First International Conference of American States

The First International Conference of American States was held in Washington, D.C., United States, from 20 January to 27 April 1890.

The idea of an Inter-American Conference held in Washington, D.C., was the brainchild of United States Secretary of State James G. Blaine, but it took almost a decade and several reversals of U.S. policy to convert his original vision of 1881 into the Washington Conference of 1889-1890.

Blaine was the Secretary of State in the short-lived Republican administration of Benjamin Harrison (4 March 1889 to 1893). Apparently inspired by the speeches of Henry Clay and "the Western Hemisphere idea", Blaine believed that the moment had come for the United States to exercise diplomatic leadership by convoking a meeting of all the Hemisphere's nations. The notion was a curious mixture of nationalism and continentalism. On the one hand the narrow interests of the United States would be served because as host and organizer the U.S. would presumably be able to set the agenda and lead the delegations; the Conference would also serve as a vehicle for showing the U.S. economic and cultural strengths off to key statesmen of the southern nations. On the other hand, Blaine also held views that could properly be called "Panamerican" in that he believed in the special role of the nations of the New World as a beacon of hope and progress, in considerable contrast to the seemingly constant wars, competition and quarrels of the Old World. In a period of considerable tension in South America just after the War of the Pacific, his motivations also included a deeply felt belief that it was necessary to find more effective ways of avoiding or resolving conflicts between the American states, in part because such conflicts might lead to European intervention.

And so, as Secretary of State, Blaine sent invitations to all the nations of the Hemisphere to come to Washington in November 1881 with the principal goal of considering and discussing methods to prevent war between the nations of the Hemisphere. But destiny intervened: President Garfield was assassinated on 19 September 1881 and the new President Chester A. Arthur, who was no friend of Blaine's, quickly removed him from the State Department. Shortly afterward, the Conference invitations were withdrawn on the grounds that the unsettled situation at home and abroad would make such an event impossible.

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