The contest was not, most might agree, a fair fight. Eight-inch guns trained toward the walls of the Puerto Cabridis fort, the German naval ship SMS Vineta had brought an impressive fleet with it: The Falke, Gazelle, Panther, Charlotte, Stosch, and Restaurador, as well as the British Navy’s HMS Retribution and HMS Quail. The Venezuelan navy—“a few antiquated old tubs crewed by men who were more fishermen than sailors,” historian Nancy Mitchell records—soon surrendered. Two seized ships had to be scuttled, since they were too decrepit to be towed up the Orinoco River to the sea and on to Curaçao.
Leaving for home on 9 December 1902, the ships lobbed a few shells at Puerto Cabello. The Germans shelled Fort San Carlos de Maracaibo twice, since the guns of Panther jammed the first time—but the Venezuelan soldiers had by then evacuated the citadel, and no losses to life were caused.
This week, US President Donald Trump dispatched a somewhat more serious naval force into the waters off Venezuela. The fleet is reported to contain at least three guided-missile destroyers, as well as some 4,500 troops trained in amphibious operations. To many in the region, it seems like Trump is preparing to bring down the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, on whose head the United States has announced a bounty of $50 million.
Even though the stated mission of the naval fleet is counter-narcotics, the real message hasn’t been missed by anyone. Large Chinese investments are being made in Venezuela’s oil fields, which hold the world’s largest proven reserves. Following on from his earlier threats to take over the Panama Canal and his offer to commit United States troops to Mexico, Trump is letting it be known he intends for America to regain hegemonic power over the Western Hemisphere.
A matter of money
For weeks before the 1902 blockade, the American minister at Caracas had been telling Venezuela’s former President Cipriano Castro just what he needed to do to avoid a fight. “You owe money,” Herbert Bowen told Castro bluntly, “and sooner or later you will have to pay.” Like other Venezuelan dictators, Castro had financed his regime by taking large loans from the thriving community of German traders in the country. He didn’t, in principle, dispute the idea that the debt had to be paid. The problem was, he just didn’t have the money. He’d have to cede territory—but that would do nothing for his popularity.
For much of the 19th century, the gunboat was an often-used tool of imperial diplomacy—using naval power to coerce weaker powers into making concessions. The American expeditions of 1853 and 1854 are often claimed to have forced Japan open to foreign trade—though, as historian Martha Chaiklin reminds us, the Dutch and others had been trading with Japan for two centuries before US Navy Officer Commodore Matthew Perry arrived.
Long before these American expeditions, European states had used gunboat diplomacy to assert claims in the New World. In 1838-1839, King Louis Philippe dispatched ships that blockaded Mexican ports and seized the San Juan de Ulúa near Vercruz—among other things, to force the country to compensate a pastry cook whose store had been looted by its soldiers.
The tone of the 19th century had been set. The Americans bombarded pirate citadels at Algiers, helped Panama secede from Colombia in 1903. The US deposed Panama’s ruler, Manuel Noriega, in 1989, amid rising concerns about his role in cocaine trafficking. Henry Kissinger, the eminence grise of American foreign policy, once described the country’s aircraft carriers as “100,000 tons of diplomacy.”
Yet, getting President Castro to pay wasn’t as simple as it seemed. Ever since outsiders first arrived in the region, historian Carlos Lizzaralde observes, competing forces had struggled to establish central authority. Ethnic and caste wars, conflicts over race, and rebellions over slavery generated a profoundly volatile political culture.
“Venezuela was hardly a country: it was a great revolutionary crowd,” historian Mariam Hood writes. “There were many armies, but no stable army. There was no administration. Venezuela was a formless mass, where superstition and cruelty were predominant—a republic where the years of peace hardly exceeded those of war. From 1830-1959, there were eleven armed revolutions, and these constant wars not only exhausted the country physically but also morally.”
The rise of the American empire arguably prevented the complete disintegration of these fragile polities. Ever since 1823, the US had been committed to what was known as the Monroe Doctrine, the idea that European imperial powers ought not be allowed to take control of newly independent South American countries. This was easier said than done, though. The US shipbuilding programme had been picking up, but the navies of Germany and the United Kingdom were still far more powerful.
American naval tacticians, though, also knew European powers had vast oceans to police, while the US had to concentrate its forces only at a single, limited point of contestation. Theodor von Holleben, the German ambassador to Washington, warned his emperor that President Roosevelt was willing to go to war over Venezuela, historian Edmund Morris records. The Germans and British withdrew.
Also read: China wants to create new order in Myanmar. India must switch gears or be dealt out of the game
A discreet empire
Fernando Coronil, the eminent anthropologist and historian, has argued that the discovery of oil in the 1920s shaped the destiny of modern Venezuela, bringing it not just wealth but giving it a distinct national identity. From 1899 to 1958—bar a brief, three-year period—a succession of retired or serving generals ruled the country. Three oil companies—the British-Dutch Royal Shell, and American corporations Gulf and Standard—monopolised extraction. Venezuela’s role in supplying Allied fuel during World War II saw it negotiate a 50 per cent share in profits.
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Venezuela emerged as one of the twenty richest countries in the world, demonstrating significant gains in its social capital and standards of living. Venezuela nationalised the oil industry in 1976, creating the State-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), and began to make heavy investments in ill-advised import-substitution projects.
However, oil prices began to fall in the 1980s, leading to capital flight and the choking off of cheap loans. The government responded by imposing capital controls, and, in 1989, sought to impose International Monetary Fund-backed austerity measures. This, in turn, led to street violence, in which hundreds were killed. In 1992, a Left-wing group of military officers led by Lieutenant-Colonel Hugo Chávez Frías sought to stage a coup.
Chávez returned from exile in Cuba to fight the 1993 elections. His promises to eradicate poverty and expand State services spoke to a nation that had suffered years of hardship. There were, however, sceptics. The Colombian writer and journalist Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who sat next to Chavez on the flight home, wrote: “I was overwhelmed by the feeling that I had just been travelling and chatting pleasantly with two opposing men. One to whom the caprices of fate had allowed saving his country. The other, an illusionist.”
The endgame
Although Chávez ushered in a period of relative economic stability, economist Naufal Yudiana notes. The government jacked up social sector spending, especially targeting low-income groups, but PDVSA was compelled to invest in these missions, leaving it without enough capital to reinvest in modernisation. Large-scale, often eccentric, expropriation of private enterprise led to capital flight. In one case, journalist Rory Caroll recounts, Chávez ordered the nationalisation of a jewellery market on a whim, saying it had once been home to South America’s great liberator, Simón Bolívar.
The government of President Nicolás Maduro consolidated the authoritarian tendencies exhibited by Chávez. Amid economic ruin, key figures in the regime also became enmeshed in facilitating cocaine trafficking from neighbouring Colombia into the US, official documents show. This was not unique. Financial ties between Mexico’s ruling party and drug cartels, for example, have been well documented, and most Colombian cocaine transits through that country, not Venezuela.
There’s no telling if Trump will consider using force to push Maduro out of office. The 4,500 troops now at sea could easily dislodge the government in Caracas, but won’t be enough to police a country ringed by drug cartels and insurgents. The removal of Maduro won’t, moreover, end America’s problems with either immigration or drugs. Trump’s tariff war, meanwhile, has pushed nation-states across South America to turn toward China.
Like the French Pastry War or the German raid on Puerto Cabridis, gunship diplomacy looks much more impressive than its results usually are. Embracing South America instead of abusing it might prove a more durable strategy.
Praveen Swami is contributing editor at ThePrint. His X handle is @praveenswami. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)