9
"Bursting with Good Intentions"
The United States in World Affairs, 1901–1913

Contrary to European predictions, the United States did not become a major player in world politics immediately after the War of 1898. An avowed Anglophile, President Theodore Roosevelt flirted with the idea of an alliance with Great Britain, but he knew that such an arrangement was not feasible because of the relative security the nation continued to enjoy and its long-standing aversion to foreign entanglements. The brief flurry of enthusiasm for empire barely outlasted the war with Spain. The need to consolidate territory already acquired consumed great energy and resources. The Philippine War soured many Americans on colonies. Once an enthusiast for empire, Roosevelt himself would admit by 1907 that the Philippines was America's Achilles' heel. While busy solidifying its position in such traditional areas of influence as the Caribbean and the Pacific Basin, the United States did not acquire new colonies or involve itself in the frantic jockeying for alliances that stamped European politics before World War I. It was a great power but not yet a participant in the great-power system.¹

The United States between 1901 and 1913 did take a much more active role in the world. Brimming over with optimism and exuberance, their traditional certainty of their virtue now combined with a newfound power and status, Americans firmly believed that their ideals and institutions were the way of the future. Private individuals and organizations, often working with government, took a major role in meeting natural disasters across the world. Americans assumed leadership in promoting world peace. They began to press their own government and others to protect human rights in countries where they were threatened. The perfect exemplar of the nation's mood in the new century, Roosevelt promoted what he called "civilization" through such diverse ventures as building the Panama Canal, managing the nation's imperial holdings in the Philippines and the Caribbean, and even mediating great-power disputes and wars. "We are bursting today with good intentions," journalist E. L. Godkin proclaimed in 1899.2

I

"What a playball has this planet of ours become," novelist Jack London exclaimed at the turn of the century. "Steam has made its parts accessible. . . . The telegraph annihilates space and time."³ Indeed, the world had shrunk appreciably by the year 1900. Steamships crossed the Atlantic in less than a week—"giant ferryboats" traversing the "straits of New York," Americans called them.⁴ Cable joined much of the globe. Passports were unnecessary in many areas; people moved easily from one country to another to visit or work. The revolutions in technology and transportation permitted large-scale trade and international investments. Commerce and capital moved with relative freedom across national borders. This early globalization of capitalism led some enthusiasts to proclaim a new era of world peace. Applying modern ideas to Enlightenment theories, British businessman Norman Angell in his 1910 best seller The Great Illusion proclaimed capitalism an inherently peaceful system that rendered unnecessary formal empires based on possession of territory and thus might eliminate great-power rivalries and make war unthinkable because of the potential cost to winners as well as losers.

Angell also recognized the destructive capacity of modern nation-states, which, in fact, along with the expansion of capitalism and technological and geopolitical changes, was opening the way to history's bloodiest century. The early 1900s represented the high-water mark of imperialism. In 1901, the great powers maintained 140 colonies, protectorates, and dependencies covering two-thirds of the earth's surface and one-third of the world's population. "No land is occupied that is not stolen," humorist Mark Twain quipped after a global tour in the 1890s.⁵ The rise of Germany, Japan, and the United States and the demise of the Spanish empire upset the existing order and aroused uncertainty and fear among the established powers, manifested in heated colonial rivalries, a spiraling arms race, and shifting alliances. In a diplomatic revolution of mammoth proportions, traditional enemies Britain and France joined to face the emerging threat of Germany. Britain's accommodation with its ancient rival Russia in turn aroused German fear of encirclement. The increasing rigidity of alliances and the escalating arms race raised the possibility that a crisis in the most remote part of the world could plunge Europe into conflagration.

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 further jostled an already wobbly international system. Revelations of Russia's stunning weakness gave Germany a fleeting edge in great-power rivalries, adding anxiety in Britain and France. The surprisingly easy victory of an Asian nation over Europeans assaulted the theories of racial supremacy that undergirded a Eurocentric world order and excited hope among Asians groaning under imperialism. It was "like a strange new world opening up," Vietnamese patriot Phan Boi Chau recorded. "We have become increasingly enthusiastic and intense in our commitment to our ideals."6

The years 1900 to 1912 also witnessed the first stirring of the revolutions that would rock the twentieth century. The war with Japan helped spark an abortive revolution in Russia in 1905, a forerunner of the more radical upheaval to come. Republicans overthrew the decaying Manchu regime in China in 1911, setting off nearly four decades of internal strife and agitation against foreign domination. Revolutions also erupted in Mexico and Iran. In all these early twentieth-century upheavals, peasants, industrial workers, the petty bourgeoisie, and provincial elites challenged established governments while meeting the threats posed by foreign powers and each other. Their success was limited, but they hinted at the shakiness of the established order and the turmoil ahead.⁷

In terms of size and population, the United States was clearly a great power. Between 1900 and 1912, the last of the original forty-eight states were admitted to the union, completing the organization of the continental United States. The territory of the mainland exceeded three million square miles; the new overseas empire covered 125,000 square miles extending halfway across the world. A still rapidly expanding population surpassed seventy-seven million in 1901 and was becoming daily more diverse. Almost eight million immigrants entered the United States during the Roosevelt presidency alone. By 1910, America's twelve largest cities had populations one-third foreign born. New York, it was said, "had more Italians than Naples, more Germans than Hamburg, twice as many Irish as Dublin, and more Jews than the whole of western Europe."8 The influx of these new immigrants inflamed nativist passions and significantly influenced U.S. foreign relations.

Economically, the United States was first among equals. Per capita income was the highest in the world, although the average concealed gross and growing disparities between rich and poor. Agricultural and industrial productivity soared; the national wealth doubled between 1900 and 1912. A favorable balance of trade permitted a dramatic rise in foreign investments—from $700 million in 1897 to $3.5 billion by 1914. A once yawning gap between what Americans owed abroad and were owed closed by that same year, eliciting predictions that New York would soon be the center of world finance. "London and Berlin are standing in perfectly abject terror," novelist Henry James observed in 1901, "watching Pierpont Morgan's nose flaming over the waves, and approaching horribly nearer their bank vaults."⁹ The consolidation of industry that began in the late nineteenth century continued apace in the early twentieth. More and more corporations fell under the control of the great New York banking houses.

The nation's political life centered around adaptations to these changes. The Progressive movement comprised an almost bewildering mélange of sometimes conflicting groups. What they shared was a faith in progress and a conviction that problems could be solved by professional expertise. The progressives set out to deal with the disorders of the 1890s by applying modern problem-solving techniques. They put great stock in bureaucracy and saw government as the essential instrument of order and progress.¹⁰

The American mood at the turn of the century was one of unbounded optimism and unalloyed exuberance. The return of prosperity salved the wounds opened in the 1890s. Americans again marveled at their productivity and gloried in their material well-being. The defeat of Spain filled the nation with pride. "There is not a man here who does not feel four hundred percent bigger in 1900 . . . ," New York senator Chauncey Depew observed, "[now] that he is a citizen of a country that has become a world power."¹¹ Americans, and indeed some Europeans, more than ever believed that their way of doing things would prevail across the world. Woodrow Wilson told a 1906 audience that the great vitality of the United States would thrust it into new frontiers beyond Alaska and the Philippines: "Soon . . . the shores of Asia and then Autocratic Europe shall hear us knocking at their back door, demanding admittance for American ideas, customs and arts."12 The first generation of historians of U.S. foreign policy shared this excitement for the nation's new role in the world. Archibald Cary Coolidge hailed the emergence of his country as one of those nations "directly interested in all parts of the world and whose voices must be heard."¹³

The internationalization of America and the Americanization of the world was under way by 1900. Another spurt in tourism manifested the nation's emerging internationalism. The growing ease and luxury and declining cost of travel increased the number of Americans going to Europe from 100,000 in 1885 to nearly 250,000 by 1914. Americans proudly referred to themselves as the "world's wanderers" and boasted that in the "century of travel, Americans are the nation of travelers." Some tourists approached Europe much like their ancestors, their experiences abroad confirming their Americanness. Others viewed travel as a way to broaden their horizons and spread American values and influence. Some hoped to liberalize and Americanize the Old World—even to improve French hygiene by flaunting the newest brand of American-made soap. Some saw travel as a way to promote peace, reasoning that the better people got to know each other the more difficult it would be to go to war. Most saw increased travel as a manifestation of their nation's power and influence. "To be a world power was to travel," it was said, "and to travel was to be a world power." Whatever the rationalization, travel influenced Americans' views of other nations and of their own place in the world. It shaped the culture from which twentieth-century policymakers and an elite keenly interested in foreign policy public would emerge. In the spirit of the age, it led to calls for a more professional foreign service, even for improved foreign language skills.¹⁴

Once scorned by Europeans for its cultural backwardness, the United States by the turn of the century had assumed an important role in the international cultural establishment. American artists and writers took advantage of French encouragement of the arts; wealthy Americans sponsored such artists as Picasso, Matisse, and Cézanne. Henry James and James McNeill Whistler were among England's cultural elite. Americans bought and collected foreign art. J. P. Morgan acquired so many treasures that Europeans began to impose limits on art exports. Charles Freer's gift of Asian art spurred the creation of the first national gallery.15

In terms of its technological and manufacturing feats, the United States was widely recognized as the world power by 1900. At the Paris Universal Exposition that year, a huge dome topped by an oversized eagle towering above everything else marked the U.S. pavilion. It contained six thousand exhibits, second only to France, displaying everything from steam engines to meats. "It seems almost incredible," reveled a Munsey's Magazine writer, "that we should be sending cutlery to Sheffield, pig iron to Birmingham, silks to France, watch cases to Switzerland . . . or building sixty locomotives for British railways."¹⁶ Europeans expressed fascination with U.S. methods of mass production and especially Frederick Taylor's principles of scientific business management. Some urged their emulation. Others warned that to copy U.S. techniques would lead to shoddy products. Europeans also feared the mass consumption and democracy that were presumably the inevitable by-products of mass production and would, they fretted, undermine their high culture and threaten their elites. British journalist William Stead's 1901 best seller The Americanization of the World sounded an alarm bell that would echo repeatedly throughout the century.¹⁷

United States citizens, sometimes working with the government, eagerly took up the cause of humanitarian relief for peoples stricken by natural disaster. The wealth generated by the industrial revolution created a strong sense of noblesse oblige. Many citizens also agreed that their nation's status as a world power entailed global responsibilities. Modern communications brought to their attention disasters in far-flung areas; modern transportation made it possible to provide timely assistance. San Franciscans in the wake of their own horrendous earthquake in 1906 contributed $10,000 to victims of a similar disaster in Chile. Dr. Louis Klopsch of the Christian Herald, called the "twentieth-century captain of philanthropy," used his paper to collect contributions for famine relief in China and Scandinavia. In 1902, Roosevelt set aside $500,000 for victims of an earthquake on the islands of Martinique and St. Vincent. In 1907 and 1909, sailors from U.S. Navy ships helped with earthquake relief in Jamaica and Messina, Italy. Reorganized in 1905 under a congressional charter giving it status as a semiofficial government agency, the American Red Cross took the lead in many emergency operations. America's "habit of giving" saved countless lives and provided hope across the world. United States aid provoked some criticism, even from recipients, but also earned praise. According to the empress dowager of China, America was "known as the one foreign nation that is really a friend and whose people though barbarians, are really kind."18

The United States' rise to world power led to increased citizen activism on foreign policy issues. Americans agitated for reform of and even revolution against the oppressive tsarist government of Russia, in 1911 pressuring Congress into abrogating the commercial treaty of 1832. They took up the cause of world peace. In 1910, steel magnate Andrew Carnegie established the first foundation with an "explicit international orientation." Funded with $10 million of U.S. Steel stock, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sought to promote peace through law, international exchanges, and research.¹⁹

Increased citizen activism led to growing interest in and involvement with foreign policy issues on the part of American women. The realm of diplomacy, like that of politics, remained an exclusive male preserve, but women moved easily from agitation for suffrage and temperance at home into causes abroad. Philanthropy was more open to female participation than the political system. Reformer Alice Stone Blackwell took a leading role in efforts to promote revolution in Russia, even advocating a form of terrorism.²⁰ Women had early taken up the cause of world peace, urging arbitration of the controversy with Britain in 1895 lest men "deluge the world in blood for a strip of land in Venezuela." After the turn of the century, they campaigned for disarmament and international arbitration of disputes and to publicize their cause designated May 15 as "Peace Day." In promoting peace, they took a position at odds with their male counterparts, singling out what they saw as misguided and dangerous notions of manliness. Deploring modern industrialism, which they viewed as the triumph of male values, they fought against military appropriations, the sale of real and toy guns, and even the sport of boxing.21

In an age of internationalization, even African Americans, the most oppressed of American minorities, looked abroad. Leading educational institutions like Hampton Institute in Virginia and Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, each committed to uplifting African Americans by teaching self-help, industrial arts, and Christian morality, sought to project their values abroad. Samuel Armstrong, the founder of Hampton, envisioned a "Girdle Around the World" and encouraged Hawaiians, Africans, Cubans, even Japanese minority groups to come to Hampton, learn its ways, and return home to uplift their peoples by introducing a "little Hampton" there. Booker T. Washington sought to spread his Tuskegee model to Africa by bringing students to the Alabama school and dispatching Tuskegee students to Togo, Sudan, Liberia, and South Africa. Like elites at home, the colonial authorities in Africa found Washington's ideas and programs congenial as ways to help manage the "natives" and make them more productive workers.²² As on domestic issues, the more radical W.E.B. DuBois, a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, took issue with the Tuskegee-Hampton approach. Linking discrimination against African Americans at home with the exploitation of black people, especially Africans, abroad, he vigorously advocated an end to racial oppression at home and imperialism abroad.²³

II

Although thrust into office by an assassin's bullet, Theodore Roosevelt perfectly fitted early twentieth-century America. He had traveled through Europe and the Middle East as a young man, broadening his horizons and expanding his views of other peoples and nations. An avid reader and prolific writer, he was abreast of the major intellectual currents of his day and had close ties to the international literary and political elite. From his early years, he had taken a keen interest in world affairs. He was a driving force behind, as well as an active participant in, the "large policy" of the 1890s. In his first address to Congress, in December 1901, he preached the gospel of international noblesse oblige: "Whether we desire it or not, we must henceforth recognize that we have international duties no less than international rights."24

The youngest president to this time, Roosevelt brought to the office a flamboyant style that neatly reflected the America of his time. A "steam engine in trousers," he was called, "an avalanche that the sound of your voice might loosen," and his youthful exuberance and frenetic energy mirrored the pent-up vitality of his emerging nation. Henry James labeled him "Theodore Rex" and described him as "the mere monstrous embodiment of unprecedented and monstrous noise."²⁵ A supreme egoist—his memoir of the war with Spain should have been titled "Alone in Cuba," one wit observed—he loved to be the center of attention. At the beginning of the age of mass media, he and his attractive family made excellent copy, fascinating and captivating the public and making TR, as he was called, the first politician to attain celebrity status. Building on precedents set by McKinley, he mastered the art of press relations and especially the press release to monopolize the news.²⁶

Unlike his predecessors at least back to John Quincy Adams, he demonstrated a particular zest and flair for diplomacy, placing himself at the center of policymaking and setting precedents for executive dominance that became a hallmark of twentieth-century U.S. foreign policy. He reveled in intimate exchanges at the top level and in the stealth and secrecy that were part of the process. He disdained the "pink tea" protocol of formal diplomacy. He delighted in vigorous walks and horseback rides that left the stuffed shirts panting in the rear. He often short-circuited regular channels, using personal friends such as British ambassador Cecil Spring-Rice and his French and German counterparts, Jules Jusserand and Speck von Sternburg, the famous "tennis cabinet," as sources of information and diplomatic intermediaries.

Roosevelt was not a free agent in making foreign policy. In the days before scientific polling, it was impossible to determine what the public thought and how public opinion affected policy. The press could provoke excitement on specific issues as with Cuba in the mid-1890s, especially in the metropolitan areas on the two coasts. When the nation was not threatened from abroad, however, the mass public, especially in the rural Midwest and South, showed little interest in foreign policy. Americans firmly believed that their country should not join alliances or assume commitments that could lead to war. Congress to some extent reflected popular attitudes and set additional barriers to presidential freedom of action. Partisan politics could play a crucial role. Especially at a time when presidents were steadily expanding their power, Congress jealously guarded its prerogatives.

Roosevelt believed that America's new role required a strong executive. He often lamented that "this people of ours simply does not understand how things are outside our boundaries." He understood that Americans would not support some of the things he wished to do in foreign policy. Borrowing from the "social control" theories of sociologist Edward Ross, he saw his role as managing and manipulating a presumably ignorant or indifferent public and Congress to do what he deemed right and necessary.27 On occasion, he used the "bully pulpit" to educate the nation about things he believed in its best interest. More often, he stretched presidential powers as far as he could without provoking outright rebellion. He frequently operated in secrecy to keep the public and Congress from knowing what he was up to. During most of his presidency, he enjoyed comfortable majorities in Congress. But in his second term he encountered stubborn opposition from fiercely partisan southern Democrats who feared he might use expanded presidential powers to challenge their racial policies and Republicans who worried about the direction of his domestic programs and his accumulation of power. Numerous times, when thwarted by congressional opposition, he used executive agreements to implement his policies. Building on precedents set by McKinley, he established a firm basis for what would later be called the imperial presidency.²⁸

TR was not above using foreign policy for partisan political advantage. In 1904, on the eve of the Republican nominating convention, he instructed Secretary of State John Hay to make public the ringing ultimatum "Perdicaris Alive or Raisuli Dead," purportedly to force the release of an American held hostage by a local chieftain in Morocco. The ostensibly bold threat set off wild cheers at the convention and has been hailed since as an example of the virtues of tough talk in diplomacy. In fact, Perdicaris was not a U.S. citizen. Roosevelt had no intention of using force to retrieve him. Most important, his release had already been secured by diplomacy before the telegram was sent. "It is curious how a concise impropriety hits the public," Hay chortled.29 Although Americans were sometimes uneasy with TR's activism, they delighted in his growing international notoriety and the importance it signified for their young nation. They guffawed when he uttered such outrageous statements as "If I ever see another king, I will bite him."

A quintessentially American figure and a legitimate American hero, Roosevelt has been a subject of controversy. Especially during periods when interventionism has been out of fashion, he has been denounced as a heavy-handed imperialist, insensitive to the nationalism of people he considered backward. During the Cold War years, on the other hand, he was widely praised as a realist, more European than American in his thinking, a shrewd and skillful diplomatist who understood power politics, appreciated the central role America must play in the world, and vigorously defended its interests.

Roosevelt understood power and its limits, to be sure, but he was no Bismarck. On the contrary, he was quintessentially American in his conviction that power must be used for altruistic purposes. He was very much a person of his times. Cosmopolitan in his views, he hailed the advance of Western and especially Anglo-Saxon civilization as a world movement, the key to peace and progress. He believed his most important task was to guide his nation into the mainstream of world history. He viewed "barbaric" peoples as the major threat to civilization and thus had no difficulty rationalizing the use of force to keep them in line. "Warlike intervention by the civilized powers would contribute directly to the peace of the world," he reasoned, and could also spread American virtues and thereby promote the advance of civilization.³⁰ He was less clear how to keep peace among the so-called civilized nations. Pure power politics ran counter to the morality that was such an essential part of his makeup. In any event, he recognized that Americans' traditional aversion to intervention in European matters limited his freedom of action. The more appropriate role for the United States was as a civilizing power carrying out its moral obligations to maintain peace.³¹

Almost as important, if much less visible, was Elihu Root, who served Roosevelt ably as secretary of war and of state. A classic workaholic, Root rose to the top echelons of New York corporate law and the Republican Party by virtue of a prodigious memory, mastery of detail, and the clarity and force of his argument. A staunch conservative, he profoundly distrusted democracy. He sought to promote order through the extension of law, the application of knowledge, and the use of government. He shared Roosevelt's internationalism and was especially committed to promoting an open and prosperous world economy. He was more cautious in the exercise of power than his sometimes impulsive boss. For entirely practical reasons, he was also more sensitive to the feelings of other nations, especially potential trading partners. A man of great charm and wit—when the 325-pound Taft sent him a long report of a grueling horseback ride in the Philippines' heat, he responded tersely: "How's the horse?"—he sometimes smoothed over his boss's rough edges. He was a consummate state-builder who used his understanding of power and his formidable persuasiveness to build a strong national government.32 He was the organization man in the organizational society, "the spring in the machine," as Henry Adams put it.³³ He founded the eastern foreign policy establishment, that informal network connecting Wall Street, Washington, the large foundations, and the prestigious social clubs, which directed U.S. foreign policy through much of the twentieth century.³⁴

Roosevelt and Root devoted much attention to modernizing the instruments of national power. Their reforms were part of a worldwide trend toward professionalization of military and diplomatic services based on the notion that modern war and diplomacy required specialized training and highly skilled personnel. They believed that, as an emerging great power in a world filled with tension, the United States must have well-trained public servants to defend its interests, promote its commerce, and carry out its civilizing mission. The call to public service was also a way to combat the selfishness and decadence that threatened the nation from within.

Learning from the chaos that accompanied mobilization for war in 1898, Root had begun to reform the army when Roosevelt took office. Generally acknowledged as the father of the modern U.S. Army, he initiated its conversion from a frontier constabulary to a modern military force and introduced the radical idea of military professionalism to a nation proud of its citizen-soldier tradition. He created the Army War College in 1903 to prepare senior officers for war. Attacking the army's antiquated and conflict-ridden bureaucracy and following European and especially German models, he secured congressional approval in 1903 for a general staff to better plan for and conduct war. By trading federal funds for increased federal control, he also initiated the difficult and politically sensitive process of building a national reserve force from state-run militias. The so-called Root Reforms aroused bitter opposition inside and outside the army. Although they did not go as far as Root and others would have liked, they represented a major step toward modernization.35

Much closer to the president's heart and more acceptable to the nation was the further expansion and upgrading of the navy. A disciple of Alfred Thayer Mahan and sea power, Roosevelt retained throughout his life a boyish enthusiasm for ships and the sea. An "adequate" navy, he declared, was the "cheapest and most effective peace insurance" a nation could buy. He brought to the task his special zeal and skill at public relations.³⁶ Under his guidance, the U.S. Navy completed the shift from harbor defense to a modern battleship fleet, expanding from eleven battleships in 1898 to thirty-six by 1913 and rising to third place behind Britain and Germany. Direct naval appropriations during Roosevelt's tenure exceeded $900 million; the fleet grew from 19,000 sailors to 44,500. As was his wont, Roosevelt intervened personally to improve the accuracy of naval gunners. His dispatch of the Great White Fleet on its world tour in 1907 was, to him, a crowning achievement. "Did you ever see such a fleet and such a day?" an unusually exuberant (even for him!) president crowed. "By George, isn't it magnificent?" The cruise exposed major technical problems with the fleet and a serious shortage of bases in crucial areas, but it represented a coming-out party of sorts for the modern U.S. Navy.³⁷

Roosevelt and Root also initiated reform of the consular and diplomatic services. At a time when competition for markets was a national priority, changes in the consular service aroused little controversy. Some Americans continued to see little need for diplomats—consuls were quite enough—but they were increasingly shouted down by the voices of modernization. Diplomats as well as consuls could serve the demands of an expanding commerce. Greater foreign travel and commerce required more and better representation. Most important, as TR put it, was the "growth of our present weight in the councils of the world." The United States needed skilled professional diplomats to compete with other nations. To level the playing field, it must eliminate politics, patronage, and amateurism. "The nation is now too mature to continue in its foreign relations these temporary expedients natural to a people to whom domestic affairs are the sole concern," Roosevelt's successor, William Howard Taft, exclaimed.38 TR took up the cause, and Root applied his considerable skills to institution-building. The unlikely combination of Massachusetts Republican senator Henry Cabot Lodge and Alabama Democratic senator John Tyler Morgan spearheaded reform in Congress.

To remove patronage and politics, consuls and diplomats were selected by examination, carefully evaluated, and promoted on the basis of performance. As a practical business matter, the consular service was restricted to U.S. citizens. Consuls were paid better salaries and forbidden to do business on the side. Emphasis was placed on language skills. As secretary of state, Root shook the hidebound State Department from top to bottom. There was talk of specialized training for diplomats. Universities from New York to California began to create courses and programs—the Harvard Business School actually began as a venue for public service training. Following European models, geographical divisions were established in the State Department to provide the sort of expertise needed to deal with specialized problems.³⁹ Diplomats rotated between Washington and the field. Some of the changes were undone when Democrat Woodrow Wilson became president in 1913, but the process of reform was under way. To this point, U.S. diplomats had leased space for missions in other countries. Responding to the slogan "Better Embassies Mean Better Business," bankers, businessmen, and lawyers joined forces in 1909 to create improved working facilities for diplomats and consuls. In 1911, Congress authorized the State Department to buy land upon which to build new embassies.⁴⁰

III

As the United States became more and more a nation of nations, ethnic groups played an increasingly important part in U.S. foreign relations. Some immigrant groups sought to use their rising power to influence policy on issues affecting the lands from which they had come, on occasion provoking conflict with these nations. More often, the persecution of immigrants by Americans sparked protest from the countries of their origin, threatening good relations, and with Japan raising the possibility of war.

Russia's persecution of Jews became an especially volatile issue in the early twentieth century. Large numbers of Jews had emigrated to the United States from Russia and eastern Europe. Like other immigrant groups, many sought to return to visit or stay. The Russian government viewed Jews as a major source of revolutionary activity and hence a threat to order. Fearing the return of Jews under protection of U.S. citizenship, it denied them visas. A new series of pogroms early in the century posed a more serious problem. As many as three hundred pogroms took place in the years 1903 through 1906, one of the worst at Kishinev, the capital of Bessarabia, where in April 1903, forty-seven Jews were killed, hundreds wounded, and thousands left homeless.41

American Jews vigorously protested. By this time, they comprised a populous and well-organized group and controlled several major New York banking houses. They represented a crucial voting bloc in major cities. Already angry over Russian travel restrictions, they expressed outrage at the pogroms. They conducted mass protests in New York and Chicago that drew support from human rights advocates such as social worker Jane Addams and journalist Carl Schurz. They flooded the government with petitions demanding action.⁴²

The Roosevelt administration responded cautiously. The president and Hay to some degree shared the anti-Semitism that pervaded old-stock America and viewed the Jewish protest as an unwelcome intrusion from a minority group promoting narrow interests. They believed that protest was futile. On the other hand, they had little use for the tsar, shared Jewish anger at these "fiendish cruelties," and feared that the pogroms might provoke flight to the United States of "hordes of Jews . . . in unabsorbable numbers," something to "rank with the exodus from Egypt," Hay warned. With an election a year away, they recognized the value of doing something. They passed on to the Russian government a petition drafted by the protestors. To secure maximum political advantage, they released it to the press. This marked the first official U.S. protest against Russian anti-Semitism in a case where the nation's interests were not directly involved.43

Hay congratulated himself that the administration had at least laid the issue before the world, but the protest had little practical effect. The Russian government naturally bristled at U.S. intrusion and refused to accept the petition. Ambassador Artur Cassini pointedly retorted that the lynching of African Americans and beating of Chinese in the United States made it "unbecoming for Americans to criticize" Russia. A new wave of pogroms accompanied the outbreak of revolution in Russia in 1905, with an estimated 3,100 Jews killed in that year alone.⁴⁴

"What inept asses they are, these Kalmucks!" Hay privately fumed, but the administration refused to do more, and Jewish protest mounted and took new forms. The powerful financier Jacob Schiff called for military intervention, and fifty thousand Jews marched in New York City. Schiff and other Jewish bankers blocked U.S. and European loans to Russia for its war with Japan and helped the Japanese secure funds, hoping that a Russian military defeat might provoke revolution and ultimately improve conditions for Jews. In 1906, the protestors formed the American Jewish Committee to orchestrate their actions. Increasingly, they focused on abrogation of the Russian-American commercial treaty of 1832, pointing out that it called for equal treatment for citizens of all countries and should be either honored or scrapped. Upon succeeding Roosevelt, Taft tried to head off congressional action by negotiating an agreement with Russia for joint abrogation. The Russians stubbornly refused. In December 1911, responding to Jewish pressures, the House of Representatives passed 300 to 1 a resolution favoring abrogation. Bowing to the inevitable, a reluctant Taft gave the required year's notice for termination of the treaty.⁴⁵

American Jewish leaders hailed abrogation as a "great victory for human rights," but it was considerably less. It did little to help Russian Jews; by provoking an anti-American backlash, it may have worsened their condition.⁴⁶ Russia raised tariffs on U.S. imports and imposed boycotts on some items, leading some Americans to protest that minority groups were exercising mischievous influence on U.S. foreign policy. The affair was of more than passing importance. The United States alone among the great powers spoke out against Russian treatment of Jews. The protest made clear the growing importance of ethnic groups in foreign policy. It brought into being one of the most powerful lobbies in twentieth-century America.

While American Jews protested human rights abuses in Russia, violations of human rights in the United States set off loud protests in China and Japan. The Chinese had ample reason for anger. After extended debate, Congress in 1904 bowed to exclusionist pressure and made permanent late nineteenth-century restrictions imposed on Chinese immigration. In the meantime, the Bureau of Immigration interpreted exclusionist laws in an arbitrary and intimidating manner.47 Bureau officials interrogated, harassed, and humiliated Chinese seeking admission to the United States and used the most whimsical reasons to keep them out. State and local laws blatantly discriminated against the ninety thousand Chinese already in the United States, reducing them to the "status of dogs," one Chinese American complained. The Bureau of Immigration seemed intent on driving them all from the country.⁴⁸ Even Chinese exhibitors at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis were subjected to discriminatory regulations and restrictions.⁴⁹

Mounting Chinese anger exploded in 1905 in a boycott of U.S. goods. Centered in the treaty ports, the boycott was one of the first visible signs of an emerging nationalist sentiment among a proud people subjected to foreign domination and insult. Chinese Americans helped instigate the boycott and supported it with contributions of money. Inspired by Japan's war against Russia, gentry, students, women, and intellectuals struck out in whatever ways seemed most available. They singled out the United States because of its gross abuses of human rights and because it appeared least likely to exact harsh retribution. They displayed anti-American posters and sang anti-American songs. They destroyed American property, even such prized personal possessions as record players. A Cantonese student denied access to the United States took his own life on the steps of the U.S. consulate. "My chair coolies are hooted in the street and I would not be surprised if my servants left me," a beleaguered U.S. consul whined. The Chinese government did not officially support the protestors, but it acquiesced in and approved what they did. The Open Door constituency begged the government to do something.50

Roosevelt handled the boycott with political acumen and dexterity. A person who admired strength in people and nations, he deplored Chinese weakness—one of his major terms of opprobrium was "Chinaman." In the 1890s, he had backed exclusion on racial and economic grounds. He sensed the new winds blowing in China, however, and he recognized the blatant injustice in U.S. policies. To quiet U.S. China hands and the Chinese, he vaguely called for changes in the law on the grounds that "we cannot expect to receive equity unless we do equity." He also promised to implement existing laws more equitably and pressed the immigration bureau to mend its ways. But he would not take risks to ensure equity, and he recognized that his power to sway Congress and the states was limited. He assured exclusionists that he would continue to oppose the admission of Chinese laborers: "We have one race problem on our hands and we don't want another." When the boycott spread and five Americans were killed in an unrelated incident, he demanded an end to the protest and beefed up U.S. military forces in and around China.⁵¹

The incident faded without tangible result. The boycott fizzled from its own weakness rather than Roosevelt's threats. The boycotters disagreed on what they were trying to do and overestimated the capacity of economic pressure to influence U.S. policies. The boycott was mainly important as an early manifestation of the rising nationalism that would soon erupt in revolution. In the United States, little changed. Exclusionists continued to control the Congress. The bureau temporarily softened its methods and ended its efforts to drive Chinese from the United States. Americans continued to treat Chinese badly. In its death throes, the Chinese government could do little more than feebly protest.

The United States sought to appease the Chinese by remitting the indemnity imposed after the Boxer Rebellion. Often viewed as an act of generosity, remission was in fact an act of calculated self-interest. For Roosevelt, it provided a substitute for Congress's refusal to modify the exclusion laws. For those merchants and missionaries who sought to extend U.S. influence and trade in China, it offered a means to palliate the justifiably righteous indignation of the Chinese. It could also be "used to make China do some of the things we want," State Department official Huntington Wilson observed. Alarmed at the number of Chinese going to Japan to study, diplomats also saw remission as a "cultural investment." "The Chinese who acquires his education in this country," diplomat Charles Denby observed, "goes back predisposed toward America and American goods." The United States thus forbade the funds from being used for economic development, insisting rather upon the establishment of an American school in China and creation of a program to send Chinese to study in the United States.52

A similar conflict with Japan provoked in 1907 a sustained war scare. Ironically, the restrictions placed on Chinese immigration and a continued demand for cheap labor led to a dramatic influx of Japanese workers, mostly from Hawaii. This sudden appearance of "hordes" of immigrants from a nation that had just thrashed a European power provoked working-class resentment against those who would "labor for less than a white man can live on" and wild fears of the "Orientalization of the Pacific Coast." Ostensibly to solve a shortage of school space caused by the recent catastrophic earthquake, in fact to avoid racial "contamination," the San Francisco School Board in October 1906 placed Chinese, Korean, and Japanese children in segregated schools.⁵³

This ill-considered order provoked conflict with a nation that could do more than boycott U.S. goods. The Japanese government was not inclined to go to war over a relatively minor issue, but it could not but view the order as an insult and felt compelled to respond to the protests of its own people. Tokyo underestimated the depth of Californians' fears. Viewing U.S. politics through the prism of its own political culture, it also overestimated Washington's ability to control state and local governments. The Japanese thus sharply protested the segregation order.⁵⁴

Roosevelt badly mishandled this issue. He shared to some degree the racial prejudices of the Californians, although he greatly respected what the Japanese had accomplished and admired their discipline and patriotism. He recognized, too, the threat they posed to the Philippines and Hawaii. He also at first underestimated the depth of anti-Japanese sentiment in California. Privately, he raged at the "idiots" who had proclaimed the order and employed racist terms to denounce racist actions—as "foolish as if conceived by the mind of a Hottentot," he declaimed. Publicly, he denounced the segregation order as a "wicked absurdity." But he could not persuade the Californians to rescind it. "Not even the big stick is enough to compel the people of California to do a thing which they have a fixed determination not to do," the Sacramento Union thundered.55 He compounded his problems with a hasty and ill-conceived effort to charm the Japanese into accepting a treaty providing for the mutual exclusion of laborers. They naturally took offense at the obviously one-sided nature of the treaty and the patronizing manner in which it was presented.⁵⁶

Having won over neither Californians nor Japanese, a chastened Roosevelt set out to cobble together a settlement. He secured from Congress legislation banning immigration from Hawaii, Canada, and Mexico, thus stopping the major source of Japanese immigration without singling them out by name. He used the leverage thus gained to prevent the California legislature from passing discriminatory legislation and to persuade the San Franciscans to revoke their obnoxious order. As part of what came to be known as the "Gentleman's Agreement," Japan agreed to restrict the emigration of laborers to the United States.

In the short run, the crisis persisted. Japanese immigration actually increased following the Gentleman's Agreement, fanning tensions on the West Coast. Anti-Japanese riots in California further provoked Japan. Hotheads in both countries warned ominously of "yellow perils" and "white perils." Some commentators compared the warlike atmosphere to 1898. Roosevelt seems to have overestimated at this stage Tokyo's inclination toward war. He also exploited the crisis to promote his beloved navy and to indulge his boylike zest for playing war. He persuaded Congress to authorize four new battleships and pressed the navy to develop War Plan Orange, the first time Japan had officially been declared a potential enemy. His master stroke, as he saw it, was to send the fleet on a world cruise that included a stop in Japan. He hoped through this blatant show of force to publicize the importance of the navy, build political capital in California, and give pause to the Japanese.

Fortunately for Roosevelt, what could have resulted in disaster ended without incident. The Japanese cut the flow of laborers, fulfilling their part of the Gentleman's Agreement and taking the steam out of the agitation in California. The world cruise exposed the deficiencies of the Great White Fleet more than its power, but the Japanese warmly received the sailors. Crowds sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" in English and waved American flags. United States sailors played baseball against Japanese teams. Although agitators in both countries continued to talk of war and the immigration issue would not go away, Roosevelt left office without further crisis.57

IV

In the first decade of the twentieth century, Americans took an active role in promoting world peace. The American peace movement was part of a larger Western phenomenon. One hundred and thirty new nongovernmental organizations dedicated to various international causes sprouted up in the early 1900s, many of which would play an important role in years to come. Like their European counterparts, U.S. peace advocates believed that a shrinking world, frightening advances in military technology, and the escalating costs of weapons gave a special urgency to their cause. Optimistic about humankind and confident of progress, they hoped that the growth of capitalism and democracy would make war less likely. They also worried about rising tensions in Europe and sought to take steps to reduce the chances of conflict. Conservative in politics, these "practical" peace reformers equated peace with order and respect for the law. They believed the United States must work closely with other "civilized" nations, especially Great Britain, and that their cause could best be furthered by the extension of Anglo-Saxon principles, especially the codification of international law and arbitration. They saw no contradiction between working for peace and maintaining military strength.⁵⁸

The organized peace movement flourished in the United States early in the century. Some groups sponsored international friendship and understanding among schoolchildren and college students. The World Peace Foundation focused on research and education. Solid citizens such as Root and steelmaker Carnegie gave the movement respectability and resources. Like others of his era, Carnegie believed that the wealthy must assume responsibility for making a better world. Peace became one of his passions. His Endowment built up the international relations sections of Carnegie-funded libraries. It promoted peaceful resolution of disputes. Its charter reflected the optimism of the era. Once war had been eliminated, it declared, the Endowment could move on to the "next most degrading remaining evil or evils."⁵⁹

Firm internationalists, the peace seekers believed that understanding and cooperation among nations were essential for world peace. They were also firmly ethnocentric. In their view, the world could best be regenerated by the spread of American values, principles, and institutions. They worked within precisely defined limits. Certain that their nation's security was not threatened by war in Asia or Europe, they did not consider breaking with tradition by joining alliances or involving the United States in world politics. Acting as "enlightened bystanders," they had no sense that achievement of their goal might require drastic measures.

They fastened rather on cautious, legalistic means such as arbitration. Arbitration was a natural for U.S. peace advocates. The U.S. practice of submitting disputes to arbitration dated to the 1794 Jay Treaty with England. Arbitration fitted within the Anglo-American tradition of extending legal concepts to international relations. It perfectly suited those peace advocates who desired to take practical steps without compromising U.S. freedom of action.

The peace advocates won the ear of policymakers, but they never determined how to take effective steps without compromising national sovereignty. With Roosevelt's blessing, Hay negotiated in 1904–5 with all the major European nations and Japan eleven bilateral treaties providing arbitration of all disputes that did not involve questions of national honor or vital interests—glaring exceptions. Already embroiled with the activist TR over numerous issues, a contentious Senate insisted that it must approve each case in which the United States went to arbitration. Dismissing the amended treaties as a "sham," Roosevelt refused to sign them.60 A more accommodating and cautious Root tried to pick up the pieces, conciliating the Senate and then negotiating twenty-four bilateral arbitration treaties with all the major powers except Russia and Germany. The Root treaties were easily approved and won their author a Nobel Peace Prize. They were so restrictive as to be of dubious value.⁶¹

American peace advocates and policymakers also supported the idea of regular great-power meetings to discuss matters of war and peace. Such efforts had the advantage of being multilateral rather than bilateral. They could deal with a broad spectrum of issues. The tsar had proposed the first "peace" conference, which met at The Hague in May 1899. Befitting its new world status, the United States took an active role. Male and female peace enthusiasts from across the world also flocked to The Hague, where they held "fringe" meetings and, in the words of the U.S. delegate, submitted "queer letters and crankish proposals." The Quakers were "out in full force," he complained. Military figures such as Mahan and British admiral Sir John Fisher attended as delegates. The conference has been aptly characterized as a noble undertaking with limited results. It did "outlaw" several weapons, took steps to ensure better treatment of prisoners of war, thus seeking to render war more humane if not eliminating it, and agreed on a multilateral arbitration treaty. But it accomplished nothing in disarmament beyond an innocuous statement that the reduction of military budgets was "extremely desirable for the increase of the material and moral welfare of mankind." It did not even approve a U.S. proposal for a court of neutral nations to arbitrate disputes.62

Roosevelt proposed a second Hague conference to push for arbitration and reductions in armaments, but he politely allowed the tsar to issue formal invitations. Forty-four nations gathered in the summer of 1907. The conferees did not address such crucial issues as neutral rights and accomplished nothing in arms reduction. Finley Peter Dunne's fictional newspaper humorist, Mr. Dooley, acidly observed that they spent most of the time discussing "how future wars should be conducted in th' best inthrests iv peace."⁶³ The delegates also rejected Root's proposal for a permanent world court. They initiated the practice of attaching reservations to their signatures, a method already used by U.S. senators. The main result was acceptance of Carnegie's proposal for the construction of a "peace palace" at The Hague.⁶⁴

Ironically, it was the warmonger of 1898 and hero of San Juan Hill who gave practical expression to the burgeoning peace sentiment by helping to end the Russo-Japanese War and prevent war between France and Germany. Much has been made of Roosevelt's realpolitik, and power politics undoubtedly entered into his unprecedented intrusions in world affairs. Other factors were more important. Like the peace advocates, he felt that the United States must work actively to promote peace. "We have become a great nation . . . and we must behave as beseems a people with such responsibilities."⁶⁵ As one of the "civilized" nations, the United States had a moral duty to preserve peace.⁶⁶ TR also loved to be at the center of things, and such interventions gave him a bigger stage to perform on. As much as he complained about the pretensions of foreign heads of states and the intractability of diplomacy, he reveled in the intrigue and secrecy and the manipulation of people and nations. He also believed that his intercession could further vital U.S. interests.

The outbreak of war between Russia and Japan in 1904 provided the first opportunity for the onetime warrior to play the role of peacemaker. Since Japan's rise to world power, the two nations had competed for influence and markets in northeast Asia. Rivalry erupted into military conflict in February when Japan suddenly terminated six months of negotiations and launched a surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in southern Manchuria.

Roosevelt moved slowly toward mediation. At first, he and Root cheered Japanese successes—and even the way they began the war! TR feared Russian advances in East Asia; he profoundly disliked their autocratic form of government and branded the tsar "a preposterous little creature."67 Although he shared the racism of his contemporaries, he respected Japanese economic and military prowess, even conceding that they would be a "desirable addition" to "our civilized society." He hoped to thwart a possible threat to the Philippines and Hawaii by deflecting Japan's expansion toward the Asian mainland. The Japanese, he crowed, were "playing our game." As they drove from victory to victory over shockingly inept Russian forces, however, he began to fear they might get the "big head." It would be best if the two nations fought to a draw, exhausting each other in the process. At the outset, he concentrated on preventing the war from becoming another occasion for plundering China. Later, he decided that it must be stopped before Japan could gain too great an edge and offered his good offices.⁶⁸

With difficulty, he got the combatants to the conference table. Each Russian military disaster seemed to render the tsar less amenable to compromise. Surprised with the ease of their success, the Japanese began to push for total victory. Roosevelt privately railed at the stubbornness and delusions of each. The Russians were capable of "literally fathomless mendacity"; Japan was an "oriental nation, and the individual standard of truthfulness is low."⁶⁹ His persistence paid off. Japan's destruction of the Russian fleet at Tsushima in May 1905 forced the tsar to negotiate. Japan's military success came at the cost of financial ruin; its leaders also found reason to talk. In the summer of 1905, the two nations agreed to attend a peace conference.

The meeting opened at the navy yard in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, August 9, 1905. Its location in the United States was without precedent. Roosevelt played a major role. He did not attend, but he watched closely from his Long Island home and exerted influence through tennis cabinet intermediaries such as von Sternburg and Jusserand, and even Kaiser Wilhelm II. In a preconference gathering at his Oyster Bay estate, he displayed diplomatic finesse by ordering a stand-up buffet dinner to avoid touchy protocol questions of seating and by delivering an admirably tactful toast. Privately, he vented his frustration: the Russians were "soddenly stupid, corrupt, treacherous, and incompetent," the Japanese "entirely selfish." It was difficult to be patient, he told friends, when "what I really want to do is to give utterance to whoops of rage and jump up and knock their heads together."70 To free itself of financial dependence on U.S. bankers, Japan sought a large indemnity and the retention of Manchurian territory it had taken. Despite its enormous losses, Russia refused concessions—"not an inch of ground, not a kopek of compensation."⁷¹ "The Japanese ask too much," Roosevelt complained, "but the Russians are ten times worse than the Japs because they are so stupid." Russian stubbornness paid off. Chief negotiator Count Sergei Witte made peace possible by ignoring the tsar's objections to ceding half of Sakhalin. Recognizing that their financial plight prevented them from resuming the war, the Japanese agreed to Roosevelt's pleas for compromise. The September 1905 Treaty of Portsmouth provided no indemnity. Japan secured Port Arthur, southern Sakhalin, and Russian recognition of its sphere of influence in Korea. Manchuria was left open to both powers.⁷²

Roosevelt quickly discovered the curses as well as blessings that befall the peacemakers. Americans cheered this new evidence of their nation's benign influence in the world and exulted that their president's big stick could be used to impose peace. TR won the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, the first American to be so honored. As with most such compromises, neither of the signatories was happy. Russians denounced Witte as "Count Half-Sakhalin." Russian-American relations, already strained over the Jewish issue, were further poisoned. Unable to grasp why their smashing military victories had not won a bigger diplomatic payoff, Japanese found in the United States a handy scapegoat. Mourning crepe was hung from government buildings. In September 1905, during anti-peace riots, mobs surrounded the U.S. legation in Tokyo.73

Even before the Portsmouth conference, Roosevelt had begun to shore up the U.S. position in the Philippines. While inspiring Asians, Japan's stunning military success worried some Americans. United States officials, Roosevelt included, increasingly recognized that its naval prowess threatened the Philippines and even Hawaii, where the Japanese population continued to grow. Now painfully aware of the vulnerability of islands once touted as the nation's outer defenses, Roosevelt in July 1905 dispatched to Tokyo his protégé and favorite troubleshooter, Taft. The president's flamboyant and outspoken daughter Alice also went along and dominated the headlines. Meanwhile, Taft held secret discussions with Prime Minister Taro Katsura. In the resulting agreement, the United States gave Japan a free hand in Korea, violating the U.S.-Korea treaty of 1882; Katsura disavowed any Japanese aspirations toward the Philippines or Hawaii. Approved by the president, the so-called Taft-Katsura agreement remained secret until unearthed in his papers nearly two decades later. When Korea in November 1905 called upon the United States to live up to its treaty obligations, TR demurred, privately commenting that the Koreans could do nothing to defend themselves.⁷⁴

The rise in tensions following the Treaty of Portsmouth, the concurrent crisis over Japanese immigration, fueled by reckless talk of yellow and white perils, and the growing possibility of conflict over Manchuria created pressures for further initiatives. In late November 1908, Root and Japanese ambassador Takahira Kogoro negotiated another secret agreement pledging respect for the status quo in the Pacific region, thus tacitly conceding Japan's preeminent interests in southern Manchuria. When Root proposed that the Senate might at least be informed of the understanding, Roosevelt, now a lame duck, responded curtly: "Why invite the expression of views with which we may not agree?"⁷⁵

Roosevelt's role in averting war between France and Germany was less direct but still important. French efforts to create an exclusive sphere of influence in Morocco threatened existing German interests. Germany naturally objected and by threatening war hoped to drive a wedge between France and its new ally, Great Britain. Engaging in a histrionic display so typical of the era, the kaiser made a dramatic, saber-rattling speech aboard a warship at Tangier, at the same time calling for an international conference to discuss the issue. Privately, he appealed to the United States to intercede.

Roosevelt moved cautiously. Some "civilized" nation should uphold order in Morocco, he reasoned, and France seemed a logical candidate. He did not want to alienate France or Britain, with whom he sympathized and sought to maintain close ties. "We have other fish to fry," he also noted, "no real interests in Morocco." Ultimately, the threat of a "world conflagration" drove him to act. In doing so, he broke precedent even more sharply than in the Russo-Japanese War, implicitly altering the Monroe Doctrine by asserting the right of the United States to intervene in European matters that affected its security.76 He nudged both sides toward the peace table. He helped resolve haggling over the agenda by persuading France and Germany to go "with no program." Largely through a major gaffe on the part of von Sternburg, he extracted a crucial German promise to accept the settlement he might work out.

The conference opened in January 1906 in Algeciras, Spain. Roosevelt played a less conspicuous role than at Portsmouth, but he exerted important and at times decisive influence. As before, he closely watched the proceedings and worked through trusted personal intermediaries. He took a consistently pro-French position while effusively flattering the kaiser. When Wilhelm backed himself into a corner from which there appeared no face-saving exit, TR threatened to publish Germany's inadvertent pledge to compromise. Faced with this dismal prospect, the kaiser gave in and then had to swallow Roosevelt's fulsome praise for his "epoch-making political success" and "masterly policy." France got most of what it wanted; the kaiser got Roosevelt's praise. War was averted, achieving the president's short-term aim; Germany was isolated and angry.⁷⁷

V

During the first years of the new century, U.S. officials devoted much effort to managing the empire taken from Spain in 1898. They brought to the task a keen sensitivity to their new world role and the importance of what they were doing. They imparted to their work the zeal for social engineering that marked the Progressive Era. Forms of governance and relationships with the United States varied markedly in the new possessions. In all cases, Americans believed in their exceptionalism. They were doing the "world's work," Roosevelt boasted, bringing to their new wards the blessings of civilization rather than exploiting them. Whatever the intentions, of course, U.S. policies were exploitative. It was not simply a matter of Americans taking advantage of helpless victims. Local elites, often Creoles who shared the racist assumptions of their new colonial masters, collaborated with the imperial power to advance their personal interests and maintain their privileged position.

At first overlooked in imperial calculations, Puerto Rico came to assume exaggerated importance in American eyes. It would provide bases to guard the canal. It could serve as a transit point for the growth of U.S. trade and investment in Latin America. The expansion of sugar production would reduce dependence on Europe for a vital consumer product. As Americans optimistically set out to educate Puerto Ricans to "our way of looking at things," they reasoned that if they did their job well they could "win the hearts" of other Latin Americans and "weld together" the civilizations of the two continents.78

The United States carved out a unique status for its new Caribbean possession. Racist attitudes toward Puerto Ricans made incorporation and self-government equally unthinkable. The island's dense population made colonization by Americans impractical. The Foraker Act of 1900 established Puerto Rico as an unincorporated territory, a possession of the United States but not part of it, the United States' first legally established overseas colonial government. The Supreme Court in the 1901 Insular Cases ruled that the United States could govern the island without the consent of the people for an unspecified period. The Constitution "follows the flag," Root declared sardonically, "but doesn't quite catch up with it."⁷⁹ The United States also kept Puerto Rico at a distance economically, imposing a tariff on most of its imports. The new scheme of governance—what Root called "patrician tutelage"—took away much of the autonomy Spain had conceded in 1897. The vote was limited to literate male property owners, disfranchising 75 percent of the male population. An executive council composed of five Americans appointed by the president worked closely with local elites and wielded such power that Puerto Ricans compared it to the "Olympian Jupiter."⁸⁰

The occupation government and colonial administration set out to Americanize the island, hoping in the process to create a model of order and stability.81 They built roads to attract investment and facilitate economic development. They implemented sanitation and public health programs to ensure a healthy workforce and permit "white American officials" to "escape death in doing their duty." They rewrote the legal code. United States officials viewed Puerto Ricans as morally deficient and lazy—"where a man can lie in a hammock, pick a banana with one hand, and dig a sweet potato with one foot," Gov. Charles Allen explained, "the incentive to idleness is easy to yield to." Viewing the local population as "plastic" and capable of being molded, they reconstructed the educational system to instill into Puerto Ricans that "indomitable thrift and industry which have always marked the pathway of the Anglo-Saxon."⁸² English replaced Spanish as the language of instruction. Classes promoted such values as honesty, hard work, and equality before the law. In the mode of Tuskegee Institute, Puerto Ricans were taught manual and technical skills to make them productive workers. Through high tariffs and incentives, the island was integrated into the U.S. economic system, transforming a reasonably diverse agricultural economy into one based on large-scale sugar production. Experts like Jacob H. Hollander of Johns Hopkins University reformed the tax code and made tax collection more efficient. United States officials even sought to Anglicize the name of the island by changing the spelling to "Porto Rico," a move National Geographic magazine adamantly rejected.⁸³

The new name never quite caught on, and proconsuls could not undo centuries of Spanish rule and remake the United States' new colonial subjects into North Americans. The roads and public health programs improved the quality of life and laid a basis for economic expansion. Educational programs were at best a qualified success. Efforts to force-feed the English language hindered instruction in other areas. Puerto Ricans clung to Spanish; illiteracy rates remained high. Despite vigorous efforts to Americanize the islanders, nationalist sentiment remained alive. Puerto Ricans challenged government dictates and agitated for greater self-government.

Even more than in Puerto Rico, the United States in the Philippines set out with missionary zeal to replicate its institutions. Idealistic young Americans went forth to educate the "natives." Colonial officials built roads and railroads, modernized port facilities at Manila, and through public health programs contained the deadly diseases of malaria and cholera. Experts stabilized the Philippine currency and reformed the legal system. Through what was called reciprocal free trade, the United States sought to foster a mutually beneficial economic development. Beginning with reforms at the local levels, U.S. officials instructed their new wards in democratic politics as a basis for eventual self-government. "We are doing God's work here," Governor General Taft exulted.84

As in Puerto Rico, the results were no better than mixed. To its credit, the United States avoided the worst exploitation of European imperialism. Congress imposed restrictions that prevented Americans from taking over huge chunks of land. Literacy and life expectancy levels rose markedly; an honest judiciary and efficient tax system were put into place. The use of English gave scattered islanders with a bewildering diversity of dialects a lingua franca, even if an alien one. Upper-class Filipinos aped American manners. The masses took to baseball and Sousa marches. As journalist Stanley Karnow has observed, however, the "Filipinos became Americanized without becoming Americans."⁸⁵ Racism further tainted an already unequal and distant relationship between master and subject. Suffrage was limited to property owners, and no more than 3 percent of the population voted. Behind the facade of democracy, an oligarchy of wealthy Filipino collaborators dominated politics and society and exploited their own people. Reciprocal free trade tied the two economies together, making the Philippines vulnerable to the booms and busts of the U.S. business cycle, stimulating uneven economic growth, and widening an already huge gap between rich and poor. Whatever the United States' intentions, the result was a colonial relationship.⁸⁶

In terms of long-term ties, the United States set the Philippines on a very different course from Puerto Rico. From the outset, U.S. rule had been rationalized in terms of noble intentions. The Schurmann Commission of 1899 recommended eventual independence for the islands, and the United States could not easily scrap promises to prepare them for self-government. Some Filipinos were ambivalent. Those who benefited from the colonial relationship recognized the economic perils that might accompany independence and feared Japan. The elite nevertheless ritualistically clamored for independence, finding eager listeners among traditionally anti-imperialist Democrats in the United States. When the Democrats won the presidency in 1912, the Wilson administration introduced a program of "Filipinization," giving Filipinos more seats on the governing executive council and larger roles in the bureaucracy. In 1916, Congress passed the Jones Act, committing the United States to independence as soon as the Filipinos could establish a "stable government." The pledge was vaguely worded, to be sure, but it was still unprecedented. No imperial nation to this point had promised independence or even autonomy.87

By the time TR took office, the United States was poised to fulfill the dream of a canal across the Central American isthmus. In late 1901, after extensive deliberation, a private commission recommended that it be built across Nicaragua, which was closer to the United States, had a more favorable climate, and posed fewer engineering challenges than the rival site in Panama. Within six months, the United States had shifted to Panama. Fearing the loss of its sizeable investment, the French company that had failed to build a canal across Panama and its redoubtable agent Philippe Bunau-Varilla reduced the price for its concession and mounted a frantic lobbying campaign. Its chief agent, the unscrupulous and powerful New York lawyer William Nelson Cromwell, spent lavishly and may have bribed key congressmen. The lobbyists even placed on the desks of senators as a warning against that route stamps portraying a Nicaraguan volcano belching forth tons of lava. Meanwhile, an engineering firm concluded that Panama's technical problems could be managed. Congress in June 1903 voted overwhelmingly for that route.⁸⁸

Only Colombia now stood in the way. Although separated from Panama by a stretch of impenetrable jungle, Colombia had withstood countless revolutions to maintain its precarious hold over the isthmus. Having just suffered a long civil war, it desperately needed money and was sensitive to questions of its sovereignty. When Hay negotiated a treaty giving Colombia $10 million with annual payments of $250,000 and the United States a one-hundred-year lease over a six-mile strip of land, Colombian politicians understandably balked. They did not want to lose the treaty, but they feared giving away so much for so little. For reasons noble and petty, they hoped by holding out to get a better deal.

Colombian rejection of the treaty set in motion powerful forces. Panamanians eager for independence and U.S. largesse plotted yet another revolt. They were encouraged by the indefatigable Bunau-Varilla, who feared going home empty-handed and sought to manipulate the political situation to salvage his clients' investment. Outraged at Colombia's "obstruction," Roosevelt and Hay made no effort to understand its legitimate concerns or to exploit its continuing interest. They were not to be deterred by a pipsqueak nation. Roosevelt privately denounced the Colombians as "contemptible little creatures," "jack rabbits," and "homicidal corruptionists." He did not instigate the rebellion—he knew he did not have to. He and Hay dealt with Bunau-Varilla discreetly. But they made clear they would not obstruct a revolt, and their timely dispatch of warships to the isthmus prevented Colombia from landing troops to suppress the uprising. A stray jackass and a "Chinaman" were the lone casualties in a relatively bloodless revolution. The United States recognized the new government with unseemly haste.89

Having contrived to secure appointment as envoy to the United States, the opportunistic Bunau-Varilla moved swiftly to consummate the deal. Even before the revolution, he had drafted a declaration of independence and constitution for Panama. His wife had designed a flag (later rejected because it too closely resembled Old Glory). Determined to complete the transaction before real Panamanians could get to Washington, he negotiated a treaty drafted by Hay with his assistance and far more favorable to the United States than the one Colombia had rejected. The United States got complete sovereignty in perpetuity over a zone ten miles wide. Panama gained the same payment promised Colombia. More important for the short run, it got a U.S. promise of protection for its newly won independence. Bunau-Varilla signed the treaty a mere four hours before the Panamanians stepped from the train in Washington. Nervous about its future and dependent on the United States, Panama approved the treaty without seeing it.⁹⁰

Colombia, obviously, was the big loser. Panama got nominal independence and a modest stipend, but at the cost of a sizeable chunk of its territory, its most precious national asset, and the mixed blessings of a U.S. protectorate. Panamanian gratitude soon turned to resentment against a deal Hay conceded was "vastly advantageous" for the United States, "not so advantageous" for Panama. TR vigorously defended his actions, and some scholars have exonerated him.⁹¹ Even by the low standards of his day, his insensitive and impulsive behavior toward Colombia is hard to defend. Root summed it up best. Following an impassioned Rooseveltian defense before the cabinet, the secretary of war retorted in the sexual allusions he seemed to favor: "You have shown that you have been accused of seduction and you have conclusively proven that you were guilty of rape."92 Although journalists criticized the president and Congress investigated, Americans generally agreed that the noble ends justified the dubious means. Even before completion of the project in 1914, the canal became a symbol of national pride. The United States succeeded where Europe had failed. It wiped out yellow fever and surmounted enormous engineering challenges. The canal symbolized for Americans their ingenuity and resourcefulness rather than imperialism; "the greatest engineering wonder of the ages," it was hailed, "a distinctively American triumph." Its symbolic importance in turn gave them a special attachment to it that make subsequent adjustments difficult.⁹³

"The inevitable result of our building the canal," Root observed in 1905, "must be to require us to police the surrounding premises." In fact, the United States had long claimed the Caribbean as its exclusive preserve. In 1892, Harrison and Blaine arranged with U.S. bankers to get the Dominican Republic's debts out of the hands of European creditors. The Platt Amendment had imposed a protectorate on Cuba. Before the first dirt was shoveled in Panama, breakdown of the Harrison-Blaine deal and the threat of foreign intervention in the Dominican Republic led to the assertion through the so-called Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine of broad U.S. police powers in the hemisphere.⁹⁴

The corollary developed out of a prolonged crisis in Venezuela that for nervous U.S. officials highlighted the threat of European and especially German intervention. Since independence, Latin American nations had contracted sizeable foreign debts, and private citizens of the Western nations mounted growing claims against Latin governments. Some claims were legitimate, some spurious, most inflated, but in the heyday of gunboat diplomacy governments were not disposed to discriminate and often backed their citizens with force. Latin Americans sought to turn European concepts of international law to their favor. The so-called Calvo Doctrine asserted that investors and creditors were entitled to no special rights just because they were foreigners. The Drago Doctrine boldly claimed that the forcible recovery of loans violated the principle of sovereign equality among nations. Neither the Europeans nor the United States recognized such heretical notions. "We do not guarantee any state against punishment if it misconducts itself," Roosevelt proclaimed.95

Venezuelan indebtedness provoked a crisis in 1902. Falling back on the Calvo and Drago doctrines, the feisty and defiant dictator Cipriano Castro defaulted on loans held by British creditors and insisted that claimants must seek justice through Venezuelan courts. The great powers informed the United States in late 1902 that they would collect the debts—by force if necessary. Roosevelt gave them a green light, although he did warn, in view of the melon carving in China, that punishment must not "take the form of the acquisition of territory by any non-American power." The Europeans demanded that Venezuela pay. When Castro refused, they seized the dilapidated vessels that constituted his "navy," blockaded Venezuela's ports, and even bombarded Puerto Cabello. Other claimants—including the United States—now lined up to profit from Anglo-German aggressiveness.⁹⁶

Roosevelt later claimed that by issuing a stern ultimatum he had forced the Germans to arbitrate, but resolution of the crisis appears to have been more complicated. Castro originally proposed U.S. arbitration, a shrewd ploy to exploit growing U.S. concern with European intervention. Roosevelt was increasingly troubled by German belligerence. The United States did have a strong naval force in the area, including Adm. George Dewey's flagship. But no evidence has ever been discovered of a presidential ultimatum. Recent research concludes, on the contrary, that although the Germans behaved with their usual heavy-handedness, in general they followed Britain's lead. The British, in turn, went out of their way to avoid undermining their relations with the United States.⁹⁷ Both nations accepted arbitration to extricate themselves from an untenable situation and stay on good terms with the United States.

The Venezuelan episode persuaded administration officials to take steps to head off future European interventions. Britain and Germany encouraged the United States to take the lead in policing its hemisphere. In May 1904—ironically, or perhaps appropriately, at a dinner celebrating the anniversary of Cuba's "independence"—Root delivered the statement that would become the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. "Any country whose people conduct themselves well can count on our hearty friendliness," he pledged. But "brutal wrongdoing, or an impotence which results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society, may finally require intervention by some civilized society, and in the Western Hemisphere the United States cannot ignore this duty."98 Roosevelt's corollary thus upheld the original intent of the Monroe Doctrine by reversing one of its key provisions and explicitly giving the United States the right of intervention. It cleared up any ambiguity as to who controlled the region.

The administration first applied the corollary in the Dominican Republic. Even before Root's May 1904 statement, that beleaguered Caribbean nation had begun to come apart. A massive influx of U.S. investments and the conversion to an export economy had hopelessly destabilized Dominican life. The nation was deeply in debt to European and U.S. creditors, the victim of an incredibly complex set of sordid deals between its own often unscrupulous leaders and foreign loan sharks. It could not pay. It verged on anarchy, the result of bitter conflicts among groups an American with typical disdain dismissed as "political brigands . . . little better than savages."⁹⁹ Dictator Carlos Morales flirted with saving himself from internal foes and external creditors by inviting a long-term U.S. protectorate. Dominican default on a stopgap debt arrangement and the Hague Court's award to Britain and Germany, seemingly rewarding their aggressiveness in Venezuela, threatened by late 1904 another European intervention in the Caribbean. Safely reelected, Roosevelt decided to act.¹⁰⁰

The United States developed for the Dominican Republic what has aptly been called a "neo-colonial substitute."¹⁰¹ Roosevelt had no interest in annexation or even the protectorate proposed by Morales. He sought less drastic means that would help stabilize the Dominican Republic economically and politically and give the United States some control without formal responsibility. With two warships providing a "powerful moral effect on the rash and ignorant elements," a U.S. diplomat with a naval officer at his side negotiated a treaty (first proposed by Morales) giving the United States control of the customs house and providing that 45 percent of the receipts should go to domestic needs, the rest to foreign creditors. When a now thoroughly contentious Senate refused to consider the treaty, Roosevelt used the threat of foreign intervention to proceed with an informal arrangement under an executive agreement. In 1907, the Senate approved a modified treaty.102

The Dominican experiment brought together diplomats, financial experts, and bankers in best Progressive Era fashion to employ "scientific" methods to promote stability and modernization. The U.S. government served as midwife, bringing in economist Hollander, who had already revamped Puerto Rico's finances, to scale back the Dominican debt, improve tax collection, and limit expenditures. Through government intercession, U.S. bankers offered Dominican bonds at high prices. To get the loan, the Dominican Republic accepted a receivership. The key was U.S. control of the customs houses, which would ensure regular payments to foreign creditors and the availability of funds for domestic needs. By removing the major prize and the means for competing factions to buy arms, it would also reduce the likelihood of revolution. Stabilization of the economy would encourage U.S. investment, which in turn would promote economic development.¹⁰³ The arrangement brought dramatic short-term improvement and became the model for de facto protectorates elsewhere in the Caribbean and Central America and even in Africa.

William Howard Taft and his secretary of state, Philander Knox, formalized TR's ad hoc arrangements into policy. The enormous Taft and the diminutive (5' 5" tall) Knox, a corporate lawyer with the sobriquet "Little Phil," made an odd couple in appearance. Taft had a very hard presidential act to follow. It did not help that the onetime friends became bitter enemies before he took office. A capable diplomatic troubleshooter, Taft, by his own admission, had an "indisposition to labor as hard as I might" and a "disposition to procrastinate."¹⁰⁴ He lacked Roosevelt's gift for public relations. Relations with Congress, already bad when Roosevelt left office, deteriorated sharply under his successor. Knox was cold, aloof, and impeccably dressed, a socialite and an avid golfer—he once affirmed that he would not let "anything so unimportant as China" interfere with his golf game. He worked short hours and took long Palm Beach vacations. While setting the broad contours of policy, he left the details to his subordinates, mainly his abrasive and short-tempered assistant secretary of state, Francis Huntington Wilson.105

Taft and Knox adopted the Dominican model to develop a policy called "dollar diplomacy," which they applied mainly in Central America. They sought to eliminate European political and economic influence and through U.S. advisers promote political stability, fiscal responsibility, and economic development in a strategically important area, the "substitution of dollars for bullets," in Wilson's words.¹⁰⁶ United States bankers would float loans to be used to pay off European creditors. The loans in turn would provide the leverage for U.S. experts to modernize the backward economies left over from Spanish rule by imposing the gold standard based on the dollar, updating the tax structure and improving tax collection, efficiently and fairly managing the customs houses, and reforming budgets and tariffs. Taft and Knox first sought to implement dollar diplomacy by treaty. When the Senate balked and some Central American countries said no, they turned to what has been called "colonialism by contract," agreements worked out between private U.S. interests and foreign governments under the watchful eye of the State Department.¹⁰⁷ Knox called the policy "benevolent supervision." One U.S. official insisted that the region must be made safe for investment and trade so that economic development could be "carried out without annoyance or molestation from the natives."¹⁰⁸

These ambitious efforts to implement dollar diplomacy in Central America produced few agreements, little stability, and numerous military interventions. Part of the problem was attitude. Knox and Wilson had little regard for Central Americans—"rotten little countries," the latter called them.¹⁰⁹ They provoked staunch nationalist opposition. Guatemala and Costa Rica flatly rejected U.S. proposals, the latter turning to Europe to refinance its debt. Honduras's finance minister took flight rather than sign an agreement; its congress, under death threat from nationalist mobs, refused to make the country an "administrative dependency of the United States."¹¹⁰ When diplomacy failed, private interests took over. "Sam the Banana Man" Zemurray, the legendary entrepreneur who had already begun converting Honduras into a "banana republic," helped finance a rebellion led by an African American soldier of fortune and supported by a U.S. warship. Upon taking power, a pro-U.S. government showed its gratitude by granting favors to Zemurray, who in turn negotiated a loan to help the new president pay off his debts.111 In the Dominican Republic itself, the much ballyhooed 1907 agreement broke down five years later amidst political upheaval. When rebels seized control of several customs houses, Taft sent in the Marines to put down the revolution, force out the president, and hold a new election. The U.S. military intervention of 1912 was the prelude to a much larger and longer intervention four years later.

Efforts to "stabilize" Nicaragua through dollar diplomacy also required U.S. military power. The independent and highly nationalist dictator José Santos Zelaya demonstrated his displeasure with the U.S. selection of Panama as the canal site by hinting that he might negotiate with a European nation. He also aspired to dominate Central America. When Zelaya threatened to invade El Salvador in 1909, the United States expressed strong disapproval, and U.S. investors encouraged a rebellion. When two Americans assisting the rebels were captured and executed, the United States broke relations and vowed to apprehend and prosecute Zelaya. The dictator fled to Mexico. After another change of government, the United States negotiated a Dominican-like treaty with Adolfo Díaz, formerly a bookkeeper with a U.S. mining company. By this time, the U.S. Senate was in full rebellion. The treaty never got out of the Foreign Relations Committee.

More deals and another revolution led to military intervention. Once it was clear the Senate would not approve the treaty, Taft, emulating TR, oversaw the negotiation of a private arrangement by which U.S. bankers gave the Díaz government cash in return for control of the National Bank of Nicaragua and 51 percent ownership of its railroads, initiatives that tied Nicaragua firmly to the U.S. economy and gave a huge boost to trade.¹¹² The United States sent 2,700 marines to put down a 1912 rebellion. It left a "legation guard" of several hundred marines to symbolize its presence. In a treaty negotiated just before Taft left office, it gave Nicaragua $3 billion for a naval base and canal rights. The treaty was not ratified until 1916.

The Taft administration also tried dollar diplomacy in Liberia. By 1908, this West African nation founded in the nineteenth century by colonization societies and freed slaves was deeply in debt to British creditors, torn by internal rebellion, and embroiled in border disputes with neighboring British and French colonies. A U.S. commission warned that failure to solve Liberia's problems could result in its being colonized by Europeans and "speedily disappear[ing] from the map." It recommended use of the Dominican model with a U.S. Army officer assuming responsibility for building a military force to protect its frontiers. Taft approved the proposal to help America's "ward." A loan was arranged and a warship sent to contain the rebellion. When Congress blocked the Nicaraguan treaty, the administration worked out a private contract for Liberia under State Department supervision. The arrangement did not succeed. The U.S. receiver general and the Frontier Force were "unpopular and inept." The loss of trade from World War I plunged Liberia into deeper economic doldrums.113

In applying dollar diplomacy in East Asia, the Taft administration broke sharply with its predecessor. Roosevelt had little sympathy for China and no use for the Open Door policy. His major concern was protecting a vulnerable Philippines against Japan. Egged on by Willard Straight, a former consul general at Mukden and staunch partisan of China, Taft and Knox came to see China and especially Manchuria as a ripe field for U.S. trade and investment and an independent and friendly China as important to the United States. Deeply suspicious of Japan—"a Jap is first of all a Jap," Taft once proclaimed, "and would be glad to aggrandize himself at the expense of anybody"—they sought to use private U.S. capital to thwart Japanese expansion and bolster the independence of China.¹¹⁴ They found eager accomplices in Beijing and among Chinese officials in Manchuria who saw the United States as a useful counterweight against Russia and Japan.

A bold move to promote American investments in Chinese railroads proved counterproductive. United States officials correctly recognized that control of the railroads was the key to political and economic power. Taft personally interceded with the Chinese to secure for the United States an equal share of an international loan to fund the construction of a railroad in southern China. Chinese officials went along but refused to push other nations to agree. The powers eventually accepted U.S. participation, but the arrangement was never completed. At about the same time, the embattled Chinese governor general of Manchuria, with the support of Beijing, devised a plan to secure U.S. funding for a trans-Manchurian railroad to counter the growing power of Russia and Japan. Knox eagerly agreed and took the scheme a giant step further by proposing the internationalization of all railroads in Manchuria, a quite unprecedented venture and an obvious attempt to check Japanese influence.115 As naive as it was ambitious, the scheme totally misfired. Hoping to divide Russia and Japan, Knox and Taft drove them together. In a July 1910 pact, they divided Manchuria into spheres of influence and agreed to cooperate to maintain the status quo. Knox's scheme depended on support from the other powers, but Britain refused to offend its new Asian ally, Japan, and France would not antagonize its ally Russia.

Undaunted, the dollar diplomats launched one last effort in East Asia. Claiming it their "moral duty" to help China, Knox finally persuaded hardheaded U.S. bankers to put up $2 million as part of an international consortium to promote economic development. He then elbowed his way into the consortium. Before the deal was consummated, revolution broke out in China. The new Chinese government sought better terms. Wary of the revolution, the great powers and indeed the United States delayed recognition for months. U.S. bankers left out of the consortium screamed in protest. By the time the deal was finally concluded in early 1913, the Taft administration was on its way out.¹¹⁶

FILLED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS, Americans took a much more active role in the world after 1901. Even in the implementation of colonial policies, they saw themselves charting a new course. Theodore Roosevelt embodied the American spirit of his era. He served in a time of peace when the United States was not threatened and there was no major crisis. He exemplified the best and worst of his country's tradition. Recognizing that the nation's new position brought responsibilities as well as benefits and that international involvement served its interests, Roosevelt took unprecedented initiatives, in the process demonstrating the president's capacity to be a world leader. He began to modernize the instruments of U.S. power. He recognized that the combination of "practical efficiency" and idealism was both necessary and rare.¹¹⁷ His practical idealism helped end a war in East Asia and prevent war in Europe, each of which served U.S. needs. Recognizing limited U.S. interests in China and Korea and the vulnerability of the Philippines and even Hawaii, he was the consummate pragmatist in East Asia, refusing to take on commitments he could not uphold.

In Central America and the Caribbean, on the other hand, Roosevelt and Taft displayed the narrowness of vision and disdain for other peoples that had afflicted U.S. foreign policy from the birth of the republic. To be sure, Roosevelt launched what his predecessors had long dreamed of, the construction of an isthmian canal, by any standard a huge achievement. And some measure of U.S. influence in the region was inevitable. But the arrogant way he dealt with Colombia and its offspring Panama and the heavy-handed interventions under the Roosevelt Corollary and dollar diplomacy changed forever the way the United States was viewed in its own hemisphere. As implemented by Roosevelt and Taft, "benevolent supervision" was not benevolent for those supervised. The attempt to impose American ideas, institutions, and values upon different cultures was arrogant and offensive—and did not work. Rampant U.S. economic intervention destabilized a region where Americans professedly sought order. The almost reflexive military interventions further damaged U.S. long-term interests and left an enduring and understandable legacy of suspicion among Latin Americans of the "Colossus of the North." "A wealthy country," Latin poet Rubén Darío put it, "joining the cult of Mammon to the cult of Hercules; while Liberty, lighting the path to easy conquest, raises her torch in New York."118

Revolutions in China, Mexico, and Russia and the outbreak of war in Europe would pose even sterner challenges for Woodrow Wilson and the foreign policy of the new world power.