The Havana Conference

On 22 July 1940 the United States Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, delivered the keynote speech in Havana at the Second Meeting of Consultation of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics. He proposed that European colonies in the Western Hemisphere, which after the defeat of France and the Netherlands were in danger of falling under German control, should in an emergency be placed under the joint administration of all the republics of the Americas. After eight days of bargaining, chiefly with Argentina, the ministers adopted on 30 July the Act of Havana and a convention on the provisional administration of European colonies, together with a declaration that an attack by a non-American state on any one republic would be treated as an attack on them all.

Popular chronologies record under 22 July that the conference met to discuss neutrality and economic co-operation. According to American diplomatic records, the meeting opened on 21 July and lasted until 30 July; 22 July was the day of Hull’s speech, which set the course of the proceedings. Neutrality and economics were indeed on the agenda, but the main reason the meeting had been called was the fate of the European possessions in the Americas.

Colonies without a mother country

At the first meeting of foreign ministers in Panama in the autumn of 1939 the American republics had resolved that, should any territory in the Americas belonging to a non-American state be about to change hands in a way that threatened the security of the continent, the ministers would meet again. The next meeting was scheduled for Havana on 1 October 1940. The spring of 1940 turned that provision from theory into reality. In May Germany occupied the Netherlands, and Queen Wilhelmina and her government left for London. The Netherlands possessed in the Americas Dutch Guiana and the islands of Curaçao and Aruba, whose refineries processed Venezuelan oil. France, which had asked for an armistice in June, held Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guiana and the small islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland. Danish Greenland had been cut off from its occupied mother country since April. Britain, which owned most of the Caribbean, Bermuda, British Honduras and British Guiana, was awaiting a German invasion.

Washington feared that Germany would demand these lands in a peace treaty or bring them under its control without any formal cession, through compliant local authorities. Bases in the Caribbean lay across the approaches to the Panama Canal. On 17 June 1940, on learning that France was seeking an armistice, Hull instructed the ambassadors in Berlin and Rome to declare that the United States, in keeping with its traditional policy, would not recognise any transfer of territory in the Western Hemisphere from one non-American power to another, nor acquiesce in any attempt to make one. The Senate passed a resolution to the same effect that day. It was a modern version of the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. Hull also cabled all the American republics asking whether they agreed to an urgent meeting of foreign ministers. By 22 June all twenty had replied in the affirmative.

Fixing the date took several weeks. The South American states warned that their delegates could not reach Cuba before the middle of July, and the State Department had to deny rumours that it wished to impose a date. In the end the meeting was called for 21 July. Some ministers did not attend in person. Brazil was represented by its ambassador, Maurício Nabuco, and Argentina by the politician Leopoldo Melo as the personal representative of the foreign minister, José María Cantilo, while American diplomats in Buenos Aires and Santiago reported that both governments were reluctant to provoke Germany, which appeared to be winning the war. Canada, at war with Germany as a British dominion, was not part of the Pan-American system.

The American delegation was small. Hull himself was the delegate, surrounded by a group of State Department advisers, including Assistant Secretary of State Adolf Berle and the Treasury expert Harry Dexter White. He arrived with ready-made drafts that had been circulated to the main capitals beforehand: a convention on collective trusteeship over threatened colonies, and a resolution establishing a provisional committee to act until the convention was ratified.

Hull’s speech and Argentine resistance

On 22 July Hull spoke of the danger that the war in Europe posed to the Americas and of economic co-operation between the republics, which Washington was ready to assist. His central point, however, was the proposal that colonies threatened with a change of sovereignty should be taken into the joint administration of all the republics. The aim was that no American state, the United States included, should gain new territory in the process, while Germany should be denied any foothold in the Americas. Once the danger had passed, the colonies were to return to their former rulers or become independent.

Argentina put up the stiffest resistance. On 23 July Melo, in the presence of the Argentine ambassador in Washington, Felipe Espil, told Hull that his government was prepared at most to accept a declaration opposing the transfer of colonies to another non-American power. Argentine public opinion, he said, was not ready for trusteeship, and Argentina lay far from the Caribbean. Espil added that taking over other countries’ territories might be regarded as contrary to neutrality, and that the United States, which was itself rearming, could afford to anger Germany, whereas weaker republics could not. In the background lay the question of the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claimed and had no wish to place under any joint administration. Hull replied that a declaration alone “would have practically no effect” and might be read as a sign of weakness, and that a split among the republics would be the greatest possible success for Germany and Japan. He asked Melo to convey his words to President Roberto Ortiz, a co-author of the Declaration of Lima. Gravely ill, Ortiz had since the beginning of July delegated his powers to Vice-President Ramón Castillo, who was credited with sympathies for the Axis. Meanwhile the American ambassador in Buenos Aires was putting pressure on Cantilo.

On 25 July the Argentines circulated their own draft to several delegations. They proposed that the fate of the colonies should be decided by their peoples through self-determination, and that the republics should merely condemn conquest by force and, if necessary, consult through diplomatic channels. They pointed out that Jamaica wished to be consulted. This in turn was opposed by the Cuban foreign minister, Miguel Ángel Campa, the host of the meeting, who put forward a draft allowing the republics to occupy threatened islands temporarily, without prejudice to rights over disputed territories – that is, Argentina’s claim to the Falklands and Guatemala’s to British Honduras, today’s Belize. Brazil came down firmly on Washington’s side. Its foreign minister, Osvaldo Aranha, gave an assurance that he was ready to sign the convention even if the United States were the only other signatory.

Hull also helped matters along with promises of money. From Havana he pressed the Treasury for permission to announce that Washington would look favourably on requests for help in stabilising the currencies of republics that co-operated with it. Earlier he had sought to persuade Congress to expand the lending capacity of the American Export-Import Bank. On 27 July he cabled Washington that he had reached agreement with the Argentines on the convention and that the American draft had “in no way been weakened”, and in places had even been strengthened. The Acting Secretary of State, Sumner Welles, congratulated him on behalf of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on an “outstanding achievement”.

The Act of Havana

On 30 July the delegates signed the Final Act, the most important part of which was the Act of Havana. It provided that when islands or regions in the Americas belonging to non-American states were in danger of becoming the subject of barter of territory or of a change of sovereignty, the American republics might establish a provisional administration over them. Whether such a need had arisen was to be decided by an emergency committee made up of representatives of all 21 republics. If, however, the matter were so urgent that there was no time to wait for the committee, any republic, alone or with others, could act at once in whatever way the defence of the continent required. The administration was to serve the welfare of the inhabitants. When the danger had passed, the territories were to return to their former rulers or, if they were capable of it, become independent.

The Act was to remain in force until the convention on the provisional administration of European colonies and possessions in the Americas, signed at the same time, came into effect and turned these obligations into a treaty. The convention provided for a permanent inter-American commission to administer the territories and was to enter into force once two-thirds of the republics had ratified it. Argentina entered a reservation regarding its rights to the Falklands. Hull later explained to Roosevelt that the purpose was to prevent British, French and Dutch possessions from becoming “bargaining counters” in the settlement of European disputes, or a battleground, and that the threat could arise not only from formal cession but also from the mere dependence of the vanquished on the victor.

The second major document was the declaration on reciprocal assistance and co-operation for the defence of the nations of the Americas. It stated that any attempt by a non-American state against the territorial integrity, sovereignty or political independence of an American state would be considered an act of aggression against all the signatories, who would in that event consult on common measures and conclude agreements on defence co-operation. The ministers also recommended setting up a committee of representatives of five states to help settle disputes between the republics peacefully, adopted recommendations against the activities of foreign agents and propaganda, and broadened the remit of the Inter-American Financial and Economic Advisory Committee established in Panama. The American idea of a great “cartel” to market surplus farm produce jointly, which Roosevelt had announced in June, was received with suspicion in Latin America and was left out of the resolutions.

The Vichy French government, which a few weeks earlier had broken off relations with Britain after the attack on the fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, watched the proceedings with unease. As early as 17 July the French ambassador in Washington, Count de Saint-Quentin, asked Hull whether the conference intended to deal with the French islands. Hull replied that he knew of no such intention, but that the conference would oppose any attempt by a foreign power to gain control over the government of island possessions such as the French ones. The French and German press wrote of American imperialism. The British took the outcome calmly, and the British minister in Guatemala told an American diplomat that if Britain lost, it would be better to place British Honduras in Guatemala’s care than to let it fall into German hands.

Place in the war

The Act of Havana was never formally applied, but it changed the situation in the Western Hemisphere. The emergency committee was constituted on 24 October 1940, once fourteen republics had appointed their representatives. The convention came into force on 8 January 1942. From then on Washington had a common, Pan-American justification for steps it intended to take in any case. Its greatest worry was Martinique, where Admiral Georges Robert, loyal to Pétain, held part of the Bank of France’s gold together with the aircraft carrier Béarn and aircraft bought in the United States. Before the end of 1940 the Americans obtained his undertaking that the ships and gold would stay where they were, and their patrols kept watch on the island. On 2 September 1940 the United States concluded the destroyers-for-bases agreement with Britain, gaining leases on bases on British islands from Newfoundland to Guiana. In April 1941 it took Greenland under its protection, and in November 1941, with the consent of the Dutch government-in-exile, it sent troops into Dutch Guiana to guard the bauxite mines.

By an irony of fate, the first seizure of a European possession in the Americas after Havana was the occupation of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon on 24 December 1941 by the ships of General Charles de Gaulle. Hull, who saw it as an unauthorised act violating the principle that the status of European possessions in the Americas should not be altered, protested against the action of the “so-called Free French” and drew the ridicule of the American press. The islands remained with Free France.

The declaration on reciprocal assistance proved more durable. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the ministers met in Rio de Janeiro in January 1942, where most of the republics broke off relations with the Axis powers and in time declared war on them. The principle that an attack on one American state is an attack on all was written in 1947 into the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, and the system of consultative meetings passed to the Organization of American States, founded in 1948. In the summer of 1940, in the weeks when Britain fought alone and Germany seemed master of Europe, Havana showed that the United States, still formally neutral, regarded the whole Western Hemisphere as its defence zone – and that, despite Argentine resistance, it had managed to win the other republics over to that view.