Defending Redundant Territories

In November 1908, the Dutch government sent a small but significant part of their naval fleet to the coast of Venezuela. Altough it could be argued that Venezuelan provocations in the months before were enough reason for this military interference, this thesis argues that there multiple long-term and contextual factors that caused the Netherlands to engage in a military confrontation with Venezuela in 1908. The geopolitical, post-colonial and economical circumtances of the Caribbean in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century provide the framework for this argumentation. In this framework, the Monroe Doctrine, the exploitation of oil in Venezuela, the opening of the Panama Channel and the legacy of Spanish colonization in the Americas are of considerable importance.