Report of Robert C. Morris, Agent of the United States, Before the United States and Venezuelan Claims Commission

Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1904. First Edition. Leather bound. Very good/none as issued. A very good, full leather first edition. Blind stamped cover and edges. Four raised bands showing rubbing. Gilt, black, brown and red title stamping on spine. Binding is sturdy, strong and square. Foxing to top edge. Off setting to endpapers. Previous owner's name in ink and impressed on first free endpaper. Text is clean. 563 pp. including index. The Venezuelan crisis of 1902–1903 was a naval blockade imposed against Venezuela by Great Britain, Germany and Italy from December 1902 to February 1903, after President Cipriano Castro refused to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in recent Venezuelan civil wars. Castro assumed that the American Monroe Doctrine would see Washington intervene to prevent European military intervention. However, at the time, US president Theodore Roosevelt and his Department of State saw the doctrine as applying only to European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. With prior promises that no such seizure would occur, the US was officially neutral and allowed the action to go ahead without objection. The blockade saw Venezuela's small navy quickly disabled, but Castro refused to give in, and instead agreed in principle to submit some of the claims to international arbitration, which he had previously rejected. Germany initially objected to this, arguing that some claims should be accepted by Venezuela without arbitration.President Roosevelt forced the Germans to back down by sending his own larger fleet under Admiral George Dewey and threatening war if the Germans landed.[1] With Castro failing to back down, US pressure and increasingly negative British and American press reaction to the affair, the blockading nations agreed to a compromise, but maintained the blockade during negotiations over the details. This led to the signing of an agreement on 13 February 1903 which saw the blockade lifted, and Venezuela commit 30% of its customs duties to settling claims.When the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague subsequently awarded preferential treatment to the blockading powers against the claims of other nations, the US feared this would encourage future European intervention. The episode contributed to the development of the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, asserting a right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of small states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts, in order to preclude European intervention to do so. --wikipedia