The Monroe Doctrine helped lead to the American occupation of territory abroad

The Monroe Doctrine was designed to keep Europe out of the Americas

First articulated in 1823 by President James Monroe, the doctrine declared the Western Hemisphere off limits to European colonization. It has since been invoked to justify US military interventions in Latin America, from Teddy Roosevelt's takeover of Venezuela to George H.W. Bush's arrest of Panama's leader Manuel Noriega.

Hear about why Europe obeyed the Monroe Doctrine, despite American military weakness

This podcast explores the European background of the Monroe Doctrine, highlighting France's efforts to install aristocratic Bourbon monarchs in the newly independent Latin American republics—and how US opposition, British threats, and Spanish resistance ultimately disrupted those plans.

Hear the reasoning behind Trump's resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine in 2025

This podcast examines the Monroe Doctrine, from its casual origins in an 1823 congressional update to Trump's "Donroe Doctrine"—highlighting how fears of Chinese influence, concerns over oil prices, and the pursuit of hemispheric dominance influenced the administration's policies toward Latin America.

Learn about the history of the Monroe Doctrine

CBS Sunday Morning explores the origins of the Monroe Doctrine, tracing how a 19th-century warning against European intervention shaped US foreign policy and influenced America’s role in the Western Hemisphere for generations.

A wave of Latin American independence movements most likely prompted the Monroe Doctrine

Between 1810 and 1822, many Latin American colonies separated from Spanish rule, 10 in the last two years. Concerns that Spain and its European allies might try to regain these republics were a main reason behind Monroe's declaration.

The Roosevelt Corollary transformed the Monroe Doctrine from a defensive warning into a rationale for US military intervention

In 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt declared that the US had the right to exercise international police power in Latin America. Over the following two decades, the US intervened militarily in the region about a dozen times—often enough that Marines became known locally as "State Department troops."

The British Royal Navy—not the US military—enforced the Monroe Doctrine for most of the 19th century

In the early to mid-1800s, the US lacked the ships and military power to prevent European nations from colonizing the Americas. Britain enforced this to protect its commercial interests by keeping rival European powers out of Latin America.

Read an excerpt from the Monroe Doctrine, introduced in Monroe's 1823 address to Congress

On Dec. 2, 1823, President Monroe delivered his seventh annual message to Congress, now known as the State of the Union. One segment—warning European powers against interfering in the Western Hemisphere—became known as the Monroe Doctrine.

FDR's Good Neighbor policy reversed the interventionism that had grown from the Monroe Doctrine

Franklin Roosevelt pledged in his 1933 inaugural address to be a "good neighbor" to Latin America and to oppose armed intervention by American forces. His administration withdrew troops from previous occupations and signed a multilateral agreement stating that no state has the right to interfere in another's affairs.

The intellectual architect of the Monroe Doctrine was Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, not Monroe

Adams, the main foreign relations authority in the Cabinet, shaped the key parts of the Monroe Doctrine speech. He advocated for a unilateral American declaration to warn European powers, rejecting a potential joint statement with Britain favored by some Cabinet members.

The US intervened in Latin America to block communist influence during the Cold War

Fearing Soviet expansion, the US intervened across Latin America by backing coups, funding right-wing regimes, and supporting anti-communist militias—most notably in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Manifest destiny fueled US aggression against Mexico

The belief that the United States had a divine right to expand westward—known as manifest destiny—justified President Polk’s push for territorial conquest. It shaped public support for the Mexican-American War and framed the invasion as national destiny.

Hear about the US role in the Cuban Revolution—and the blowback it caused

Against long odds, Fidel Castro launched a socialist revolution just 90 miles from the US and kept it alive for decades. This 10-part podcast traces Washington’s pivot from early support to an obsessive campaign of sabotage and hundreds of alleged assassination plots.

What was the impact of the Haitian Revolution of 1791?

This 53-minute podcast explores the context surrounding the Haitian Revolution, a 13-year rebellion led by the then-French colony's enslaved population. The Spanish colonized the Caribbean island after Christopher Columbus landed on it in 1492,...

The Truman Doctrine marked the start of US containment strategy

Introduced in 1947, the Truman Doctrine pledged US support for nations resisting communism—starting with Greece and Turkey—and launched the containment policy that defined early Cold War strategy.

The formation of the UN elevated the US on the world stage

This podcast episode of "To the Best of My Ability" from the National WWII Museum goes behind the scenes of the United Nations' founding from the American perspective. It explores how FDR's vision for global peace took shape, how Truman carried it forward, and how Eleanor Roosevelt helped define human rights—set against the backdrop of wartime diplomacy, Cold War tensions, and the San Francisco Conference, where the UN Charter was signed.

Foreign policy and war defined Madison's presidency

During James Madison's presidency, disputes with Britain and France over trade, maritime rights, and impressment dominated foreign policy, culminating in the War of 1812 and shaping how the United States engaged with major European powers.

The diplomat who implemented Monroe's policy introduced the poinsettia to the United States

Joel Roberts Poinsett, appointed as the first US minister to Mexico in 1825 following the doctrine's announcement, took cuttings of a vibrant Mexican plant called the cuetlaxochitl during his time there. Americans loved the foliage and named it after him.

A podcast about Honduras' narco-Presidente

The former President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, was once a US ally in the war on drugs, but he now stands accused of overseeing a narco-state. Hernandez served as Honduran president for eight years, once considered one of the United...

The Panama Canal boosted the US as a world power in trade, engineering, and finance

The effort proved the US could achieve grand engineering projects while granting it influence over (and benefitting economically from) a major interoceanic channel and its host country, Panama.

The United States has had a tumultuous relationship with Cuba since its 1959 revolution, highlighted by a nuclear crisis and a decades-long trade embargo.

The US Pacific strategy sought control of key islands to close in on Japan

The US adopted a two-pronged "island hopping" campaign across the Central and Southwest Pacific from 1943–44, deliberately targeting strategically crucial but less-defended islands. This allowed forces to bypass heavily fortified Japanese strongholds and build airfields for bombers aimed at Japan, drastically accelerating the path toward Tokyo while conserving manpower and resources.

The War Powers Act may have ironically given presidents more discretion to engage in hostilities, not less

In this wide-ranging podcast on Congress's power to declare war, scholar Gary Schmitt argues that the War Powers Act, ironically, gave presidents a legal framework for initiating hostilities, creating a 60-day window for unilateral action that hadn't existed before.

Oil’s legacy: fueling industrial growth and shaping imperial strategies

This episode of The Rest Is History podcast traces oil’s pivotal role—from fueling industrial growth to steering imperial power. It also examines how access to oil shaped US politics, World War II, and sparked the creation of OPEC following the Suez Crisis.

European colonization contributed to coffee's spread

European colonization created channels for large-scale coffee exports with workforces based in Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Trade routes throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world carried the drink to new shores and changed the agricultural and economic landscapes of the countries in the Bean Belt.

Hughes reported on Black Americans volunteering in the Spanish Civil War

In 1937, the Baltimore Afro-American newspaper sent him to cover the Black soldiers who’d left the US to fight in the International Brigades cooperating with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. Hughes’ dispatches mainly focused on the racially integrated military companies, something that was prohibited in the US.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Explore an interactive map of battles from the American Revolution, along with detailed summaries of each engagement

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

The US dollar is the most widely circulated currency in the world, and is involved in nearly 90% of global transactions

The American cockroach is actually from Africa, an apparent hitchhiker aboard ships carrying enslaved people, with evidence suggesting the bug may have arrived in the New World as early as the 1600s.

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

While El Niño moves warm Pacific Ocean waters east along the equator, La Niña moves them west, shifting where rainfall will become more common for months.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Apollo astronauts left items in the moon's 'toss zone,' including golf balls, family photos, and bags of human waste, to make room for lunar rocks.

Long before Major League Baseball began allowing instant replay for balls and strikes, an umpire reluctantly used the technology to determine whether a hit was a home run, a move that inadvertently ushered in a new era for the sport.

'Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,' a work by American painter Thomas Moran, inspired Congress to establish Yellowstone National Park.

The rivalry between Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson centered on federalism—the question of how much power the federal government should hold relative to the states.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Learn how monoclonal antibodies, which mimic the body's antibodies, can fight diseases like Ebola.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

Coral polyps reproduce via broadcast spawning, where entire reefs simultaneously release reproductive cells for about one hour, once a year.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

The name 'Silicon Valley' arose from the founding of Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Fairchild Semiconductor in 1956-57, founded near Stanford University in Palo Alto

The hormonal disorder PCOS was renamed PMOS in 2026, a move designed to improve care and research by shifting the focus to the hormonal causes of this condition that affects 1 in 8 women.

Sunflowers have long been a symbol of nuclear disarmament because they can extract large amounts of radioactive cesium from soil.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.