1823
Monroe Doctrine
In his annual message to Congress, President Monroe - at the urging of John Quincy Adams - warned Europe to stay out of the Americas. It was bluster: the Royal Navy did the enforcing. But the doctrine would become the central conceit of United States foreign policy for a hundred and fifty years.
First Anglo-Burmese War Looms
British and Burmese forces skirmished along the ill-defined Arakan frontier as Konbaung Burma, flush from conquering Assam and Manipur, pressed into company territory. Within months the war would become official, and British steamships would be chugging up the Irrawaddy. Burma's long slide into British India had begun. The war would cost Britain five million pounds and fifteen thousand dead, most of them from disease rather than battle.
French Invade Spain
Under the banner of the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis," French troops authorized by the Congress of Verona crossed the Pyrenees to restore Ferdinand VII's absolutism against the liberal Trienio government. Cadiz fell in the autumn; the Spanish constitution of 1812 was once again abolished. Reaction in Europe had one more good year in it.
Iturbide Falls in Mexico
The short-lived First Mexican Empire collapsed when Agustin de Iturbide - who had declared himself Agustin I - abdicated under pressure from a republican revolt led by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Mexico became a federal republic. Iturbide went into European exile, and his brief cameo on history's stage was nearly over.