User:La la ooh

I am putting data for a survey on instruction creep here for now.

Page by page survey of Wikipedia policies:

Policy template was created 07 March 2005.

Dispute resolution created: 12 Jan 2004 tagged: 12 May 2005. size was about 8.5 kB today: 23 Oct 2007. size: 10 kB.

Naming conventions created: 11 Feb 2002. by 22 Aug 2005 it was tagged

<!-- Material I may use This is a review of an article entitled "The Central American Crisis" which appeared in the New Statesman, 20 January 1961. The article is of interest because it contains one of the first uses of the term "neo-colonialism" in a political context. The article is also useful as a synopsis of United States imperialism in Central America around 1850-1961.

According to the online Encyclopedia of Marxism, the first use of the word "neo-colonialism" in a political context was in 1959 in relation to French control of Algeria. (Prior to that the term had been used in art history.) As far as the present writer is aware, the next occurrance of the term was in this 1961 New Statesman article -- although there may well have been other occurrances. The use of the term here differs slightly from what one might call its "classical" early use, which was to describe control over nominally independent states following post-World War Two decolonisation, exercised primarily by economic means. Here the term is applied to an earlier era -- beginning around 1850 -- and to situations where there was a more overt use of military force.

The term appears three times in the article. We quote these three instances below, including enough of the surrounding text to give a fair indication of the term's intended meaning in each case.

First occurrance
 * I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service as a member of our country's most agile military force -- the Marine Corps. I served in all commisioned ranks from a second-lieutennant to major-general . . . I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for our American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international Banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912.


 * The writer is Major-General Smedley D. Butler, US Marine Corps. His life story -- mirroring the history of neo-colonialism in the Caribbean -- helps to explain why Washington now faces the most serious crisis which has confronted a United States government in its own hemisphere. -- p.82.

Second occurrance
 * The US could not ignore them [The Central American countries]: until the 1860's, the sea-land-sea voyage across the isthmus was still the quickest route from New York to San Fransisco. It lacked the desire -- and at that date the means -- to conquer them. And it failed to persuade them to federate into a large, stable unit, with which Washington could have normal relations. It thus slid uneasily into neo-colonialism, exercised first by individual entrepreneurs, but increasingly by the government itself. -- p.82.

Third occurrance
 * Cuba, however, provides the perfect pattern of US neo-colonialism. -- p.83.

As for the substance of the article, the first half is a synopsis of US imperial activity in Central America. Topics, covered in a paragraph or two each, include:  The William Walker invasions of Nicaragua and Honduras (late 1850s). <LI>The US role in the Panamanian revolution; the resulting Canal Zone treaty. <LI>The 1912 Knox Doctrine.</LI>

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