secondary literature which constitutes the basis of the study and can affirm with reasonable confidence that Lael's book constitutes the definitive account of the events. Although there remains a good deal more research and analysis to be completed on the Colombian side, we are unlikely to learn more than we do from Lael's constructive and exhaustive study of United States and British materials. Lael's study adds to our knowledge of both Colombian-American relations, displacing the 1930s study by E. Taylor Parks, as well as the specialized studies of the canal issue by Dwight Miner, Sheldon Liss and Shorter Book Reviews 121 Walter LaFeber, at the same time that it provides a desirable corrective to the more positive literature on the foreign policies of the Roosevelt and Wilson years by Arthur Link, John Blum and John M. Cooper, Jr. The "arrogant diplomacy'' which, Lael argues, was pursued by a succession of U.S. administrations toward Colombia and Latin America during these years was premised on a strong sense of moral and racial superiority over the weaker nations with which the United States had diplomatic relations and which, as Roman Catholic, conservative and traditional societies, approached issues such as modernization, economic development and national honour from different perspectives than did the United States. The closest analogy one can offer (and it is not a very exact one) to the conduct of the Roosevelt administration in 1903, would be the situation had Great Britain decided in 1861, after the Confederate firing on Fort Sumter, that the South should be free from Northern tyranny, and had intervened to prevent Union troops from attempting to restore national control. There are minor exceptions which one could take to the study. The preoccupation with the Panama issue, understandable as it is, nonetheless prevents a fuller discussion of United States-Colombian relations in these years, including the early oil explorations, the development of street railways, involvement in sugar production and more generally in agriculture; although Lael, building on his earlier publications in the area, compensates for those deficiencies by providing a thorough and important analysis of platinum extraction and controls during World War I. One would, nonetheless, like more...