US Marines in the Caribbean (1909-1911)

An earlier version of this article, which the Tactical Notebook will publish in two parts, appeared in the first (cloth-bound) edition of Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Oxford: Osprey, 2008). The article, however, was not included in subsequent editions of the book, whether paperback or electronic.

In the century leading up to 1909, United States Marines took part in 50 or so minor operations on the shores of Central America and the islands of the Caribbean Sea. These little expeditions, which were invariably carried out by landing parties drawn from the crews of warships, tended to be short-term affairs. In all but a handful of cases, the Marines and Bluejackets who made up these landing parties spent less than a week ashore.[1] Between 1909 and 1912, however, the pattern of American involvement changed. For most of the quarter-century that followed, the raids, rescues, and local displays of force that had so long been the bread and butter of the American naval presence in the Caribbean gave way to operations of a different sort. Described as “small wars” by the Marines who carried them out and “banana wars” by subsequent generations, these enterprises involved the deployment of substantial expeditionary forces, occupations that lasted for years, and efforts at nation building that, for good or for ill, had a profound effect on the future development of the peoples concerned.[2]

The naval forces of the United States began to operate in the Caribbean during the American War of Independence (1775-83). Nevertheless, they did not establish a permanent presence in the region until the spring of 1823, when President James Monroe ordered the creation of the West India Squadron. The initial purpose of this “Mosquito Fleet” (as it was sometimes known) was to suppress an epidemic of piracy in the Florida Straits and the Gulf of Mexico. Once this was accomplished, the West India Squadron took on the mission that would define the role of American naval forces in the region for nearly a hundred years: protecting American citizens, whether afloat or ashore, from the side effects of the political violence endemic to the region. In fulfilling this mission, these forces also provided a concrete reminder of the policy that would eventually become known as the “Monroe Doctrine.”[3]

At first, the focus of American interest in the Caribbean lay in places that were adjacent to American territory and, in particular, the sea-lanes that ran from the mouth of the Mississippi to the Straits of Florida. After the US acquired California (1848), however, Americans began to pay much more attention to Central America. The most obvious product of that increased attention was the Panama Railway. Funded entirely by American investors and completed in just five years (1850-1855), this 49-mile long railroad reduced the time it took to travel from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean from four days to four hours, eliminated most of the hardships and (frequently fatal) dangers associated with that trip, and added greatly to American interest in the possibility of a canal that would allow seagoing ships to pass directly from the Pacific to the Caribbean.[4]  This, in turn, encouraged Americans of a maritime frame of mind to think about the places where a ship that had entered the Caribbean by means of such a canal would pass into the open Atlantic, and thus the islands of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico.  It also excited interest in the western coast of Central America.

The American Civil War (1861-65), which put a temporary halt to all schemes for trans-oceanic canals and overseas naval bases, had the paradoxical effect of elevating the Monroe Doctrine from an informal understanding between two powers into an unquestioned article of faith for American statesmen. While the US was distracted, Spain regained possession of the Spanish-speaking parts of Hispaniola, thereby converting the Dominican Republic into the colony of Santo Domingo, and France sent an army to Mexico, where it fought on behalf of an imported monarchy against the forces of an indigenous republic.

These incidents, and the speed with which the Spanish and French governments restored the status quo ante at the end of the Civil War, convinced contemporary American statesmen that a powerful US was the only significant obstacle to the re-colonization of Latin America. The Civil War, which saw the extensive use of islands throughout the Caribbean as bases for Confederate blockade runners and commerce raiders, also convinced many American naval officers that the interests of the US in the region extended well beyond the coastal waters of the Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Straits. It is thus not surprising that the following decade saw the earnest exploration of such possibilities as the establishment of American naval bases on Hispaniola, the American purchase of the Danish West Indies, and the granting of American statehood to the Dominican Republic, as well as expeditions to survey possible routes for a trans-oceanic canal. [5]

By 1875, none of the American projects to obtain naval bases, acquire territory, or begin the construction of trans-oceanic canals in the Caribbean had achieved the slightest degree of success. While some of these failures were the result of poor management, technical difficulties, or political obstacles of the local variety, the chief reason for this was the disappearance of the factors that had previously motivated American interest in the region. Transcontinental railroads (the first of which was completed in 1869) solved the transportation problems of many Americans who would otherwise have clamored for a trans-oceanic canal. The relative weakness of France, Russia, and Spain (the powers that had inspired the original Monroe Doctrine), and the continuation of the traditionally benign attitude of Great Britain, reduced fears of an expansion of European influence in the Western Hemisphere. This development coincided with a considerable reduction in the activity of US naval forces in Central America and the Caribbean. 

Between 1866 and 1890, only three American landing parties went ashore in the region.  Two of these (in 1873 and 1888) were dispatched to protect the American residents of the Caribbean terminus of the Panama Railroad (what is now the city of Colón) from becoming the unintended victims of local civil wars.  The third landing party, which went ashore in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince in 1888, served as escort to Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, who was on a mission to secure the release of an American ship that had been seized on the high seas by participants in one of Haiti’s many intramural conflicts.  While Luce had been authorized to use force to recover the ship, he was able to fulfill his mission without firing a shot.[6]

The next revival of intense American interest in Central America and the Caribbean, which began in the 1890s, took place within the context of “navalism.” Codified in the writings of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan of the US Navy, navalism held that the secret to success in naval warfare, and thus the contest for predominance among seafaring nations, was a large fleet of powerful warships that, in the event of war, could be rapidly concentrated in order to fight decisive battles.

Alfred Thayer Mahan in 1904

While the most obvious effect of navalism was to encourage states to expand and modernize their navies, the movement also created a number of secondary effects, which varied from one country to the next. In Germany and Japan, navalism provided the justification for ambitious programs to transform modest navies of purely local significance into world-class fleets, as well as the acquisition of overseas colonies of doubtful economic value. In Great Britain, it led to a reduction in those overseas commitments that inhibited the ability of the Royal Navy to concentrate its forces. This, in turn, led directly to an explicit recognition on the part of Great Britain that the US was the dominant power in Central America and the Caribbean.

In the US, navalism resulted in a renewed desire for the acquisition of permanent naval bases in the Caribbean and the Pacific, as well as the development of a capability to establish temporary naval bases in the course of a naval campaign. It also convinced many Americans that the US, which maintained fleets in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, needed a canal that, in case of war, would be open to US warships and closed to those of hostile nations. The most obvious products of the renewal, intensification, and “navalization” of American interest in a trans-oceanic canal was the American assumption (and subsequent completion) of the ill-fated French project to build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, sponsorship of the revolution that separated Panama from Colombia, and the Anglo-American agreements that replaced the old ideal of a neutral, essentially demilitarized trans-oceanic waterway with one that was, quite literally, under the guns of American fortresses.[7]

American victory in the Spanish-American War of 1898, which provided the US Navy with two naval bases in the Caribbean (Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and Culebra in Puerto Rico) satisfied the essential elements of the longstanding American desire for such facilities.[8] Similarly, the annexations of Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam effectively put an end to American enthusiasm for the acquisition of additional territories (particularly in places where the inhabitants were poorly supplied with Caucausian ancestors). At the same time, the rise of Germany and Japan as global naval powers led to considerable concern about the possibility that Germany might obtain naval bases in the Caribbean, that Japan would acquire naval bases off the Pacific coast of Central America, and that either power would either gain control of a trans-isthmian canal or find some other means of interfering with the rapid transit of American warships from one ocean to another. In the years leading up to World War One, such fears were fueled by the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), a Japanese attempt to acquire a naval base in Baja California, the rapid expansion of the German Navy, frequent expressions of disdain for the Monroe Doctrine on the part of prominent Germans, and German endeavors to acquire naval bases on Hispaniola and in the Danish West Indies.[9]

In the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, emerging American concerns about grand strategy, naval operations, and the security of the soon-to-be-completed Panama Canal coincided with a development that, for want of a better name, might well be called the “crisis of kleptocracy.” Over the course of the nineteenth century, the combination of extractive economics and strongman politics created a number of traditions in which the lion’s share of entrepreneurial energy in the independent republics of Central America and the Caribbean was channeled into attempts to capture the income stream produced by customs duties. In some cases, these exercises in armed entrepreneurship resulted in struggles between regional warlords (who desired control over discrete slices of the governmental revenues) and ambitious centralizers (who coveted the entire pie). In others, it resulted in endemic struggles that pitted regional warlords against each other, or short-lived changes of national government that, if only for a while, left all the customs revenues of a given republic in the hands of a single person or party.

Though the crisis of kleptocracy and American worries of the navalist variety were separate developments, they did overlap in one area. For nearly a century, European investors had been in the habit of making substantial loans to the national governments of the various Caribbean and Central American republics. Though they sometimes took the form of mortgages on particular mines or pieces of land, these loans were usually advanced against customs duties in general, the duties collected on particular items, or the duties collected in a specific place.

While the governments that took out these loans were notoriously unstable, European investors continued to lend their money to them. One reason for this was the universal practice of holding each regime responsible for the debts of its predecessors. Another was the willingness of European governments to employ their navies as collection agencies. Thus, whenever a Caribbean or Central American government fell behind on the payments on its international debt, it had to deal with the threat of foreign warships in its harbors, foreign landing parties on its soil, and the seizure of one or more of its custom houses. This had the secondary effect of exciting American fears about foreign influence in the region, fears that were exacerbated on those occasions when the German Empire proclaimed itself the champion, not merely of German creditors, but of those of other European nations as well.

The inability of a Caribbean or Central American republic to keep up with its international financial obligations was often the result of a breakdown in local arrangements for the distribution of national revenue. Thus, the dispatch of European warships to a Caribbean or Central American republic often coincided with outbreaks of political violence in that country. This, in turn, led to situations where the European warships put landing parties ashore to protect their diplomats, their expatriates, or the local international community as a whole from the worst effects of civil strife. In this way, many Caribbean countries found themselves caught in constantly escalating (and seemingly endless) cycles of insolvency, insurrection, and international intervention.

On December 13, 1901, the German government announced that, in order to collect debts owed by Venezuela to German nationals, it planned to send ships to blockade Venezuelan harbors and, should this not achieve the desired result, take control of customs houses on the Venezuelan littoral. Thus began the Venezuelan Claims Crisis of 1902-03. In the 15 months that followed, Germany convinced Great Britain and Italy to participate in an international naval expedition to Venezuelan waters, German and British warships seized four Venezuelan gunboats and blockaded the port of Caracas, Great Britain withdrew its ships, the US Navy conducted ostentatious maneuvers in the southern Caribbean; and, in the end, the parties concerned agreed to submit their dispute to international arbitration.[10]

On December 6, 1904, the threat of a similar crisis over the international debts of the Dominican Republic led President Theodore Roosevelt  to announce the policy that has since become known as the “Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” Roosevelt argued that, as attempts by European powers to ensure the payment of debts would necessarily violate the Monroe Doctrine, the US would have to take measures to ensure that its sister republics in the New World honored their international financial obligations.

The mechanism for the implementation of the Roosevelt Corollary in the Dominican Republic resembled the sort of regime that might be imposed upon a bankrupt corporation. Financial experts arranged for new loans that allowed both debt consolidation (replacing multiple European creditors with a single American one) and a much lower rate of interest. At the same time, American officials took charge of the Dominican customs service, supervised the collection of duties, and ensured that revenues were divided (in accordance with a pre-established formula) between debt service and the legitimate expenses of government. Lest it be tempted to interfere with the operation of this arrangement, the Dominican leadership also agreed to give up the right to change its customs duties without American permission.

In some respects, the situation in the Dominican Republic was highly amenable to the “customs receivership” imposed by the US. Traditionally more concerned about the threat of Haitian aggression than the danger of re-colonization, Dominican leaders at the national level were less reluctant than most of their Caribbean counterparts to sacrifice significant portions of sovereignty on the altar of security. Thus, there was little immediate resistance to the imposition of the new arrangement. The vast majority of the Dominican bonds, moreover, were held by American, French, and Belgian investors, who, as a rule, were much happier with an American customs receivership than the prospect of a debt-collection regime managed from Berlin. At the same time, Dominican geography (which were characterized by poor overland communications and a multitude of natural harbors), politics (which were controlled by powerful regional warlords) and customs duties (which were higher than they should have been) were all highly favorable to smuggling. Nonetheless, the short-term results of the American customs receivership were encouraging. Consequently, Roosevelt’s successor as president of the US, William Howard Taft decided to extend the techniques of customs receivership and debt consolidation (an approach that he would soon begin to describe as “dollar diplomacy”) to other places in Central America and the Caribbean.

Ironically, the first application of Taft’s “dollar diplomacy” took place in Nicaragua, which was not only one of the more stable states in the region (with a dictator who had been in power since 1893), but also one of the few Caribbean republics that had managed to make regular payments to its international creditors during the first decade of the twentieth century (though only at the cost of inflating the national currency). In the eyes of the US, however, these virtues (such as they were) did little to mitigate the many offenses of the regime of José Santos Zelaya. In the past few years, Zelaya had done much to undermine the traditional autonomy of the Misquito Coast, thereby making many enemies among the people who lived there, a number of whom were American citizens. At the same time, he had been involved in a number of thinly veiled attempts to overthrow the governments of Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, and Ecuador. Worst of all, Zelaya had invited both Germany and Japan to build a second trans-oceanic canal. In peacetime, such a waterway would have threatened the economic viability of the Panama Canal, thereby depriving the US of the revenue needed to offset the cost of construction. In the event of war, a Nicaraguan canal under the control of Germany and Japan would have done much to complicate American naval operations.

The most successful of the many extra-territorial maneuvers conducted by Zelaya was the Nicaraguan invasion of Honduras in 1907. Though Zelaya himself described the resulting war as a struggle between sovereign states, the presence of many Hondurans on his side, and many Nicaraguans and Salvadorans on the other, gave the conflict the character of a Central American civil war.[11] President Roosevelt responded with a diplomatic initiative that made the US and Mexico the joint sponsors of a Central American peace conference, as well as the joint guarantors of a treaty that created a framework for the peaceful resolution of disputes in the region.[12] Unfortunately, as Mexico was suffering from many of the same ills as its smaller neighbors to the south, and the problem at hand was less a matter of inter-state disputes of the traditional kind than of Zelaya’s exploitation of domestic unrest on the territory of his neighbors, Roosevelt’s attempt to craft a multi-lateral response won him little more than the half-hearted approval of contemporary idealists.

In the spring of 1909, the recently inaugurated administration of President Taft found itself faced with yet another attempt by Zelaya to take control of a nearby country, an enterprise that, among other things, involved the sending of ships full of armed men and supplies from ports on the Pacific littoral of Nicaragua to points on the coast of El Salvador. Taft’s response made use of the diplomatic framework created by his predecessor, but did not depend upon it. Thus, while the Mexican Navy made a token contribution of two aged gunboats to the flotilla stationed in the Gulf of Fonseca, the lion’s share of the business at hand (which included intercepting ships carrying arms or revolutionaries, strengthening the resolve of the Salvadoran government, and discouraging Zelaya from further adventures of this type) was carried out by four armored cruisers of the US Navy and a battalion of US Marines.

While the Marines deployed to the Gulf of Fonseca spent most of their time in enforced idleness, their inclusion in the expedition of 1909 reflected a significant change in organization, capabilities, and self-conception that had taken place in the Marine Corps during the previous decade. Throughout the nineteenth century, the vast majority of Marines had either been assigned to the ships’ companies of armed vessels (where they kept order among the sailors, provided crews for some of the shipboard guns, and served in landing parties) or to naval installations on land (where they served as guards and trained for duty at sea). Though Marines from ships’ detachments and barracks were sometimes formed into military-style field units, the units so created had no permanent existence.

After the Spanish-American War, however, some of the temporary field units cobbled together by the Marine Corps began to take on a more permanent character. Thus, rather than sending out provisional companies and battalions made up of detachments from various barracks and warships, the Marine Corps began to assemble provisional battalions and regiments from permanently constituted companies. (As a rule, companies consisted of a hundred or so men, battalions of three or four companies, and regiments of two or three battalions.)

The Transformation of the Marine Corps (1899-1916)

The frustration of Zelaya’s ambitions in the Gulf of Fonseca convinced several of his lieutenants that Nicaragua was ripe for a change of government. In October of 1909, Juan J. Estrada, who had commanded the Nicaraguan forces that had recently fought in Honduras, and had consequently been rewarded with the governorship of the Department of Zelaya, raised the banner of rebellion. While Estrada’s ambitions were national, the lion’s share of the impetus behind his movement came from the ethnically mixed (and largely English-speaking) population of his province, which encompassed both the Misquito Coast and its hinterland. In particular, residents of this area, which had long enjoyed a high degree of independence and had few commercial, traditional, or cultural connections to people other parts of Nicaragua, resented the many restrictions that Zelaya had imposed upon them. They were particularly incensed by Zelaya’s practice of granting (or selling) trade monopolies of various kinds, which greatly interfered with the international commerce that played such an important role in the local economy.

The immediate American response to the rebellion on the Misquito Coast was very much in keeping with the way that the US had traditionally dealt with outbreaks of political violence in the Caribbean: the State Department proclaimed strict neutrality and the Department of the Navy dispatched a warship with orders to protect the lives and property of American expatriates. Within a few weeks, however, the execution of two American citizens who had been captured by government forces while serving in the ranks of Estrada’s rebel army proved to be the straw the broke the camel’s back. On December 1, 1909, the US broke off diplomatic relations with Nicaragua and, while declining to offer direct support to the rebels, made it very clear to all concerned that it had lost all patience with Zelaya. Nine days later, Zelaya resigned his office and went into voluntary exile, hoping thereby to keep his supporters in positions of power.[13] 

For four months, it seemed as if Zelaya’s act of political self-sacrifice had had its intended effect. The nationwide revolution that Estrada had hoped to spark failed to materialize, and what remained of his army had taken refuge in Bluefields, a city that had long served as the commercial capital of the Misquito Coast. Before the government troops could deliver the coup de grâce, however, the US consul in Bluefields requested reinforcements for the hundred-man landing party that an American cruiser had put ashore to protect the many Americans who lived there. On May 31, 1910, elements of the same battalion of Marines that had recently been deployed to the Gulf of Fonseca landed in Bluefields and began to do things that, while described as measures to prevent harm to American citizens, had the effect of protecting the remnants of Estrada’s rebel army from the government troops.

On one occasion, for example, the senior Marine ashore (the soon-to-be-famous Major Smedley D. Butler) informed the commanders of both sides that, as projectiles landing in Bluefields might endanger American citizens, he would take action against any soldiers who fired into the city, but had no objection to bullets that flew in the other direction.[14] The actions of American warships, which prevented each side from interfering with commercial traffic, were also of greater benefit to Estrada’s rebel army, which was able to collect customs duties at Bluefields and obtain supplies purchased in overseas, than to the government forces, which, being far away from their sources of supply in the cities of western Nicaragua, were forced to live off the land.[15]

Major Smedley D. Butler aboard a ship, circa 1910

While the government forces cooled their heels outside of Bluefields, forcing their countrymen to accept increasingly worthless paper money in exchange for food, fodder, and other supplies, Zelaya’s old enemies in other parts of the country launched uprisings of their own. By the end of the summer of 1910, Zelaya’s successor was out of power and a fragile coalition of rebel leaders had taken the reins of government. While maneuvering against each other in a variety of ways, these leaders agreed that the resources of the state should be used to both compensate their supporters for their losses and reward them for their loyalty. This policy, which left Nicaragua without the foreign currency needed to pay its international debts, but with far too much of its own paper money, created a financial and monetary crisis that quickly brought the economic life of the country to a standstill.

The remedy provided by the US, which combined a debt-consolidation loan with a customs receivership and a new currency, solved the worst of Nicaragua’s fiscal and monetary problems. At the same time, the abolition of the many monopolies and special concessions that Zelaya had granted during his long dictatorship did much to stimulate trade. Unfortunately, progress in the realm of economics led directly to problems in the political sphere. Many Nicaraguans resented the loss of sovereignty inherent in both the customs receivership and the monetary reform. At the same time, the abolition of monopolies and special concessions created a class of influential people who, having paid for such advantages with money and political support, tended to view them as their private property.[16]

The second half of this article, which will appear under the title of US Marines in Nicaragua (1912), will be posted shortly.

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[1]Strictly speaking, the term “Bluejackets” refers only to enlisted men of the United States Navy, particularly when they are performing duties of a military (as opposed to a purely nautical or technical) nature. As used here, however, it also includes the officers assigned to landing parties.

[2]US Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence, List of Expeditions, 1901-1929, unpublished manuscript, Navy Library, Washington, DC and Richard F. Grimmett, Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2004, (Washington: Congressional Research Service, 2004).

[3]On December 2, 1823, President James Monroe told the US Congress that he would view any attempt on the part of a European power to seize additional territory in the Western Hemisphere as “the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.”  James Monroe, “Seventh Annual Message” (December 2, 1823), in Edwin Williams, ed., The Statesman’s Manual, (New York: Edward Walker, 1854), I, 451-62.

[4]Robert Tomes, The Panama Railroad, (New York: Harper Brothers, 1855), 104.

[5]Descriptions of many of these proposals can be found in The Journal of Negro History. These include Merline Pitre, “Frederick Douglas and the Annexation of Santo Domingo,” October 1977; Myra Himelhoch, “Frederick Douglas and Haiti’s Mole St. Nicholas,” July 1971; Harold T. Pinkett, “Efforts to Annex Santo Domingo to the United States, 1866-1871,” January 1941; and Leila Amos Pendleton, “Our New Possessions – The Danish West Indies,” July 1917. See also Jackson Crowell, “The United States and a Central American Canal, 1869-1877,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, February 1969 and Robert E. May, “Lobbyists for Commercial Empire:  Jane Cazneau, William Cazneau and U.S. Caribbean Policy, 1846-1878,”, The Pacific Historical Review, August 1979.

[6] Harry A. Ellsworth, One Hundred Eighty Landings of United States Marines, 1800-1934, (Washington: U.S. Marine Corps, 1934), 46-51 and 88.

[7]Alfred Thayer Mahan, Lessons of the War with Spain, (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1970), 28-30 and The Problem of Asia (Boston: Little Brown, 1905), 136 and 198-9.

[8]Donald A. Yerxa, Admirals and Empire, the United States Navy and the Caribbean, 1898-1945 (Columbia, SC: The University of South Carolina Press, 1991), 58-66.

[9]Gerhard Wiechmann, Die Preussische-Deutsche Marine in Lateinamerika 1866-1914, Eine Studie deutscher Kanonenbootpolitik (Ph.D. Dissertation, Carl von Ossietsky Universität, 2000); Göran Henriksson, “Den Tyska Marinen och Danska Västindien,” Krigshistorisk Tidsskrift, April 1976 and Thomas A. Bailey, “The Lodge Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine,” Political Science Quarterly, June 1933.

[10]Seward W. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt, the American Navy and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902-1903,” The American Historical Review, April 1946.

[11]For descriptions of these events from Zelaya’s point of view, see Nicaragua, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Documentos Referentes a la Guerra entre Nicaragua y Honduras de 1907 y a la participación de El Salvador (Managua: Compañía Tip. Internacional, 1907).

[12]Elihu Root, Latin America and the United States (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), 213-6.

[13]Dana G. Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy in the Caribbean, 1900-1921 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980), 179.

[14]Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: General Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History, (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987), 41.

[15]Munro, Intervention and Dollar Diplomacy, 183-5.

[16]Dana G. Munro, The Five Republics of Central America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1919), 335-40.

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