In 1905,
then Secretary of War William Taft
and a host of other American
dignitaries took a tour of Pacific islands
and Asian
nations. James
Bradley tells the story of this trip, along with the wider contest of President Theodore
Roosevelt’s policies toward Pacific expansion and Asia, in The Imperial Cruise.
Roosevelt, with Taft as his right hand, engaged in secret diplomacy with
Japan. The
Senate would not have approved a treaty with Japan with terms Roosevelt wanted,
and his own State Department would have strongly advised against his course. So
Roosevelt sent Taft to consummate a secret deal that he could never
acknowledge.
By the time Taft set sail, Japan was already responding to interactions
with the West. It was remaking itself into an industrialized, militarized country
in the western mold. Roosevelt saw in them American-friendly, quasi-civilized
people who could expand Anglo-Saxon virtues into Asia without slipping out from
under Anglo-American influence. As with almost everything related to the
Pacific and Asian peoples, Roosevelt was very shortsighted.
In reading about the early 20th
Century, I’ve been struck by the pervasiveness of racism. Bradley
explains how Roosevelt viewed everything through a racial lens. These were
racial lenses were proudly worn by white elites at the time. The key to history
was racial history. They saw the birth of civilization in the Middle East
with the Aryans, who began moving west. Around the Mediterranean,
where the Aryans mixed with other races, civilizations degenerated. In Germany, pure
Aryans gave rise to Teutons, who inherited Aryan civilizing with values of democracy and
individualism. These Teutons moved west and were further perfected in the
Anglo-Saxons. Anglo-Saxon civilization leapt across the Atlantic and push aside
the savages of North America.
To Roosevelt, Manifest Destiny had not closed with the conquering of the
continent; it was ready to spread into the Pacific. White men would continue to
spread their civilizing influence, subjugating or exterminating lesser, browner
races when necessary as white Americans had done to their Indian
wards. White elites like Roosevelt saw their westward destiny in this racial
history, and it was further confirm by science in Darwinian
survival of the fittest.
History
and science
refute such notions now. Bradley (and I) certainly don’t try to justify the
attitudes or actions of Roosevelt, Taft or others. Bradley is plainly critical
of handling of Pacific islands and Asia. Roosevelt’s racial views blinded him
to the abilities and patriotism of non-whites. He had the hubris to pursue
diplomacy on his own, secretly, without advice from the State Department,
Senate or anyone else who might raise the slightest objection or concern. He
tutored Japan in the ways of western imperialism, but could not imagine how
well they would learn the lessons. Bradley places at least some of the blame
for World
War II in the Pacific at the feet of Roosevelt, whose interventions created
the powerful military
empire we faced in those waters.
Roosevelt was an astute manager of his image and he understood public
relations. Because of this, he sent his oldest (and nearly estranged) daughter Alice on
the trip. She was a celebrity, and her presence assured a lot of press
coverage. Her presence was also a distraction from Taft’s secret mission.
If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
Bradley, James. The Imperial
Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. New York: Little,
Brown and Company, 2009.
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