Theodore Roosevelt is a major character in the American story. He has his face on Mt. Rushmore, for God's sake. But you don't really know that much about him. You've always wanted to dive into the TR waters to learn more bout the nation's 26th president, but the mountain of books about him has made it a bit daunting to choose a starting point. When you picked up "Imperial Cruise" you had no idea it would be just that. You thought it was just a primer on the pre-history of the World War II in the Pacific, and it was... but it was also a major indictment of Teddy Roosevelt's tenure as the chief executive of the United States at the dawn of the 20th century.
In July of 1905, the oldest daughter of the president of the United States was 21 years old, and she was the hottest celebrity in the country, maybe in the world. She was irreverent and brash. She was independent and outspoken. The first beautiful and shockingly behaved young woman who was famous simply for being famous, Alice Roosevelt set the mold for what would become a very familiar staple of our modern world. When the president wanted to send his Secretary of War (and future president), William Taft, to engage in secret, not to mention unconstitutional, negotiations with foreign governments, it made perfect sense to use Alice as a smokescreen for what was really going on. And so the Imperial Cruise was born. The Secretary and the First Daughter were accompanied by seven senators and twenty three congressmen (one of whom would later marry Alice) on a luxury passenger liner called Manchuria. Forming the largest diplomatic delegation ever sent by the United States to Asia, they set out to tour the Pacific Empire that the United States had spent the last few decades of the nineteenth century building.
The title of this book is a little misleading. "The Imperial Cruise" is not strictly about the cruise that President Roosevelt sent his Secretary of War and his daughter on in 1905. It is mostly about the path the United States took to justify in starting an American Empire in the first place. As the book follows the progress of the actual cruise, from Hawaii to the Philippines, from Japan to China and Korea, Bradley leads you through the history of America's efforts to build an empire in each location. On second thought, maybe the title isn't so misleading after all.
"The Imperial Cruise" covers the Mexican-American War of aggression the US fought for a small piece of what we now call Texas, The Spanish-American War of convenience to claim territories stretching from Puerto Rico to Cuba and from Guam to The Philippines, and the American lead hostile corporate (and eventually US Marine) conquest of Hawaii. The book also sheds painful light on the atrocities committed by the United States in the Philippines.
Before we go any further with the history of America's Empire, one thing needs to be made clear: American foreign and domestic policy was based on extreme racism even long after slavery was ended. This was not just the familiar racism of dehumanizing epithets and Jim Crow laws, this was the kind of racism that would, a few decades later, sound more familiar ringing from the stadiums of Nuremberg and Berlin. It was a racism that demanded Aryan dominance, indeed men who would come to be idolized by generations of Americans spewed white supremacy with an ease that is shocking to read in print. Teddy Roosevelt, whose face is carved on a mountain in South Dakota, regularly made the case for Aryan supremacy both before and while he was president. Even worse, he used these racist ideas to justify decisions which would later require the blood of millions to rectify.
In the early part of the 20th century it seems that everyone was pretty terrifyingly racist. Harvard University's most respected professors were white supremacists. The Western World was completely convinced that Anglo-Saxon's were destined to rule the world's "less worthy" races. If they had to kill most of them to do so, that was not a particular problem. The important thing was to keep white people in power and keep the white race pure by not allowing it to mix with other undesirable races. Today we call that ideology 'eugenics.' In fact, after the Mexican American War, the US could have claimed all of Mexico as our newest territory, but too many Americans wanted no part in governing non-Aryans. We wouldn't even claim territory we had conquered because the were just too many brown people there. Now that is pretty racist.
Somehow, Japan received the dubious honor of becoming "Honorary Aryans" in the eyes of the Roosevelt Administration. The Japanese ambitions in seeking domination on the Asian mainland were given the quiet blessings of the United States government. It was thought that Japan would force China to keep her doors open to western commerce. Japan could also serve as a convenient military check against Russian expansion into the lucrative opium trade so many Americans were getting rich off of inside China. In fact, the US ignored her treaty of friendship with Korea when Japan started a war with Russia over control of the peninsula.
Japan shocked the world with a surprise attack that devastated the Russian Navy before Japan had even declared war. Sound familiar? The President of the United States spoke of the Japanese victory in glowing terms. "I was thoroughly pleased with the Japanese victory," President Roosevelt said. "For Japan is playing our game." Forty years later, another President Roosevelt would paint those same tactics as dastardly and cowardly.
Teddy Roosevelt even went so far as to unofficially threaten war with France and Germany if they came to Russia's defense in her new war with Japan, and Japan had already secured a military support treaty with England. Even worse, after the war with Russia ended, the Roosevelt administration betrayed an ally to Japanese domination. Korea had signed treaties with the US and considered America their protector. One of the secret meetings Secretary Taft had while on the Imperial Cruise was to betray this relationship. Teddy gave Korea to Japan just (if not even more) appeasingly than Chamberlain gave Czechoslovakia to Germany. It was this open invitation to strive for control of mainland Asia that started Japan on the road leading to Pearl Harbor. It was this example, Japan's American-approved invasion of a racially inferior nation and the subsequent brutality that inspired Japan's policy of domination for the next forty years. It is also the direct cause of the deaths of upwards of thirty million human beings. You call it World War II.
In one fell swoop, Roosevelt and Taft had handed Korea to Japan only to then immediately turn public opinion in Japan against the United States by convincing the Japanese government to not seek a huge cash indemnity from their defeated Russian adversary. By insisting China keep her doors open to foreign commercial meddling, Roosevelt and Taft had also ignited the flames of Chinese nationalism and then fanned them using Japanese aggression on the mainland as a foil.
It becomes easy to empathize with the Japanese' mounting sense of frustration in the coming decades when the very nation that planted the seed of "An Asian Monroe Doctrine," as Teddy Roosevelt called it, suddenly balked when Japan, you know... began implementing an Asian Monroe Doctrine. As Japan stretched her ambitions over the horizons, she was met at every turn by the nation that had inspired her ambitions in the first place. It smacks as more than merely hypocritical for a nation to, with one hand, order the death of everyone in the Philippines over the age of ten years old while, with the other hand, wagging a finger at their Japanese former ally who culls 200,000 sex slaves from a conquered Korea. Maybe the attack on Pearl Harbor wasn't such a cowardly or infamous stab in the back. Maybe it was America's failed foriegn policy biting her on the ass.
We had certainly changed our minds about the Japanese being "Honorary Aryans" when we swore to wipe them from the face of the Earth a few years later, when we fire bombed their capital, and when we vaporized two of their ancient cities with nuclear weapons.
Of course there are far more events than can be listed here that occurred between Japan's annexation of Korea in 1905 and her attack on the US Navy on December 7th, 1941. There are the usual complexities and nuances of diplomacy between modern nations, there are economic factors and political variables to consider as well. The Japanese government certainly holds the lion's share of the blame. But the ball connecting those two dots was set rolling by an American president who was motivated by racist ideals, who proved terrible at predicting the ramifications of his actions, who did not want any light shed on his actions, who dealt with foreign governments in unconstitutional secrecy, who came to prefer the company of 'yes' men, and who was clearly out of his league.
Theodore Roosevelt's face is carved on a mountain alongside Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln, three undeniably great men. You should read more books on Teddy Roosevelt, because "The Imperial Cruise" makes him look like he simply has no place on that mountain. But then again, the truth resists simplicity.
On to the next book!
Okay, here is some John Green on this topic. Who can get enough of this guy? This is Crash Course on American Imperialism with special emphasis on the Spanish American War.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfsfoFqsFk4
P.S. You were fascinated by the knowledge (which didn't really fit into the scheme of this review) that Franklin Delano Roosevelt's family money did not come from his Roosevelt side. It came from his Delano side. His grandfather had been one of those who had taken advantage of the Western Powers forcing open China's door. He had made a fortune in the most lucrative of all businesses, dealing drugs. The money that made FDR so wealthy was made selling opium to the people of China. Now that's something they don't teach you in school!
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