Monroe Doctrine
Datec. 1904
Artist
Frederick Burr Opper
(American cartoonist, 1857–1937)
MediumInk on illustration board
Dimensionssheet: 21 1/2 × 16 15/16 in. (54.6 × 43 cm)
Credit LineGift of Helen Farr Sloan, 1978
Object number1978-204
On View
Not on viewClassificationsDRAWING
Label TextFrederic Opper's political cartoon was sparked by President Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 expansion of the Monroe Doctrine when he feared that Venezuela's economic crisis might result in an invasion by a European power. Opper combines this theme with several other anti-immigrant ones, including a personification of America enchained by a Roman Catholic bishop. Caricatures of non-American faces and actions surround the elderly man in business attire at the center, who is imagining all these horrors from newspaper reports.
