Ostend Manifesto
The Ostend Manifesto ( English Ostend Manifesto ) is a declaration that was formulated in the Belgian city of Ostend in 1854 , and which was addressed by the United States to England and France . The document stated that the United States was entitled to seize the island of Cuba if Spain did not sell it to the United States. The declaration was signed in Aachen , which at that time belonged to Prussia .
The manifesto, which had not been approved by the Franklin Pierce administration , was denied after the text became known prematurely. Nevertheless, the domestic and foreign policy reactions were extremely negative.
prehistory
At the instigation of the American Secretary of State William L. Marcy , the three American diplomats Pierre Soulé , Ambassador to Spain, James Buchanan , Ambassador to Great Britain and John Y. Mason , Ambassador to France, met in Ostend in 1854 to explore the possibilities of Buying Cuba from the Kingdom of Spain. The proposed purchase price was $ 120 million. If Spain refused the offer, violence should be threatened at the request of the South Democrats.
Expansion policy was a leading force in US politics at the time. Some Americans wanted to buy Cuba so they could expand slavery . The proposal was controversial, many US Congress representatives from the northern states opposed it. In 1898 the Spanish-American War was fought to liberate Cuba from Spanish colonial rule. The island was not formally incorporated as a state of the United States , but the government was indirectly controlled by the US government until 1959.
Web links
- Ostend Manifesto (English) , entry in the New International Encyclopedia, 1905