The End of the Monroe Doctrine

[MGR1]

Originally Posted by Torplexed

I always somewhat bemused by the Monroe Doctrines beginnings. Although declared by a US President, it was mostly enforced in its early decades by the power of the Royal Navy, as the British tacitly approved of it and the US lacked the naval power back then to do much more than sometimes contribute.

That will have been the British "Informal" Empire at work. From "British Cruisers: Two World Wars and After" by the American naval historian Norman Friedman:

The third important cruiser role was protecting the Empire. It was complex partly because shadowing the formal British Empire was an informal one, consisting of close trading partners whose governments tended to benefit from British sea dominance. This informal empire was closely connected to the trading operations of the City of London, the financial centre of the United Kingdom and, before the First World War, the single most important financial centre of the world. The City financed world trade, and it well understood that free trade (free, for example, from anti-trade warfare) was key to British prosperity. It was understood that governments would favour Britain and the City if they understood that British sea dominance helped protect them.......... The informal empire seems to have been well understood in the British government, but rarely (if ever) discussed; it has surfaced in historical discussions only in recent years.
Informal empire could be expected to work as long as prospective partners could realistically expect Britain, which generally meant the Royal Navy, to help protect them. When someone wrote that 'trade follows the flag', what was often meant was that a country shielded by the Royal Navy would feel inclined to support that protection by buying British, and using British banks to float it's loans. In a sense informal empire justified the cruiser squadrons maintained on foreign stations between the two world wars. The stations were revived after the Second World War, but could not be maintained for long, as the war had destroyed too much of the British economy

Then there's this in the notes section:

The position of the United States within the informal empire but also as a force attempting to disrupt the formal empire gives some idea of the complexity of informal empire. Much of the formal empire was obtained to support the trading requirements of the informal empire; places like Hong Kong were valuable as trading ports, not in themselves. The British (or at least some of them) seem to have been unique in the nineteenth and early twentieth century in accepting the modern idea that investment and return were what counted, not physical control; hence many modern claims that conquest does not pay. Of course the British (or at least some of them, in government and the City) well understood that control of some territory made it more attractive for informal-empire partners to work with the British.

Once you become aware of the informal empire, the actions of various UK governments being in thrall of/protecting at all costs the City of London, plus the current one in joining this Chinese "Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank" makes more sense.

The "Formal" British Empire may be gone, but the "Informal" one still exists!!

Mike.

[Aktungbby]

The position of the United States within the informal empire but also as a force attempting to disrupt the formal empire gives some idea of the complexity of informal empire.

Two indisputable facts of the informal empire are: 1; until the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the 5,500 mile Canadian- US boarder-incl. Alaska- was the longest militarily unguarded frontier in the world. 2: The Atlantic Ocean is (still) essentially an English speaking 'lake'.

[MGR1]

Very true indeed, especially the first part. Remember that Friedman's American - when he first mentioned the "Informal Empire" in one of his British Destroyer books (I think it might have been the second volume which dealt with the Victorian to Interwar ships) he seemed surprised and little disconcerted at the concept.

Mike.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by MGR1

Very true indeed, especially the first part. Remember that Friedman's American - when he first mentioned the "Informal Empire" in one of his British Destroyer books (I think it might have been the second volume which dealt with the Victorian to Interwar ships) he seemed surprised and little disconcerted at the concept.

Mike.

Agreed