Think As Historian: THINK AS A HISTORIAN: SIGNIfICANCE Of HISTORICAL SITUATION

When Mexico nationalized the oil industry, some foreign countries whose oil companies were taken over boycotted Mexican oil and urged consumers to boycott other Mexican products. As a result, Nazi Germany became Mexico’s biggest customer for oil. The United States, however, had a “Good Neighbor” policy with Mexico and took a softer approach.

Read the following excerpt from a 1938 letter from U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull to the Mexican ambassador in Washington, D.C. Then answer the questions that follow.

“The Government of the United States . . . notes that the applicable

precedents and recognized authorities on international law support its

declaration that, under every rule of law and equity, no government is

entitled to expropriate private property, for whatever purpose, without

provision for prompt, adequate, and effective payment therefor. . . .

My Government considers that its own practice has amply

demonstrated that it is the consistent friend of reform, that it has

every sympathy with misfortune and need, and that it recognizes fully

the necessities of the under-privileged. It cannot, however, accept

the idea that these high objectives justify, or for that matter require,

infringement on the law of nations or the upsetting of constitutionally

recognized guarantees. . . .

Every sovereign nation is in possession of powers to regulate its

internal affairs, to reorganize, when needful, its entire economic,

financial, and industrial structure, and to achieve social ends by

methods conforming with law.

Instead of using these recognized and orderly methods, the

Government of Mexico in effect suggests that whenever special

conditions or circumstances obtain in any one country, that country

is entitled to expect all the other nations of the world to accept a

change in the settled rules and principles of law, which are domestic

quite as much as international, solely in order to assist the country

in question to extricate itself from difficulties for which it is itself

entirely responsible. Specifically, it is proposed to replace the rule of

just compensation by rule of confiscation. Adoption by the nations of

the world of any such theory as that would result in the immediate

breakdown of confidence and trust between nations, and in such

progressive deterioration of international economic and commercial

relations as would imperil the very foundations of modern civilization.

Human progress would be fatally set back. . . .

The vital interest of all governments and of all peoples in this question

and the imperative need of all countries to maintain unimpaired the

structure of common justice embodied in international as well as in

basic national law, lead me, particularly in view of the warm friendship

existing between the two countries, to appeal most earnestly to the

Mexican Government to refrain from persisting in a policy and

example which, if generally pursued, will seriously jeopardize the

interests of all peoples throughout the world.”

1. In Secretary Hull’s view, what would allow for the expropriation of private property?

2. What is Secretary Hull asking the Mexican government to do?

3. Why, in this historical situation especially, would the United States be interested in preserving good relations with Mexico?