Editing Foreign relations of Venezuela (section)

====The Roosevelt Corollary and Dollar Diplomacy====
The [[Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903]] saw a [[naval blockade]] of several months imposed against Venezuela by [[United Kingdom|Britain]], [[Germany]] and [[Italy]] over President [[Cipriano Castro]]'s refusal to pay foreign debts and damages suffered by European citizens in a recent Venezuelan civil war. Castro assumed that the United States' [[Monroe Doctrine]] would see the US prevent European military intervention, but at the time the US saw the Doctrine as concerning European seizure of territory, rather than intervention per se. Though [[United States Secretary of State]] [[Elihu Root]] characterized Castro as "a crazy brute", President [[Theodore Roosevelt|Roosevelt]] was concerned with the prospects of penetration into the region by the [[German Empire]]. With Castro failing to back down, US pressure and increasingly negative British and American press reaction to the affair, the blockading nations agreed to a compromise, but maintained the blockade during negotiations over the details. This incident was a major stimulus behind the [[Roosevelt Corollary]] and the subsequent U.S. policy of [[Dollar Diplomacy]] in Latin America.

During the presidency of [[Juan Vicente Gómez]], petroleum was discovered under [[Lake Maracaibo]].  Gómez managed to deflate Venezuela's staggering debt by granting concessions to foreign oil companies, which won him the support of the United States and the European powers.  The growth of the domestic oil industry strengthened the economic ties between the U.S. and Venezuela.