Dear Editor,
A letter by Mr Frederick Kissoon captioned “How can Mr Chavez lecture the world on American imperialism when his government bullies its small neighbour?” (07.03.07) claimed that the Severo Mallet-Prevost memorandum, published after his death, accused the United States of conspiring with Britain in the 1899 award. This is not true.
The Mallet-Prevost memorandum, published in the American Journal of International Law in July 1949, actually accused the Russian President of the arbitration tribunal, Mr Fyodor Fyodorovich de Martens (Frederic de Martens), of making a deal with Britain which robbed Venezuela in the final award.
I will show that events leading up to the 1899 award revealed that the United States was clearly on the side of Venezuela in the border controversy.
In 1875 the Venezuela government began its attempts to have the dispute settled by arbitration and asked the United States for help. In the early 1880s the US state department indicated to the British government that arbitration might be the best way to solve the territorial dispute.
In 1884 the Venezuela government sent ex-president Mr Guzman Blanco to London for discussions on the territorial question. At the same time the United States government instructed its representative in London, Mr Lovell to give Mr Blanco all the help he could. However nothing much was achieved in those discussions and it was not until 1890 that negotiations were resumed.
On December 3, 1894, United States President Grover Cleveland, sent a message to Congress in which he expressed his intention to have the two countries agree to arbitration. In February 1895 Congress passed a resolution urging both Britain and Venezuela to accept President Cleveland’s suggestion. In that same year President Cleveland also proposed the appointment of a commission to ascertain the boundaries between British Guiana and Venezuela. Also in 1895, the United States Secretary of State Richard Olney, instructed the ambassador to London, to request the British government to reply to the proposal about submitting the dispute to arbitration. Olney stated that if Britain refused, its relations with the United States could be adversely affected.
It was in 1896, while two members of the boundaries commission were studying Dutch documents in Holland, that the British government finally agreed to submit the matter to arbitration. In February 1897, the treaty of Washington was signed between the two countries which provided for the appointment of a tribunal which met in Paris in 1899. The decision was handed down on October 3 of that same year.
So, therefore, there could not have been any conspiracy between Britain and the United States.
Yours faithfully,
GG Fraser
Editor’s note
While in 1876, Venezuela had appealed to the US inviting that country to “take an interest in having justice done in Venezuela,” her first tentative reference to arbitration was in 1880. After little success with the British, the Venezuelans were eventually to hire a US lawyer named William Scruggs to operate as a propagandist on their behalf, and he produced a pamphlet accusing Britain of being in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine. This pamphlet was distributed in the US and was picked up by the press. Scruggs persuaded a Congressman from his own state of Georgia to introduce a resolution in Congress exhorting Britain and Venezuela to go to arbitration; this was passed on February 22, 1895. Secretary of State Olney then wrote to Britain asking for arbitration on July 20, 1895. When nothing positive was forthcoming, President Cleveland appeared before Congress on December 17, 1895, requesting power to appoint a commission to establish the true divisional line between Venezuela and British Guiana.
The address is famous for its implication of a preparedness on the part of the United States to go to war with Britain if the commission found the latter country in occupation of lands which by right belonged to Venezuela.
While the commission completed a great deal of research, its conclusions were never published because the British government, tied up with problems elsewhere in the world, agreed to submit to arbitration.
