As a result, Britain was most anxious to have the friendship of the United States and she therefore refrained from forcing the issue and using her vastly superior naval power. The boundary question was resolved when Britain agreed to accept the decision of an arbitration tribunal which in the end upheld the British case.
Another aspect of the "sphere of influences" interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine was revealed in 1889, when delegates from the Latin American republics met with representatives of the United States in the first of what was to be a regular series of conferences. The delegates established the International Bureau of American Republics which later became the Pan-American Union, with its headquarters in Washington. Although the Union set up many useful committees for the purpose of exchanging information, the Latin American nations regarded it as an instrument of American influence, or even domination. Their conviction that they were not equals with the United States in the Union was strengthened when the American government directly interfered with a revolution in Chile in 1891 and a trade dispute in Brazil in 1893. More and more, it became apparent that the main concern of the United States in Latin America was to exclude European influence and to support politicians who were favorable to the expansion of American trade and investment.
In Chile, Peru, Costa Rica, and other Latin countries, Americans invested heavily in railways and copper, silver, and tin mines and grew increasingly influential in the politics of these countries. In 1899 the owners of American banana plantations formed the United Fruit Company, an American corporation which soon dominated the economic life of small states like Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Santo Domingo and Guatemala. The company, which also had large interests in Cuba and Colombia, came to exert great influence upon the policies of the American government towards the so-called "banana republics" in Latin America.
