The Venezuelan government is now at loggerheads with ‘U.S. imperialism’, which they accuse of all kinds of infamy. But as we shall see, in the late 19th century, it vigorously supported one of the most fundamental regional pillars of that very imperialism. Indeed, had it not been for US imperialist intervention, today Guyana might have stretched to the Orinoco.
Great Britain had two claims, one within the boundary drawn by Robert Schomburgk and the other ‘extreme claim’ going right to the Orinoco. Her Majesty’s Government stated that it was willing to take that proportion of its claim outside the Schomburgk line to arbitration, but was not prepared to discuss territories within the line, which it regarded as indisputably its own. Venezuela did not agree with Britain’s refusal to yield the entire area to arbitration.
In October 1894, Venezuelan forces crossed the border into British Guiana and established a post, and the British colonial police and magistrate left without putting up any resistance (The Times. London, 1894). The entire business was coming to a head when in 1895, President Cleveland of the USA invoked the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, which stated, ‘The occasion had been judged proper for asserting a principle in which the right and interest of the United States are involved, that the American continents by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and
