answers: the Americas
context: beginnings as an isolationist country, the seeds for the Monroe Doctrine were already being laid even during George Washington's presidency. According to S.E. Morison, "as early as 1783, then, the United States adopted the policy of isolation and announced its intention to keep out of Europe. The supplementary principle of the Monroe Doctrine, that Europe must keep out of America, was still over the horizon". While not specifically the Monroe Doctrine, Alexander Hamilton desired to control the sphere of influence in the western hemisphere, particularly in North America but was extended to the Latin American colonies by the Monroe Doctrine. </s> But Hamilton, writing in the "Federalist Papers", was already wanting to establish America as a world power and hoped that America would suddenly become strong enough to keep the European powers outside of the Americas, despite the fact that the European countries controlled much more of the Americas than the U.S. itself. Hamilton expected that the United States would become the dominant power in the new world and would, in the future, act as an intermediary between the European powers and any new countries blossoming near the U.S. In fact, in a note from James Madison, Thomas Jefferson's Secretary of </s> reinterpreting it to argue that no European nation should interfere with the American western expansion ("Manifest Destiny"). In 1862, French forces under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, giving control to the puppet monarch Emperor Maximilian. Washington denounced this as a violation of the doctrine but was unable to intervene because of the American Civil War. This marked the first time the Monroe Doctrine was widely referred to as a "doctrine." In 1865 the U.S. stationed a large combat army on the border to emphasize its demand that France leave. France did pull out, and Mexican nationalists executed Maximilian. In
question: which area did the monroe doctrine aim to free from european influence