Theodore Roosevelt came into presidency in 1901 towards the end of the Philippine American unofficial “quasi” war. At this point there were two major groups of people in the US known as the Imperialists and the Anti-Imperialists. The Imperialists believed in expansion of American beliefs and values beyond the North American continent, while Anti-Imperialists believed we should focus on our domestic issues before expanding more. Roosevelt was a very strong Imperialist. Theodore Roosevelt’s aggressive foreign approach led to the development of the Panama Canal, involvement in foreign affairs in South America, and his role as a peacemaker on the world stage. Theodore Roosevelt wanted to create a canal in Panama that would act as a shortcut for commercial and naval ships to the Pacific. However, at this point Columbia had …show more content…
Roosevelt took this very seriously when several South American colonies had troubles with European powers. In 1902, Venezuela became a main focus of Roosevelt's when Germany and Britain set ships to blockade the country's coast. Although Germany and Britain were not colonizing, Roosevelt felt this was a threat to Venezuela. Roosevelt took action and demanded they use an outside view to settle the dispute. San Domingo also had troubles with European countries. European countries took advantage of the economically underdeveloped Latin America and gave them loans they could not pay back. Roosevelt felt that Europe was gaining too much economic influence in the Western Hemisphere and sent in US troops to protect South America. These events led to the development of the Roosevelt Corollary which was added to the Monroe Doctrine. This stated that the US would intervene with any countries that ran into serious economic issues. This was passed in order to keep European economic influence out of the Western