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The Venezuelan crisis of 1895 occurred over Venezuela's longstanding dispute with the United Kingdom about the territory of Essequibo and Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory. As the dispute became a crisis, the key issue became Britain's refusal to include in the proposed international arbitration the territory east of the "Schomburgk Line", which a surveyor had drawn half a century earlier as a boundary between Venezuela and the former Dutch territory of British Guiana.〔King (2007:249)〕 The crisis ultimately saw Britain accept the United States' intervention in the dispute to force arbitration of the entire disputed territory, and tacitly accept the United States' right to intervene under the Monroe Doctrine. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the matter, and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.〔Graff, Henry F., ''Grover Cleveland'' (2002). ISBN 0-8050-6923-2. pp123-25〕 The dispute had become a diplomatic crisis in 1895 when Venezuela's lobbyist William L. Scruggs sought to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C. to pursue the matter. Then US President Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the Doctrine that did not just forbid new European colonies but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.〔Zakaria, Fareed, ''From Wealth to Power'' (1999). Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-01035-8. pp145–146〕 British prime minister Lord Salisbury and the British ambassador to Washington, Julian Pauncefote, misjudged the importance the American government placed on the dispute, prolonging the crisis before ultimately accepting the American demand for arbitration〔Paul Gibb, "Unmasterly Inactivity? Sir Julian Pauncefote, Lord Salisbury, and the Venezuela Boundary Dispute," ''Diplomacy and Statecraft,'' Mar 2005, Vol. 16 Issue 1, pp 23–55〕〔Nelson M. Blake, "Background of Cleveland's Venezuelan Policy," ''American Historical Review,'' Vol. 47, No. 2 (Jan., 1942), pp. 259–277 (in JSTOR )〕 of the entire territory. By standing with a Latin American nation against European colonial powers, Cleveland improved relations with the United States' southern neighbors, but the cordial manner in which the negotiations were conducted also made for good relations with Britain.〔Nevins, Allan. ''Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage'' (1932). ASIN B000PUX6KQ., 550, 633–648〕 However, by backing down in the face of a strong US declaration of a strong interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, Britain tacitly accepted the Doctrine, and the crisis thus provided a basis for the expansion of US interventionism in the Western Hemisphere.〔Historian George Herring wrote that by failing to pursue the issue further the British “tacitly conceded the U. S. definition of the Monroe Doctrine and its hegemony in the hemisphere.” – Herring, George C., ''From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776,'' (2008) pp. 307–308〕 Leading British historian Robert Arthur Humphreys later called the crisis "one of the most momentous episodes in the history of Anglo-American relations in general and of Anglo-American rivalries in Latin America in particular."〔R. A. Humphreys (1967), "Anglo-American Rivalries and the Venezuela Crisis of 1895", Presidential Address to the Royal Historical Society 10 December 1966, ''Transactions of the Royal Historical Society'', 17: pp131-164〕 ==Background== By 1895 Venezuela had had a dispute with the United Kingdom about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, for over half a century. The territorial claims were originally those of the Spanish Empire (inherited by Venezuela after its independence in 1830) and of the Dutch Empire (inherited by the United Kingdom with the acquisition of the Dutch territories of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice in 1814), having remained unsettled over previous centuries.〔Joseph, Cedric L. (1970), "(The Venezuela-Guyana Boundary Arbitration of 1899: An Appraisal: Part I )", ''Caribbean Studies'', Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jul., 1970), pp. 56–89〕 Over the course of the nineteenth century the British and Venezuelans had proved no more able to reach an agreement, until matters came to a head in 1895, after seven years of severed diplomatic relations. The basis of the discussions between Venezuela and the United Kingdom lay in Britain's advocacy of a particular division of the territory deriving from a mid-nineteenth-century survey it commissioned. This survey originated with German naturalist Robert Schomburgk's four-year expedition for the Royal Geographical Society in 1835 to 1839, which resulted in a sketch of the territory with a line marking what he believed to be the western boundary claimed by the Dutch. As a result of this he was commissioned by the British government to carry out a survey of Guiana's boundaries.〔 The result was the "Schomburgk Line", which he established partly following natural divisions and partly to distinguish territory of Spanish or Venezuelan occupation from that which had been occupied by the Dutch.〔 The Line went well beyond the area of British occupation, and gave British Guiana control of the mouth of the Orinoco River.〔 In 1844 Venezuela declared the Essequibo River the dividing line; a British offer the same year, to make major alterations to the Line and cede the mouth of the Orinoco and much associated territory, was ignored.〔Humphreys (1967:138)〕 No treaty between Britain and Venezuela was reached, and after an 1850 agreement not to encroach on disputed territory,〔 the matter largely rested until 1876, when diplomatic exchanges resumed. Schomburgk's initial sketch, which had been published in 1840, was the only version of the "Schomburgk Line" published until 1886. This led to accusations by US President Grover Cleveland that the line had been extended "in some mysterious way".〔 In October 1886 Britain declared the Line to be the provisional frontier of British Guiana, and in February 1887 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations.〔 Proposals for a renewal of relations and settlement of the dispute failed repeatedly, and by summer 1894, diplomatic relations had been severed for seven years, the dispute having dragged on for half a century.〔 In addition, both sides had established police or military stations at key points in the area, partly to defend claims to the ''Caratal'' goldfield of the region's Yuruari basin, which was within Venezuelan territory but claimed by the British. The mine at El Callao, started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883.〔 The gold mining was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory.〔Humphreys (1967:139)〕 Venezuela had in the course of the dispute repeatedly appealed to the US and to the Monroe Doctrine, but the US had declined to involve itself.〔 This changed after Venezuela obtained the services of William L. Scruggs.〔 Scruggs, a former US Ambassador to Colombia and Venezuela, was recruited in 1893 by the Venezuelan Government to operate on its behalf in Washington D.C. as a lobbyist and legal attache. Scruggs had apparently resigned his ambassadorship to Venezuela in December 1892, but in fact had been dismissed by the US for bribing the President of Venezuela.〔 As a lobbyist, Scruggs published an October 1894 pamphlet entitled ''British Aggressions in Venezuela:, or the Monroe Doctrine on Trial''.〔 In the pamphlet, he attacked "British aggression", claiming that Venezuela was anxious to arbitrate over the Venezuela/British Guiana border dispute. Scruggs also claimed that British policies in the disputed territory violated the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Whilst for much of the nineteenth century the Doctrine had only rarely been invoked by the United States, a "paradigm shift in U.S. foreign relations in the late nineteenth century"〔 saw the U.S. more actively support its increasingly significant economic interests in Central and South America. This "'new diplomacy' thrust the United States more emphatically into the imperial struggle".〔Gilderhus, Mark T. (2006), "The Monroe Doctrine: Meanings and Implications", ''Presidential Studies Quarterly'', Volume 36, Issue 1, pages 5–16〕 It was in this context that Scruggs sought to draw on the Doctrine in Venezuela's interests. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Venezuelan crisis of 1895」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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