Roosevelt, Twain and the Birth of Empire
Stephen Kinzer argues in “The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire” (Henry Holt, 2016) that the debate surrounding the decision to go to war with Spain in 1898, and then the ratification of the peace treaty that ended the conflict, altered the course of world affairs. It was “the farthest-reaching debate in our history. It was arguably even more momentous than the debate over slavery, because its outcome affected many countries, not just one.”
The account that follows is primarily the story of U.S. politics. Kinzer takes the story forward until 1902, when the Philippine War came to an end. During this time period, Theodore Roosevelt constantly pushed what he called the “large policy.” The underlying premise of this book is that 1898 sets the United States on the path that will take it into its misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan a hundred years later. Needless to say, Roosevelt is more villain than hero in this rendering.
There are many strengths in this book. Kinzer is an experienced writer. He does an exceptionally good job of developing the views of the anti-imperialists – the losers in this debate. From his account, they had the stronger argument. They also had a strong political position. The U.S. Senate was set to reject the Treaty of Paris until William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic nominee for President in both 1896 and 1900, made an ill-considered pivot.
And yet there are several shortcomings. Kinzer has a difficult time in developing the other side of the debate, and the book is a one-sided diplomatic history. There is no effort to develop the Spanish perspective. Kinzer does include combat operations in his account, but primarily ground power. The discussion of the naval battles that broke Spanish power are token. The Battle of Manila Bay is discussed in one paragraph.
The title of this work is also misleading. While much of the coverage focuses on the activities of Roosevelt, he was not the only one pushing a new foreign policy. Kinzer makes it clear that Roosevelt was working closely with his friend Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts to bring about a confrontation with Spain. They were assisted in this effort by William Randolph Hearst, the innovative newspaper publisher, who used his chain of papers to call for war.
There was another group opposing them. In many ways, it was a more distinguished group. Mark Twain was one of them, and he was a major celebrity of the day. Other anti-imperialists included two former presidents of the United States, a former secretary of state, the chief executive officer of U.S. Steel and a number of sitting United States senators. The biggest workhorse in opposition to imperialism in Kinzer’s study is Carl Schurz, a former U.S. senator and secretary of the interior. To be honest, Twain barely figures in this work. He is mentioned on only 30 of 306 pages, but he is the anti-imperialist best remembered these days. Civil War buffs, though, know Schurz as a general who was at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Chattanooga.
Hearst, on the other hand, switches sides. Kinzer suggests it was a combination of envy of Roosevelt’s growing stature and partisan ambition. A Democrat, Hearst wanted to be Jennings’ running mate in 1900. Maybe, but it also could have been because foreign affairs was a money-losing topic for his media corporation, as several of his biographers have maintained.
While the American public has basically forgotten the Spanish-American War and the Philippine War, historians have not. Academics have spent almost a century exploring various aspects of this period and have shot down some of the sillier ideas: newspapers did not manipulate the nation into war. Newspapers reflected popular opinion of the day, and the news corporations did not compel the U.S. government to execute a media-formulated foreign policy. President William McKinley was hardly a weak and indecisive leader pushed into a conflict. A number of diaries kept by members of his staff and cabinet make it clear that he was in charge of his administration. He tried to pursue policies to avoid war with Spain, which failed for a variety of reasons. The absence of the Spanish perspective is key in this regard. McKinley changed his policies when it was clear his preferred options were not working.
Theodore Roosevelt did not order the U.S. Navy into war footing on his own. Roosevelt is a colorful and energetic character to be sure, but the sound and fury of his personality should not blind us to his relative influence. In 1898 he was a sub-cabinet officer, and then a lieutenant colonel, and then a colonel in a combat unit. He was hardly in a position to change the destiny of the nation. That would come later. And big business did not push this war on the nation either. In 1936, historian Julius Pratt argued that the business community was opposed to the war because it was not in the interests of its bottom line. No one has effectively refuted that argument in the years since. Kinzer tries to get around it: “Businessmen as a class were at first reluctant to join the rush to war, but by midsummer many had been won over.” This is one of the few occasions when Kinzer takes on an argument that runs counter to his own. In most cases, though, he simply ignores the views of historians who appear in his bibliography.
Kinzer ends with a chapter that documents the sorry history of U.S. interventions since 1898, making his covert thesis overt. There are a lot of problems with this argument. Not all interventions are the same. Much of what the United States is doing today—for better or worse—is much different and done for different reasons than what was done in 1898-1902. To be blunt, the architecture of world affairs has changed a lot since 1898. But why let that fact get in the way of a good story.
