Changes

The Venezuelan Boundary Dispute officially began in 1841, when the Venezuelan Government protested alleged British encroachment on Venezuelan territory. In 1814, Great Britain had acquired British Guiana (now Guyana) by treaty with the Netherlands. Because the treaty did not define a western boundary, the British commissioned Robert Schomburgk, a surveyor and naturalist, to delineate that boundary. His 1835 survey resulted in what came to be known as the Schomburgk Line, a border that effectively claimed an additional 30,000 square miles for Guiana.

However, when the commission finally rendered a decision on October 3, 1899, it directed that the border follow the Schomburgk Line. Although of rejection of Great Britain’s increasingly extravagant claims, the ruling preserved the 1835 boundary. Disappointed, the Venezuelans quietly ratified the commission’s finding. Of far greater significance, the Anglo-Venezuelan boundary dispute incident asserted for the first time a more outward-looking American foreign policy, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Internationally, the event marked the United States as a world power and gave notice that under the Monroe Doctrine, it would exercise its claimed prerogatives in the Western Hemisphere.