Historical coverage of relations between the United States and Latin America in the interwar period (1920-1940) are still somewhat characterized by broad trends. This period was in reality a quite complex era, marked by extensive expansion of U.S. ties within the Western Hemisphere. This short monograph of U.S.-Colombian relations mainly explores the years 1928-1936.
It is well researched on the U.S. side from archives and libraries. It is less thoroughly investigated on the Colombian side; access to Colombian records is more challenging, and the author has thus focused mostly upon newspapers. A fine bibliographic essay is provided. The period is often portrayed as a significant change to the earlier diplomacy of the United States, the Good Neighbor Policy replacing U.S. interventionism under the Monroe Doctrine. The author concurs with others who perceive little modification to the main thrust of American diplomacy, which was governed by economic and strategic interests.
The author places his study in the context of modernization, which leads to two problems. The first is that the theme of modernization is treated only marginally in the pages of the publication. The second is that this era witnessed the early gropings of Latin American states for such economic measures as natural resource control and stimulation of infant industry. This may be more properly termed premodemization. The real quest for modernization occurred after World War II and sharply flavored U.S.-Latin American relations in the 1950s and 1960s.
The question of modernization aside, this publication successfully captures the many currents, and sometimes crosscurrents, which typify diplomacy between nations and which characterized the relations between the United States and Colombia between the world wars.
