December 2 in History

In December 1823, President James Monroe used his annual message to Congress to declare that the United States would regard any further European colonization in the Americas, or European interference in the affairs of newly independent states there, as a threat to its own peace and safety. The statement, later named the Monroe Doctrine, had little immediate force behind it, but it became one of the most durable principles of American foreign policy and a foundation for the United States' claim to special influence in the Western Hemisphere.

The United Arab Emirates came into being in December 1971, when six of the seven emirates that now make up the country joined together as a single federal state. The seventh, Ras al-Khaimah, followed in early 1972. The union turned a cluster of small, formerly British-protected sheikhdoms on the Persian Gulf into a sovereign country, and it later grew into one of the Middle East's most prominent economies and a major hub for trade, aviation and finance.