Thomas D. Schoonover - Uncle Sams War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization

Uncle Sams

Publication of this volume was made possible in part
by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright 2003 by The University Press of Kentucky

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serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre
College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University,
The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
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Morehead State University, Murray State University,
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Frontispiece: A Fair Field and No Favor. Uncle Sam restrains
aggressive, militaristic European treatment of China in order to
promote an open door to commercial and investment opportunity
(China holds a train). (Harpers Weekly, November 18, 1899)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Schoonover, Thomas David, 1936
Uncle Sams War of 1898 and the origins of globalization /
Thomas Schoonover ; foreword by Walter LaFeber

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8131-2282-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Spanish-American War, 1898. 2. United StatesTerritorial
expansion. 3. World politics19th century. 4. Globalization
Political aspectsUnited States. I. Title.

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting
the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dedicated to my son, Paco, who died on 23 July 2000.

He knew about this project.

He read an article containing many of its themes,
and we discussed the project.

My heart and soul are heavy and sad
because he will not be able to read the final form.

Inside front cover: Gulf-Caribbean Basin

Inside back cover: Pacific Ocean and East Asia

In 1904, Halford Mackinder arose to present a paper before the Royal Geographical Society in London. Extraordinarily learned, lengthy, and dry, the paper turned out to be one of those few documents that helped unlock the dynamics of twentieth- and twenty-first-century international relations. The Geographical Pivot of History, as Mackinder immodestly but accurately titled his paper, argued that Central Asia held the key to the control of global events. Whoever held that region, stretching roughly from the oil-rich Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to western China, would be able to control the entire Eurasian landmass, he concluded. It was thus necessary for British interests, Mackinder warned, to ensure that Russia could never consolidate a hold on that region. Later, during World War II, Soviet, British, and U.S. policy aimed to deny this region to Hitlers forces, an objective the Russians barely but historically achieved in 194142, thereby helping to fix the course of the Nazis destruction. Between 1999 and 2003, the U.S. superpower for the first time established military bases in Central Asia so it could secure an area that, in Washingtons eyes, continued to be a pivot of world affairs.

Thomas Schoonovers book redefines Mackinders epochal approach by placing it in a different, but equally important, framework of historical movement. The American scholar differs from his British counterpart by locating the pivot of history not in Europe but in the Caribbean-Central American region that for over four centuries linked European and then U.S. expansionism to the quest for control of Asia, especially Asian marketsthe chief theatre of events in the worlds great hereafter, as Asia was termed by William Seward, Lincolns secretary of state and one of American historys more accurate prophets. To rephrase, while Mackinder saw historys pivot as land-based, Schoonover emphasizes that the key to centuries of European and now U.S. power can be found in the control of the sea, especially the Panamanian route between two great oceans.

With its sweep and extraordinary research, Schoonovers argument brings together succinct stories of European and then U.S. expansionism, explains why the United States became an overseas imperialist power in the 1890s, demonstrates how it and other imperialist nations viewed and fought over the Caribbean-Central American region, then traces the effects of this imperial competition on the evolution of not only Central America, but the vast Pacific Ocean-East Asian area. By using the Caribbean-Central American region in this way, this book presents a fresh, highly important perspective on the Wests expansionism and its several centuries of effects on Sewards chief theatre of events. The bookends of this story, Schoonover neatly suggests, are Christopher Columbus and Mao Zedong.

Schoonovers is a perspective that, while focusing on the critical question of how the United States made the historic leap in the 1890s to become a great power, moves beyond the American scene to examine the dynamics of Western Europe, Central America, and East Asia. Schoonover is superbly (it is tempting to say uniquely) qualified to tell this story. For nearly forty years he has exploited diplomatic and other archival materials in Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, and Central America, as well in the United States. He has mastered the West European as well as the American secondary literature. His own books and articles on how, and why, Europeans and Americans competed in the Western Hemisphere have been critical in shaping the perspectives from which scholars and journalists have viewed that centuries-long imperial competition and its effects on the global arena.

Trans-national and trans-cultural histories are now popular approaches, especially among some historians who understand much about culture but little about either power or the archives of the most powerful nations. Schoonover not only utilizes those archives, and he not only appreciates the importance of an approach that takes in the many important players, but he knows that the events that climaxed in the 1890s and whose results shaped the next century have to focus especially on dominant U.S. power. As Henry Adams once phrased it, the central question of 1901, as in 1801, was how, and whether, Washington (that is, the government representing the American peoples interests) could control New York City (that is, the hub of U.S. economic power). Schoonover understands what Adams was saying, and his analysis is as important for the early twenty-first century as it is for the late nineteenth. It is especially worth reflection when he notes some of the components of this U.S. power, not least its incredible technology and its often destructive religious-missionary motivations.