The Venezuelan government is now at loggerheads with ‘U.S. imperialism’, which they accuse of all kinds of infamy. But as we shall see, in the late 19th century, it vigorously supported one of the most fundamental regional pillars of that very imperialism. Indeed, had it not been for US imperialist intervention, today Guyana might have stretched to the Orinoco.
Great Britain had two claims, one within the boundary drawn by Robert Schomburgk and the other ‘extreme claim’ going right to the Orinoco. Her Majesty’s Government stated that it was willing to take that proportion of its claim outside the Schomburgk line to arbitration, but was not prepared to discuss territories within the line, which it regarded as indisputably its own. Venezuela did not agree with Britain’s refusal to yield the entire area to arbitration.
In October 1894, Venezuelan forces crossed the border into British Guiana and established a post, and the British colonial police and magistrate left without putting up any resistance (The Times. London, 1894). The entire business was coming to a head when in 1895, President Cleveland of the USA invoked the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which stated, ‘The occasion had been judged proper for asserting a principle in which the right and interest of the United States are involved, that the American continents by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered subjects for future colonialisation by any European power.’
From the inception, Britain argued that the Monroe Doctrine ‘has no principle of international law, and no nation, however powerful, has the right to insert a code of international law that is not recognised by any other country’.
However, in December 1895, the president of Venezuela, Joaquín Torres, stated in an address to his congress that ‘The doctrine (Monroe) upon which we stand is strong … and cannot become obsolete while the republic endures.’ He pointed out that the insistence of Great Britain on extending its border was ‘dangerous to our peace and safety’. The Venezuelan president insisted that his country claimed the Monroe doctrine as its right. So far as he was concerned, Great Britain was bent upon increasing her territory in the hemisphere and it was therefore incumbent upon the USA to determine the correct border between British Guiana and Venezuela, after which it must resist by every means at its disposal every new and willful ‘aggression upon its rights and interest’(The Times. London. 14.1.1896).
Notwithstanding British objections, in 1895, President Cleveland asked his congress for appropriations to set up a boundary commission. The terms of reference of the commission were not to fix ‘the utmost limits claimed by Great Britain as a matter of right, but a line … in consideration of convenience and expediency’ (Ibid.). These were supported by the Venezuelan government, yet now they partly reject the 1899 arbitration award on the grounds that it was not based upon right and law!
Not surprisingly given its imperialist history, world opinion was against Britain. She was seen as a ‘Slogger Bill’, twisting the arms of her weaker opponent (Thurston, Herbert, (June, 1896) ‘The Venezuelan Border Question.’ The Month). Not unlike the position of Guyana today, the disparity in strength between the claimants was such that Venezuela could only have recourse through peaceful means. It took US intervention to force Great Britain to the court of arbitration.
Before the US boundary commission could finish its work, Great Britain agreed to take the entire disputed area to arbitration. An arbitration treaty was signed in Washington on 2 February 1897 and the US boundary commission was dissolved on the 27th. In Venezuela, the incident passed without much comment, for no one wished to be reminded of the ‘dangerous controversy which could have led to war’ (The Times. London. 1897).
After Britain agreed to arbitration, Dr. Adolf Ernst, an expert on Venezuelan history, said the agreement was ‘no victory’ for the Monroe Doctrine as the conditions that rendered it (the doctrine) necessary have long passed’. (The Times. London. 8.6.1897)
Last week I dealt with what was essentially the British position in the border dispute. In 1844, the Venezuelan government published its first formal statement on the question, according to which, Spain first discovered the New World and this discovery was recognised by the Papal Bull of Pope Alexander VI, which divided this world between Spain and Portugal.
From the inception, the Papal Bull was challenged by the other major European powers, and reliance on it appears to have been more of an argument of convenience on the part of Venezuelan government. For example, its Manifesto to the World, published in 1811, the year of Venezuela’s independence, seems to have taken a different position. ‘Those who conquer and obtain possession of a country by means of their labour, industrious cultivation, and intercourse with the natives thereof, are they who have preferable rights to preference … and transmit it to their posterity born therein.’
That aside, Venezuela argued that from a very early date Spain had explored and occupied the Orinoco and the territories around the Barima, Amacuro and Pomeroon rivers; that at the time of the Treaty of Munster the Dutch had no possession in Guyana; that Spanish domination had extended as far as the Essequibo and that any possessions of the Dutch West India Company on that river had been usurped and not recognised by the Spanish Government.
The government also quoted some geographers who claimed that the Essequibo River was the boundary between Venezuela and British Guiana. Dr. Raphael Segio, a Venezuelan jurist, cited General P. Melscher (a Dutchman), who in his History of the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice, published in 1785, stated that the Netherlands’ control had not extended to the Amacuro or even the Barima.
Taking into consideration ‘long continued occupation and possession as far as could be established on either side’, the legally established arbitration tribunal of 1899 fixed the boundary lines we now have (Documents on the Territorial Integrity of Guyana. (1981) Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Guyana). Yet, more than a hundred years later, the Venezuelan government is still using the threat of force to bully its smaller neighbour into relinquishing what was legally acquired!
Contrary to President Torres, while the Venezuelan Republic still endures, a few months ago, President Obama declared the Monroe Doctrine obsolete. ‘The days in which our agenda in this hemisphere so often presumed that the United States could meddle with impunity, those days are past’ (http://beforeitsnews.com/opinion-conservative/2015/04/).
Yet the doctrine’s invocation against Britain in the 19th century and the behaviour of Venezuela towards its small neighbour today are testimony to the true nature of the international system within which small nations must survive. There have been some positive developments but Thucydides centuries’ old observation still has much relevance: “Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” (The History of the Peloponnesian War).
