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In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.
In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul.
In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.
- Sales Rank: #658084 in Books
- Published on: 2009-11-24
- Released on: 2009-11-24
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.50" h x 1.55" w x 6.25" l, 1.53 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 387 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780316008952
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
From Publishers Weekly
Theodore Roosevelt steers America onto the shoals of imperialism in this stridently disapproving study of early 20th-century U.S. policy in Asia. Bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley traces a 1905 voyage to Asia by Roosevelt's emissary William Howard Taft, who negotiated a secret agreement in which America and Japan recognized each other's conquests of the Philippines and Korea. (Roosevelt's flamboyant, pistol-packing daughter Alice went along to generate publicity, and Bradley highlights her antics.) Each port of call prompts a case study of American misdeeds: the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines; the takeover of Hawaii by American sugar barons; Roosevelt's betrayal of promises to protect Korea, which greenlighted Japanese expansionism and thus makes him responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt's policies and paradoxical embrace of the Japanese as Honorary Aryans. Bradley's critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced. He doesn't explain how Roosevelt could have evicted the Japanese from Korea, and insinuates that the Japanese imperial project was the brainstorm of American advisers. Ironically, his view of Asian history, like Roosevelt's, denies agency to the Asians themselves. Photos, maps. One-day laydown.(Nov. 24)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Bradley’s first books, Flags of Our Fathers (2000) and Flyboys (2003), were sensationally popular World War II combat stories. His new one, about U.S.-Japanese diplomacy in 1905, represents a departure. Asserting a causal connection between diplomatic understandings reached then and war 36 years later, Bradley dramatizes his case with a delegation Theodore Roosevelt dispatched to Japan in the summer of 1905. Led by Secretary of War William Taft and ornamented by the president’s quotable daughter Alice, it sailed while TR hosted the peace conference between victorious Japan and defeated Russia. As he recounts the itinerary of Taft’s cruise, Bradley discusses attitudes of social Darwinism and white superiority that were then prevalent and expressed by TR and Taft. They modified their instincts, Bradley argues, in dealing with nonwhite Japan, and secretly conceded it possession of Korea. This is what Bradley asserts was a prerequisite to Pearl Harbor in 1941, a dubious thesis when the tensions of the 1930s stemmed from general Japanese aggressiveness, not its control of Korea per se. Bradley does fine on 1905 but falters when predicting the future. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
TERRIFIC PRAISE FOR THE IMPERIAL CRUISE:
"James Bradley's incendiary new book...is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency...In Flags of Our Fathers he wrote about how his father helped plant the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. In The Imperial Cruise he asks why American servicemen like his father had to be fighting in the Pacific at all."―Janet Maslin, New York Times
"A provocative study...What is fascinating about Bradley's reconstruction of a largely neglected aspect of Roosevelt's legacy is the impact that his racial theories and his obsession with personal and national virility had on his diplomacy. Engrossing and revelatory, The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best."―Ronald Steel, New York Times Book Review
"[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions."―Gene santoro, American History
"For readers under the impression that history is the story of good guys and bad guys, and that Americans are always the former, this book could be useful medicine."―Rick Hampson, USA Today
"A page-turner with solidly attributed eye-opening passages."―Mike Householder, Associated Press
"Engaging...this is a book to admire and, it must be said, to enjoy."―David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe
Most helpful customer reviews
240 of 283 people found the following review helpful.
U.S.-Japan relations, Baron Kaneko and President Roosevelt
By Ian Ruxton
I downloaded the Kindle edition of this book and right away read Chapter 8 on Theodore Roosevelt's flattering and self-interested secret proposal to the Japanese Government of a 'Japanese Monroe Doctrine' for Asia, in essence a private invitation to play the imperialist game which, as Baron Kaneko later lamented in a paper written in 1932, Roosevelt never admitted making or endorsed and took to his grave in 1919, despite promising to Kaneko in a farewell lunch at Sagamore Hill on September 10, 1905 that he would publicly announce it after he left office.
Other reviewers have pointed out that there is not much about the cruise undertaken by W.H. Taft and Alice Roosevelt in this book, and I feel it is mainly a convenient device to tell a tale which is really expressed in the sub-title 'A Secret History of Empire and War.' There are in fact two main narrative threads here: a rather gruesome and to many readers upsetting one about American imperialist ambitions and 'westering' colonization of the Pacific (Hawaii) and East Asia (the Philippines), and another to me more interesting one about U.S.-Japan relations. This review will focus on the latter.
James Bradley has done an excellent and well-researched job of presenting the history in detail of the exchanges between Kaneko and Roosevelt, though he seems unaware, or at least does not mention, that Kentaro Kaneko (1853-1942) had already met Theodore Roosevelt before 1904 through an introduction arranged by Harvard-educated William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), the Bostonian collector of Japanese art. They first met in 1890 when Roosevelt was Head of the Civil Service Commission and Kaneko was returning to Japan via the U.S. after studying Western parliamentary systems in Europe, and the two Harvard men maintained an occasional correspondence - letters and Christmas greetings - thereafter. (See my translation published recently of Masayoshi Matsumura's Baron Kaneko and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05): A Study in the Public Diplomacy of Japan for further details.)
The idea of a 'Japanese Monroe Doctrine' influenced the Japanese Government leaders and encouraged them to follow America's example as their 'sensei' (teacher), yet it was surely not proposed for Japan's benefit, but for that of the United States. It made perfect sense at the time for Roosevelt to persuade Japan to keep the European powers (including 'Slavic' Russia) at bay and check their expansion into East Asia, while assuring the 'Open Door' in China for American commerce. And Japan was, of course, warned in clear language to stay away from the Philippines, America's largest colony. (Kaneko responded that Japan had her hands full with Taiwan, acquired in 1895 from China, and had no designs on the Philippines.) As Roosevelt wrote privately to his son in February 1904, Japan was "playing our game" and the Russo-Japanese War was in essence from his viewpoint a war by proxy.
It is thus quite ironic that Japan's victory over Russia which was widely celebrated in the U.S. as an underdog's triumph marked the high point in U.S.-Japan relations, and from that time they worsened steadily until World War II, having been generally good in the 50 years from Commodore Perry's arrival to open Japan in 1853. Roosevelt's clever and (for his purposes) useful idea of a 'Japanese Monroe doctrine' - first suggested to the Japanese by U.S. diplomat General Charles Le Gendre (1830-99) in the 1870s according to Bradley - was one lesson too many for the willing pupil Japan. The concept tragically and disastrously morphed over time into the uncontrollable juggernaut of Japanese militarism, beginning with the weak buffer state of Korea being abandoned to its fate by T.R. - one of which he apparently approved - and made a Japanese protectorate in late 1905, and from 1910 a full colony (see Ch. 12, 'Sellout in Seoul'). In effect the inventive mind of the President inadvertently sanctioned the creation of a Frankenstein which, as Mr. Bradley indicates, others had to confront and defeat subsequently. (But the line of causation is too long and thin to blame Roosevelt directly for Pearl Harbor, though I am not convinced the author is actually doing so. Was the Pacific War 1941-45 foreseeable back in 1905? Surely not!)
Theodore Roosevelt's publicly proclaimed admiration for Bushido, jujitsu and other aspects of Japanese culture as promoted by Kaneko, not to mention the superb training and remarkable courage of the army and navy, was doubtless in and of itself genuine, but it surely also had the useful result of helping to massage the egos of his Japanese guests, especially the intermediary Baron Kaneko. Interestingly, he wanted the Japanese to win, but not too overwhelmingly, and on August 23, 1905 he wrote confidentially to Kaneko suggesting that Japan should give up any claims to an indemnity in the forthcoming peace conference. When Japan did so and the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth brokered by Roosevelt were made public there were serious riots by a discontented and disappointed populace in Tokyo (80% of police boxes and two churches destroyed) and throughout Japan. The souring of friendly U.S.-Japan relations surely began at that point. (How many Japanese would have rejoiced at the subsequent award to Roosevelt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906?)
Roosevelt meanwhile stressed Japan's many positive gains to Kaneko (withdrawal of Russian troops from Manchuria, a lease of the Liaodong peninsula, control of the Southern Manchurian railway, Korea and half of Sakhalin), but also probably shrugged his shoulders and blamed the Japanese leaders for raising the expectations of the Japanese people too high in the case of the indemnity. He may have had a point, since - as Sir Ernest Satow observed from Peking - the Japanese army had not captured enemy territory of sufficient importance (e.g. Vladivostok) which was the usual basis for an indemnity. However, Sergei Witte the chief Russian negotiator outwitted Komura Jutaro at Portsmouth by asking publicly the hypothetical question "If we let you have the whole of Sakhalin, will you still demand an indemnity?" To this Komura replied that Japan would under no circumstances give up the indemnity, which made him seem intransigent in the eyes of the American media. (Thus for Japan, military victory was followed by diplomatic defeat as ten years previously in the Triple Intervention of April 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War, and this only further stoked Japanese resentment and created a time bomb with a long fuse.)
By the way, I should have preferred the author to use "Japanese" rather than the abbreviation "Jap", when using his own - or Roosevelt's - words outside quotations, likewise "Theodore" rather than "Teddy" which seems over-familiar for a historian, albeit an amateur one. The author's frequent use of the term "Aryan" also carries unfortunate and inescapable Nazi resonances, but 100 and more years ago ideas of 'Yellow Peril' originating in Europe were dominant and Caucasians generally feared Asian immigration, especially to California. (There is indeed much ugly and open racism in the early part of the book in quotations and cartoons, and also some stomach-turning accounts of massacres and torture in the Philippines. This inevitably will turn off some readers.) However, these are minor stylistic points and the book is generally an excellent and informative read!
Ian Ruxton, author of 'The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929), a Scholar-Diplomat in East Asia'
58 of 69 people found the following review helpful.
History as harangue
By Bif Bechenschnifter
As other reviewers have pointed out, Bradley relies heavily on secondary sources for his history. One of the sources he quotes liberally is Morris' excellent biography of the young Roosevelt, "The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt." Early in "The Imperial Cruise", Bradley says, "The author Edmund Morris thought the Nibelunglied so central to Teddy's life that he used phrases from it as aphorisms to begin each chapter of his first Roosevelt biography." This is not true (each chapter begins with a stanza from Longfellow's "The Saga of King Olaf"), and this misrepresentation is characteristic, I think, of a work that is produced with a flimsy agenda. Bradley stretches, paraphrases, and twists to serve this agenda, and decontextualizes history to provide a narrow enough focus to support his bias. There are entertaining moments in the book, but Bradley is no historian.
77 of 93 people found the following review helpful.
Some good hits on Teddy and the politics of the day, but a lot of disappointing "history" and bias
By Brian W. Hayes
Mr. Bradley's book is provocative, and he certainly scores some legitimate hits on the appalling race politics of Roosevelt's time. But I have two major problems with this book:
1) I am deeply disappointed by the bias evident in the "factual" underpinnings of his thesis; Bradley clearly is massaging the facts to fit his simplistic argument in the same way that a 19th century Social Darwinist would. Two concrete examples: during his brief overview of the Mexican War, Bradley refers to the Neuces River as the "internationally recognized border", portraying the US presence there as illegal. The reality is significantly more complicated. Following the Battle of San Jacinto, the Mexican president had signed the "treaty" of Velasco (subsequently renounced by Mexico) recognizing the Rio Grande as the border. No other documents ever concluded the Texas Revolution, so it is safe to say that the border situation was ambiguous; if there was any "recognized" border from 1836 to 1846, it was the Rio Grande. Moreover, there certainly was no United Nations corollary in 1836 to provide the imprinatur of "international recognition" - I would be interested to see any documents from European or Asian legations backing up Bradley's claim.
Second, during his section on Japan, Bradley repeatedly refers to the "closed" period of Tokugawa Japan as a benevolent time where "the samurai class set down their swords and became teachers", where culture flourished and Japan prospered. Again, the reality is significantly more complicated. The Tokugawa shogunate and samurai class acted as feudal landlords over the mass of peasants in a manner that would be familiar to an oppressive 14th century French magnate, and most historians would portray the shogunate after about 1700 as one of social, cultural and economic stagnation. I doubt very much that Bradley would portray a European feudal system in the same rosy light; in fact, his view on Japan reminds me of the dominant late 19th century American portrayal (Ulrich Phillips and others) of the slave condition as one of a "benevolent paternalism", where the master taught and cared for his charges.
2) Bradley's core argument is essentially that "Teddy Roosevelt's actions caused the Second World War in the Pacific and led to the death of 100,000 American servicemen". My great-uncle died on the Philippines, so I suppose I should be outraged by this thesis... but it is completely unpersuasive.
I find it odd that of all the actors in the last century, Teddy seemingly was the only one who possessed free will. In Bradley's vision of the world, history unfolds in a robotic, predetermined fashion except for Roosevelt, who alone possessed the ability to change history (much like a time traveler in any number of insipid science fiction stories).
Why not blame John Bunyan and Pilgrim's Progress for helping affect the American belief system several hundred years before Teddy, or Teddy's dad for raising him steeped in the racial politics of the day, or the Japanese leaders who expanded their empire in the First World War, or finally the cabal of leaders who actually decided to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941? They had no less free will than Teddy, and it is a ridiculous argument to reach back to 1905 and pin the blame on one flawed U.S. president.
These two flaws cast a black pall over Bradley's work, and I fear they mortally wounded his argument. There certainly is plenty of room for criticism of U.S. policies at the turn of the century, but I would hope that other books on the subject be better researched and less of a polemic.
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