page_title: First International Conference of American States
section_title: Background to the Conference
hierarchical_section_title: First International Conference of American States / Background to the Conference
caption_attribution_description: English: Organization of American States. Library of Congress description: "Front view of the Pan American Union, Washington, D.C."
context_page_description: The First International Conference of American States was held in Washington, D.C., United States, from 20 January to 27 April 1890.
context_section_description: The idea of an Inter-American Conference held in Washington, D.C., was the brainchild of United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine, but it took almost a decade and several reversals of U.S. policy to convert his original vision of 1881 into the Washington Conference of 1889–1890.
  Blaine was the Secretary of State in the short-lived Republican administration of Benjamin Harrison (4 March 1889 to 1893). Apparently inspired by the speeches of Henry Clay and "the Western Hemisphere idea", Blaine believed that the moment had come for the United States to exercise diplomatic leadership by convoking a meeting of all the Hemisphere's nations. The notion was a curious mixture of nationalism and continentalism. On the one hand the narrow interests of the United States would be served because as host and organizer the U.S. would presumably be able to set the agenda and lead the delegations; the Conference would also serve as a vehicle for showing the U.S. economic and cultural strengths off to key statesmen of the southern nations. On the other hand, Blaine also held views that could properly be called "Panamerican" in that he believed in the special role of the nations of the New World as a beacon of hope and progress, in considerable contrast to the seemingly constant wars, competition and quarrels of the Old World. In a period of considerable tension in South America just after the War of the Pacific, his motivations also included a deeply felt belief that it was necessary to find more effective ways of avoiding or resolving conflicts between the American states, in part because such conflicts might lead to European intervention.
  And so, as Secretary of State, Blaine sent invitations to all the nations of the Hemisphere to come to Washington in November 1881 with the principal goal of considering and discussing methods to prevent war between the nations of the Hemisphere. But destiny intervened: President Garfield was assassinated on 19 September 1881 and the new President Chester A. Arthur, who was no friend of Blaine's, quickly removed him from the State Department. Shortly afterward, the Conference invitations were withdrawn on the grounds that the unsettled situation at home and abroad would make such an event impossible.
  Now a private citizen, Blaine continued to lobby for his Inter-American Conference. Among other things, he wrote an article titled "The Foreign Policy of the Garfield Administration", in which he revealed that his idea for a Conference had a second motive in addition to avoiding war: commercial relations. He linked the two ideas together by arguing that greater commercial inter-dependence would lead to growth and stability, and thus peace. It was also clear that the mix of nationalism and continentalism continued, since Blaine acknowledged that it was in the self-interest of the U.S. to find new markets in the Hemisphere. To achieve this he proposed an American customs union, or "zollverein", which would give preference to inter-American trade and reduce that with Europe, especially England. The resulting greater isolation of America from Europe, Blaine believed, would make it less likely that "the United States would have to defend the Monroe Doctrine".
  These ideas had little impact on the administrations of Chester Arthur (Republican, 1881–1885) or Grover Cleveland (Democrat, 1885–1889). However, Blaine did have the backing of influential businessmen and church and peace groups, which in turn lobbied the Congress. As a result, Congress adopted a resolution (24 May 1888) which urged a reluctant President Grover Cleveland to hold the Conference. With little enthusiasm, Cleveland's Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard sent the invitations in July  1888. This was late in Cleveland's term, and the Conference was scheduled to be held during the presidency of his successor.
  This successor, Benjamin Harrison, returned Blaine to the post of Secretary of State and encouraged him to move ahead with the Conference. By this time the original motivation of developing mechanisms for peaceful resolution of disputes
caption: OAS building, Washington
exif: {"Image DocumentName": "hidemand/1a34536u.tif", "Image ImageDescription": "Front view of the Pan American Union, Washington, D.C.", "Image Make": "John Collier (anthropologist)", "Image Model": "Library of Congress", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "1800", "Image YResolution": "1800", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop", "Image DateTime": "2011:07:30 15:13:52", "Image Artist": "John Collier", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image Copyright": "http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa1992001238/PP/", "Image ExifOffset": "440", "GPS GPSVersionID": "[2, 2, 0, 0]", "GPS GPSLatitudeRef": "N", "GPS GPSLatitude": "[38, 53, 1713/50]", "GPS GPSLongitudeRef": "W", "GPS GPSLongitude": "[77, 2, 2811/125]", "GPS GPSAltitudeRef": "0", "GPS GPSAltitude": "4", "Image GPSInfo": "582", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "May 1943", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:03:01 11:59:52", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "8374", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "6546"}