THE MAKING OF THE GOOD NEIGHBOR POLICY

This explores the transformation of the U.S. attitude towards Latin America after World War I from ""dollar diplomacy"" to the non-intervention and non-interference of the Good Neighbor Policy. It is a straightforward and unbiased presentation, scholarly and in substantial detail. The author examines the events from the last gasp of the ""send in the Marines"" policy in Nicaragua in the early '20's to the Latin American solidarity with the U.S. during World War II. The growing maturity of American policy is evidenced in an amply documented - perhaps too much for the average reader work. Wood has been given access to State Department documents and what he has to say is interesting and revealing. It provides a background today through a substantial contribution to the understanding of a period which saw U.S. attempts to stabilize the Cuban government, and in the Batista dictatorship, but which also saw a growing awareness -- following the Mexican oil expropriations -- that the interests of American capitalism would have to be subordinated to the interests of the U.S. as a whole. This might, in the long run (as it did in Venezuela) avoid expropriation. large in this period are three figures:- Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cordell Hull and Sumner Wells, architects of the good neighbor policy. One could wish it has been brought up to date in a critical approach to the changing trends.