The Olney interpretation (also known as the Olney corollary or Olney declaration) was

United States Secretary of State The United States secretary of state (SecState) is a member of the executive branch of the federal government of the United States and the head of the U.S. Department of State. The secretary of state serves as the principal advisor to the ...

Richard Olney Richard Olney (September 15, 1835 – April 8, 1917) was an American attorney, statesman, and Democratic Party politician who served as a member of the second cabinet of President Grover Cleveland as the 40th United States Attorney General ...

's interpretation of the

Monroe Doctrine The Monroe Doctrine is a foreign policy of the United States, United States foreign policy position that opposes European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It holds that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign ...

. During a border dispute between

British Guiana British Guiana was a British colony, part of the mainland British West Indies. It was located on the northern coast of South America. Since 1966 it has been known as the independent nation of Guyana. The first known Europeans to encounter Guia ...

and

Venezuela Venezuela, officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many Federal Dependencies of Venezuela, islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It com ...

, Olney claimed in 1895 that the Monroe Doctrine gave the United States authority to mediate border disputes in the

Western Hemisphere The Western Hemisphere is the half of the planet Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian (which crosses Greenwich, London, United Kingdom) and east of the 180th meridian.- The other half is called the Eastern Hemisphere. Geopolitically, ...

. He extended the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine, which had previously stated merely that the Western Hemisphere was closed to additional European colonization: "Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition... The border dispute was settled by arbitration in 1897, and the Olney interpretation was defunct by 1933.

References

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Sources

* George B. Young, "Intervention Under the Monroe Doctrine: The Olney Corollary," ''Political Science Quarterly,'' Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1942), pp. 247–28
in JSTOR
Legal history of the United States History of the foreign relations of the United States Spanish–American War Banana Wars 1895 in the United States Guyana–Venezuela border Foreign relations of the United States Monroe Doctrine