ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the Venezuela boundary crisis, that "crucial" antecedent event. Walter LaFeber's statement has the political and business leaders working together but says nothing about "the masses". Accounts of the new American empire, understandably, review antecedent causal factors, both domestic and foreign. Those accounts proclaim the existence of a "compelling" logic, of a "powerful" underlying motive causing the events, the aim being "outreach". In the development of the new empire, only the economic effects of the 1893-1897 depression and the battle of Manila Bay in 1898 rank in importance with the Venezuelan boundary crisis of 1895-1896. In 1895, a boundary dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana threatened to bring British intervention against the Venezuelans. Britain was "the only European nation friendly to the United States" during the Spanish-American War and much "journalistic writing" there welcomed their "fellow Anglo-Saxons" into the "ranks of the civilizing powers".
