A Subject of Such Weight

Chapter 2 examines how TR handled the politics of European interventions in Latin America from 1901 to 1903, especially a blockade of Venezuela spearheaded by Britain and Germany. It argues that TR’s reading of public opinion was a central factor in the evolution of his thinking about the Monroe Doctrine, in that he initially overestimated the willingness of Americans to tolerate European interventions in Latin America. The chapter documents how fierce criticism of the Venezuela blockade, most of which was directed at Germany and which caused problems for Roosevelt with the nation’s large German-American community—a constituency whose support he would need in the 1904 election—played a crucial role in the formulation of the Roosevelt Corollary.