Shadowing British Imperialism: Origins of the U.S. Open Door Policy, 1890-1899
by
William T. Mountz, B.A.
A Thesis
In
HISTORY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved
Dr. Justin Hart
Dr. Catherine Miller
John Borrelli
Dean of the Graduate School
August, 2007
Copyright 2007, William T. Mountz
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I find it necessary to list several acknowledgements to people who offered me
help, guided me through, and gave me constant support while writing my thesis. But first,
I find it necessary to list several acknowledgements to those who helped place me on the
path to graduate school in the first place. I wish to thank the History Department at
Angelo State University and the West Texas Collection for funding and preparation as an
undergraduate. While attending Anglo State University three professors offered guidance
and support: Dr. Shirley Eoff, Dr. Daniel Haworth, and Dr. John Wheeler.
Work on my thesis remained unfettered with financial worries due to the funding
the History Department at Texas Tech University awarded me. In particular, Dr.
Gretchen Adams gave me a chance amongst many fine applicants to earn a sufficient
income. While at Texas Tech I often found the library difficult to navigate. Tom Rohrig,
librarian of government documents, not only pointed me in the right direction, but often
delivered exactly what I sought. Furthermore, when writing proved difficult, I found
myself surrounded with great colleagues that eased the writing process in the History
Department at Texas Tech. Though there are too many to list individually, I owe great
thanks to my colleague Kristin Henze. Kristin and I developed a friendship forged from
having the same two advisers.
Both of my advisers—Dr. Justin Hart and Dr. Catherine Miller—guided me
through the process of writing a thesis. They taught me that a thesis was a process more
than a product. Both gave me friendship but at the same time were able to test my ideas.
Dr. Hart seemed to always hand me the right book at the right time. Dr. Miller pushed my
ability to read the subtext within primary documents. Dr. Hart taught me much about
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Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
writing. He improved my prose, syntax, and diction. Dr. Miller taught me how to ask
critical questions, and how to let theory guide questioning. Both challenged me, both
frustrated me, but most importantly, both helped me grow as a historian. I am very
thankful for all their hard work. I know they cared about me and my thesis.
Lastly, I need to thank the group of people who matter most to me. They offered
support in ways that only they can. In truth, they know me better than I know myself—
my family. Thank you Murrays for surrounding me with your youth, and always giving
me support. Thank you mom and dad for helping fund, move, and providing vacations
from my work. Both of you have always believed in me, that alone has given me much
courage to pursue my dreams. And most importantly, thank you Betty. As a fiancée and
wife, you have given me support through love and encouragement. I hope I have made all
of you proud.
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Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................. ii
I. INTRODUCTION.....................................................................................................1
II. OPENING THE FREE TRADE DEBATE, 1890-1894 ...........................................22
Introduction ........................................................................................................22
Part I: Free Trade ...............................................................................................25
Free Trade Advocates’ American Century ............................................................... 25
Free Trade Advocates’ Solutions for Economic Problems ....................................... 30
Free Trade Advocates Address Labor Problems .................................................... 33
Capital ...................................................................................................................... 34
Free Trade Advocates’ Moral and Scientific Justifications ....................................... 36
Free Trade Advocates’ Moral Justifications ............................................................. 37
Free Trade Advocates’ Scientific Justifications ........................................................ 41
Part II: Anti-Militarism ......................................................................................42
A Merchant Marine ................................................................................................... 44
Free Trade Advocates’ Anti-Militarism ..................................................................... 46
Free Trade Advocates’ Critique of Mahan ............................................................... 52
Part III: U.S. Reactions to Free Trade Advocates ..............................................56
Distrust of Great Britain ............................................................................................ 56
Summation .........................................................................................................69
III. THE VENEZUELAN CRISIS, 1895-1896 ...........................................................71
Introduction ........................................................................................................71
The Venezuelan Crisis .......................................................................................72
The Monroe Doctrine .........................................................................................81
Free Trade Advocates’ Opposition to War ........................................................84
Apologetic for England ......................................................................................87
The “Barbarian Society” ....................................................................................90
Summation .......................................................................................................102
IV. CONCLUDING THE FREE TRADE DEBATES, 1897-1899 ...............................104
Introduction ......................................................................................................104
A Brief History of Events Between 1897 and 1899 ........................................105
Establishing Relations with Great Britain through
Diplomacy, Race, and Class ....................................................................113
Changing the United States’ Diplomacy..........................................................117
Improved Relations with Great Britain through Race .....................................124
Improved Relations with Great Britain through Class .....................................128
Placing Boundaries on the Comparisons Between Great Britain
and the United States ...............................................................................131
American Free Trade Advocates as Anti-Imperialists .....................................138
Summation .......................................................................................................147
V. THE CONCLUSION ...........................................................................................152
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BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................................155
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Beginning in 1890, a series of free trade debates began in U.S. periodicals that
lasted until 1899. These free trade debates helped lead to the U.S. Open Door Policy.
Specifically, the free trade debates helped American imperialists to conceive obtaining
markets through new tactics. By 1899 the United States had become an empire abroad
through war. The war produced minimal casualties, but occupying the new colonies
proved costly. The United States sought new ideas about imperialism. Free trade
advocates provided answers. Interestingly enough, Great Britain influenced the free trade
debates. Early on, the debates literally took place between American protectionists and
British Liberals. Through most of the decade however, the debates took place between
American protectionists and imperialists against Americans championing British Liberal
ideas. As examined throughout the thesis, the debates revealed that the three groups
debating (protectionists, imperialists, and free trade advocates) often converged on
imperialist ideals rather than diverged. Stated otherwise, their tactics differed, but their
fundamental ideologies (racism, capitalism, and the desire for U.S. global domination)
remained the same.
This thesis examines free trade advocates’ articles in three different periods over
the decade: Beginning the Debates 1890-1894; The Venezuelan Crisis 1895-1896; and
Concluding the Debates 1897-1899. Each period provided evidence that ideas from Great
Britain influenced the free trade debates. Additionally, each period displayed different
themes. Between 1890 and 1894 free trade advocates introduced British Liberal ideology
to the United States. Between 1895 and 1896 the Venezuelan Crisis reinforced that free
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trade advocates in Great Britain and the United States worked together. The Venezuelan
Crisis also established divisions between free trade advocates, and affected how free
trade advocates would champion free trade in the future. Between 1897 and 1899 the free
trade debates presented dichotomous themes. Free trade advocates established
connections between Great Britain and the United States in order to persuade Americans
that free trade would work in the United States. At the same time, American free trade
advocates placed boundaries on the comparisons between the two nations. Thus, the
dichotomous themes produced the nationalized uniqueness found in the U.S. Open Door
Policy.
For evidence, I examined articles relating to free trade in U.S. and British
periodicals between 1890 and 1899.1 I chose the year 1890 because the Nineteenth
Century Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature started indexing from 1890 onward.2
Overall I examined about 100 articles, and then narrowed those down to about 56
different articles between 1890 and 1899. About half of the articles came from the years
1898 and 1899. The increase in articles for those two years reflects the amount of extra
rhetoric that the Spanish-American War induced from free trade advocates. Furthermore,
the increase also reflects the British articles I examined to obtain British opinion between
1897 and 1899 (Great Britain’s beginning departure from free trade). Besides these two
reasons, the increase in articles might have been a product of indexing in the Nineteenth
1
U.S. Periodicals: The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, The North American Review, The Arena, The
Century Magazine, and The Forum; British Periodicals: Review of Reviews, The Westminster Review, The
Spectator, Fortnightly Review, Contemporary Review, and The Nineteenth Century.
2
Nineteenth Century Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature (New York: H.W. Wilson Co.,
1890).
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Century Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature.3 Out of the approximate 56 articles
examined, there were at least 22 identified authors, and 13 unknown authors. I used 22
articles from E.L. Godkin. As editor of The Nation, Godkin was placed in a position to
contribute regularly to the free trade debate.4
U.S. periodicals displayed that the debate about free trade took place in the form
of a public forum. Free trade advocates presented British Liberal ideas to the United
States’ public (those who read the magazines).5 Over time, U.S. imperialists adopted
British Liberal ideas. U.S. imperialists implemented “free trade” ideology into the U.S.
Open Door Policy in part because of free trade advocates’ decade of contributions in U.S.
periodicals. Furthermore, the debates about free trade reveal the shift in U.S. foreign
policy as well as in the American mind over the decade.6 Many American policymakers
displayed great hostility towards free trade in 1890, yet only a decade later the U.S. Open
Door Policy was created. Examining U.S. periodicals reveals aspects about the American
mind in the late nineteenth century, and the shift that dealt with accepting the United
States as an empire. Often this time period is used to discuss what came to be, and the
identity of the time-period itself is lost. Identifying ideas in U.S. periodicals unanachronistically revealed aspects of the American mind in the Gilded Age. U.S.
3
Ibid.
4
I made note of Godkin’s dominance in contributions because it might affect my conclusions.
Nonetheless, I believe I have shown others shared and voiced Godkin’s ideas.
5
After reading Warren Kimball’s recently brief contribution to the Diplomatic History Journal, I
decided “public” needed clarification. See, Warren F. Kimball, “Fair Winds and Following Seas,”
Diplomatic History 31 (June 2007): 411.
6
The “American Mind,” as termed by Commager, generally refers to American elites and
policymakers. For more about the American Mind, see: Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind: An
Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880’s (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1952).
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periodicals did not just discuss American ideas. U.S. periodicals hosted a transatlantic
intellectual discussion between Great Britain and the United States. Examining the
transatlantic intellectual discussion revealed the British Liberal origins of the U.S. Open
Door Policy.
Examining periodicals during the Gilded Age provided the perfect outlet to
explore these questions. Media during the time period was changing. The media
increased through publications and circulation. Newspapers alone “rose from three
million to twenty four million” in circulation between 1870 and 1910.7 Before 1880,
magazines had relatively small circulations.8 But, particularly in the time examined
within and near this thesis, between 1890 and 1905, “magazine circulation tripled.”9 By
1905 “the top 20 magazines ha[d] an aggregate circulation of 5.5 million.”10
This media boom created more outlets for people to express themselves publicly.
The free trade debate beginning in 1890, exemplifies this. As a free trade advocate wrote,
men and women all over the world show a desire to place their opinions
before the public, and to explain their reasons for holding the views
which they desire to inculcate upon the minds of the public generally.
Loud discussion is prevalent, because the freedom of the press, together
with a general liking for information, renders the quick circulation of
personal convictions a comparatively easy process.11
7
Culture and Sports at the End of the 19th Century
<http://www.cs.unm.edu/~sergiy/amhistory/ch26.html> (26 June 2007) University of New Mexico History
Department.
8
Ibid.
9
Institutional History
<http://elibrary.unm.edu/oanm/NmU/nmu1%23mss148bc/nmu1%23mss148bc_m3.html> (26 June 2007),
University of New Mexico Center for Southwest Research.
10
Delivering the goods - magazine circulation - Celebrating 250 Years of Magazine Publishing,
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_n3_v20/ai_10461679>, (26 June 2007), Folio: The
Magazine for Magazine Management.
11
Lawrence Irwell, “Will Great Britain Return to Protection?,” The Westminster Review, October
1892, 349.
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The author said, “freedom of the press,” but just like the media today, it was a business.
About this time ad rates began to be linked with circulation figures and cover prices were
lowered on popular magazines.12 A better example of the business like tactics within the
media was amplified near 1898, with the dawning of the Spanish-American War, and the
yellow journalism battles between Joseph Pulitzer’s and William Randolph Hearst’s
newspapers. Nonetheless, print media at the time provided an unprecedented national
public forum. More leisure time also partly caused the increase in media. Irwell believed
that there was just, “a genuine increase of enthusiasm…to such reforms as affect the
well-being of the community at large” which caused “individuals [to] devote their time
more frequently and more heartily than they ever did before.”13 Perhaps so, but organized
labor’s emphasis on the 8-hour day certainly increased people’s opportunity to engage in
other activities.14
Examining periodicals from the 1890s also revealed how authors identified
themselves, or displayed the origins of the ideas and the political parties, clubs, and
leagues they belonged to. For example, many who opposed free trade advocates’ ideas,
protectionists and imperialists, came from the Republican Party. Protectionists, through
most of the 1890s, operated and organized themselves through the Republican Party.
Both Morrill and Lodge were important members of the Republican Party. Furthermore,
12
Delivering the goods - magazine circulation - Celebrating 250 Years of Magazine Publishing,
<http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m3065/is_n3_v20/ai_10461679>, (26 June 2007), Folio: The
Magazine for Magazine Management.
13
Lawrence Irwell, “Will Great Britain Return to Protection?,” 349.
14
Eight-hour day, < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day > (26 June 2007), Wikipedia.
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other Republicans, like William McKinley, supported high tariffs in congress. The
Republican Party in general favored high tariffs, and arguably always had since before
the Civil War. All this was displayed and reinforced in the periodicals examined.
Free trade advocates did not always operate through the United States’ party
structure. The Democratic Party had traditionally supported lower tariffs because of their
agricultural constituency. Nonetheless, most Democrats did not completely support free
trade ideology, even if they would have been more sympathetic to the ideas. Free trade
advocates organized themselves through leagues or clubs in Great Britain, and most were
members of the British Liberal Party between 1890 and 1899. In the United States free
trade advocates typically remained political independents, loosely associated with either
major party. In particular, free trade advocates usually identified themselves as exRepublican Party members, the “Mugwumps.”
Interestingly enough, the periodicals displayed how the two U.S. political parties
reacted to the free trade debates. Republicans, after championing protectionism for so
long, would be the party in power during the creation of the U.S. Open Door Policy.
Through most of the 1890s, the Republican Party distanced themselves from free trade
advocates. They supported the McKinley tariff (1891), and the Dingley Tariff (1897).
The Republican Party’s concern about free trade in the 1890s displays how free trade had
become a political issue. In 1890 free trade was politically undesired. By 1892 however,
while both parties held their national conventions for the next election, politicians more
openly discussed free trade.
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Protectionist George F. Hoar15 wrote an article titled, “Reasons for Republican
Control” in 1892 addressing Republicans stance on free trade.16 The article exemplified
Republicans’ need to address free trade, and clarify their protectionist position to their
constituency and other politicians. Hoar argued that Republicans should be elected
because they opposed free trade. (Republican control obviously did not occur. Grover
Cleveland was elected, the first Democratic president since the Civil War.) Nonetheless,
Hoar, writing on behalf of the Republicans, distanced Republicans from free trade
ideology and instead aligned with the McKinley tariff. Hoar wrote, the Republican Party
“stands by the McKinley bill in principle and in detail….it will offer to the business and
the manufacturing interests of the country four years of quiet…”17
15
George F. Hoar was a senator from Massachusetts He had been devoutly loyal to the Republican
party, and he would remain that way until 1898, when he would become what the historian Robert Beisner
labeled a fainthearted Mugwump. As Beisner noted, “He supported civil service reform, high tariffs,
international bimetallism, and civil rights legislation.” Furthermore, he had been a shining star in the
Republican Party due to his ability to avoid scandal that plagued some of his fellow party members in the
1870s and 1880s. Hoar is important for other reasons as well. He would later be involved in the antiimperialist movement in 1898. Hoar did not support McKinley’s war of expansion. He fell out with the
Republican Party over the issue. Nonetheless, he held onto many other Republican policies, like
protectionism. Beisner described Hoar as a complicated individual. Many free trade advocates were antiimperialists and Democrats or Mugwumps. Hoar was neither, yet he could not support U.S. expansionism.
Hoar’s national intellectualism and historically patriotic ancestry partly explain his decisions. Hoar
was a Massachusetts elite. “His…ancestors included a president of Harvard, two great-grandfathers, a
grandfather, and three great-uncles who fought at Concord Bridge, and another grandfather, Roger
Sherman of Connecticut, who signed the Declaration of Independence.” I suspect his interests in U.S.
colonial history as well as history in general helped him formulate his “exceptionalist” understanding of the
United States and its republican virtues. Hoar’s belief in the United States’ republican virtues caused his
limited separation from the Republican Party in 1898. To him, a democratic republic could not be an
empire. Cited From: Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New
York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), 140.
16
George F. Hoar, “Reasons for Republican Control,” The Forum, 1892.
17
Ibid., 124.
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Besides championing Republican policy, Hoar criticized the Democratic Party’s
policy, and their presidential nominee Cleveland, by “revealing” Democrats’ free trade
advocacy. Hoar did this by stating what the Republican Party would not do.
I confidently predict that it will not commit itself by any declaration to
which it can be held in regard to any single practical measure. It will
not say to Alabama and Tennessee and West Virginia, ‘We are for free
iron.’ It is quite doubtful whether it will even venture to say again to
Ohio, ‘We are for free wool.’ Nor will it say to the textile
manufacturers of New England, ‘We are for free woolens.’18
Hoar based his criticisms on Cleveland’s previous Latin American reciprocal trade
agreements. Furthermore, Hoar believed the Democrats would avoid addressing free
trade issues by denouncing monopolies.19
Hoar’s comments revealed some facts about free trade in the United States. Some
Democratic leaders supported free trade. Articles examined in the second chapter
revealed Cleveland’s rhetoric and ideology in 1889 matched Gladstone’s liberal ideology.
Democrats’ connection, especially Cleveland, with free trade ideology is only reinforced
when one examines British support for Cleveland’s reelection in 1888.20 This short story
provides an example of how periodicals can reveal different aspects about free trade
ideology and how it ultimately became adopted into United States’ foreign policy.
Today, the term “free trade,” as defined by The Penguin Dictionary of Economics
means, “The condition in which the free flow of goods and services in international
18
Ibid., 123.
19
Ibid.
20
Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895-1914 (New
York: Atheneum, 1968), 4.
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exchange is neither restricted nor encouraged by direct government intervention.”21 In the
1890s however, free trade held a different, more complex definition. First, free trade was
associated solely with Great Britain. Within Great Britain, free trade was associated with
the British Liberal Party. The British Liberal Party adopted free trade in the 1840s in
order to solve both domestic and colonial problems. Over time, the British used free trade
as a tool to manage and expand the British Empire. Great Britain created elaborate laws
defining free trade. Most clearly however, free trade to the British meant providing open
ports without tariffs in their spheres of influence so that other nations could trade freely
throughout the British Empire. In order to expand, Great Britain maintained spheres of
influence over territory rather than colonizing or acquiring the land. Free trade focused on
markets rather than physical territory.
In general, free trade was born out of a reaction to mercantilism in the late
eighteenth century. Mercantilists “advocated government intervention to obtain surpluses
on visible trade.”22 However, a new economic liberalism championed the idea of laissezfaire.23 Laissez-faire essentially “condemned any interference with industry by
government agencies as being inappropriate and harmful, except in so far as it was
necessary to break up private monopoly.”24 “Free trade” grew out of this reaction to
mercantilism. Free trade advocates generally believed in “what Adam Smith called the
‘hidden hand’: the greatest good is achieved if each individual is left to seek his own
21
Graham Bannock, R.E. Baxter, and Evan Davis, eds. The Penguin Dictionary of Economics, 7th
ed. (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 149.
22
Ibid., 150.
23
Ibid.
24
Ibid., 221.
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profit.”25 The term “free trade” originated in late sixteenth century British Parliamentary
Debates.26 Through political philosophers like Adam Smith (1723-1790), David Hume
(1711-1776), and “the leading economists of the first half of the nineteenth century—
James Mill, David Ricardo, Robert Torrens, John Stuart Mill, John Ramsay McCulloch,
Nassau Senior to mention but the most eminent”—free trade developed as idea and
policy.27
By 1890 free trade advocates defined “free trade” based on Richard Cobden’s
(1804-1865), John Bright’s (1811-1889), and W.E Gladstone’s (1809-1898) definition.
Free trade advocates generally understood the history about how these men developed
free trade. Irwell described this history in his article in The Westminster Review. Irwell
described how Cobden, a British manufacturer, founded the Anti-Corn Law League in
1838, which first introduced free trade ideology familiar in the 1890s. The Anti-Corn
Law League organized political protest against the Corn Laws passed in 1815. These
laws set high tariffs in order to protect domestic corn growth. In 1846 the British
Parliament repealed the Corn Laws. The Anti-Corn Law League desired to abolish all
tariffs on food stuffs.28 Cobden led the first free trade cadre. 29
25
Ibid.
26
Douglas A. Irwin, Against the Tide: An Intellectual History of Free Trade (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996), 46.
27
Ibid., 93.
28
Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell: The people's bread, a history of the Anti-Corn Law League.
London: Leicester University Press, 2000.
29
John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), 388-9.
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In 1846 the Anti-Corn Law League dissolved, but free trade advocates banded
under Cobden and John Bright, another British manufacturer and statesman. The group
under Cobden and Bright was ideologically bound, with no real charter or set of
governing rules. They advocated what has been labeled Manchester Capitalism or
Manchester Liberalism. Which as Irwell defined:
meant an absence of Protectionist tariffs upon imports. It is true that
duties for revenue purposes are still exacted upon certain luxuries
brought into the country, but in cases where similar commodities are
manufactured at home, the domestic article pays, through Inland
Revenue, the same proportion of tax as is contributed by the
importations from abroad.30
This loose group of affiliates appears to have turned into a physical club around the
1870s. By the 1880s some American politicians joined this club. In my sources, I have
found statements like Irwell’s, that the Cobden Club distributed free trade literature as
well as kept up with the “work inaugurated by Messrs. Cobden and Bright.”31 Little
research has been done on the club itself, and researching it has been a second project,
which I have had to limit myself on.
Nonetheless, Cobden and Bright created the fundamentals of the new free trade
ideology. Gladstone—politician and economist—implemented Cobden’s and Bright’s
idea into British policy. As a leader of the British Liberal Party, and four-time Prime
Minister, Gladstone created a liberalism which placed free trade’s principles at the center.
Free trade advocates accepted Gladstone’s liberalism as free trade ideology in the 1890s.
Ideologically, Gladstone believed “Britain’s strength lay in Britain, not in her empire”
30
In particular he supported free trade on tea, coffee, and cocoa, since they were regularly used
items. Lawrence Irwell, “Will Great Britain Return to Protection?,” 350.
31
Ibid.
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and because of this “he had very little sympathy for those who worried about military and
naval security.”32 Many free trade advocates, especially in the United States, shared
Gladstone’s anti-militarism. Furthermore, Gladstone also “did not believe…that the
possession of formal empire was important.”33 He hoped that British colonies, especially
white British colonies, would “grow up and shoulder their own responsibilities.”34 In a
sense, he believed in the sovereignty of other nations, especially white British colonies,
because “he assumed that the economic dependence of the white colonies would continue
irrespective of the nature of the political tie.”35 Thus, Gladstone believed in spheres of
influence. Gladstone believed free trade ideology was morally superior to protectionist
ideologies. He believed divine inspiration helped create free trade, and that free trade
would “modernize” the world with technology and socio-Christian values. Thus,
Gladstone believed wars would decrease given the “better” condition of the world due to
free trade.
Cobden’s, Bright’s, and Gladtone’s ideas formed the basis for free trade ideology
in the 1890s. Why did Americans begin discussing these British free trade ideas in the
1890s? Murney Gerlach’s book, British Liberalism and the United States revealed how
Gladstone’s ideas about economic liberalism moved from Great Britain to the United
32
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman,
2002), 186.
33
Ibid.
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid.
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States.36 Gerlach argued that there are two main reasons why some Americans eventually
adopted Gladstone’s ideas. First, he argued that “the British [liberals] had a special
interest in her progress in that America was her offspring, shared her heritage, customs,
and language.”37 Certainly the cultural relations that prevailed in this time between Great
Britain and the United States added to the ability at which other ideas could travel back
and forth.38 Gerlach’s second reason, that some Americans eventually adopted
Gladstone’s ideas, was due to Gladstone’s realization that the United States would
eventually be a more powerful nation than Great Britain. In a quote cited by Gerlach,
Gladstone wrote in 1878, “O matre forti filia fortior—that the daughter was so much
more powerful than the mother.”39 Gerlach credited Gladstone for making this realization
“relatively early compared with that of other late Victorian statesmen.”40 Because of this
consciousness, Gladstone took great efforts to, “praise what he called, in one article, ‘Kin
Beyond Sea.’”41
36
Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the
Late Victorian Age (New York: Palgrave, 2001).
37
I have inserted “liberals” into the quote, because I believe Gerlach meant British liberals like
Gladstone who did view this type of maternal relationship with the United States. That cannot be said of all
Britain’s throughout history. It would be hard to explain the War of 1812, the incidents in the Oregon
Territory, and the U.S. Civil War, which many British, even Gladstone, had sympathies for the South, if it
was not just the liberals. Ibid., xiv.
38
Melani McAlister, Epic Encoutners: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East,
1945-2000 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).
39
Gerlach, xiv.
40
Ibid.
41
Andrew W. Robertson, review of British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social
Thought in the Late Victorian Age by Murney Gerlach, The American Historical Review, (October 2003):
1216.
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In part due to the praise, and in part due to his consciousness about the potential
power the United States would yield, Gladstone became “the colossus of transatlantic
liberalism.”42 Arguably there is a third reason Gladstone tried persuading the United
States to accept economic liberalism. P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, authors of British
Imperialism, argued that the United States’ protectionist policies had been hurting Great
Britain.43 Nonetheless, Americans started giving Gladstone attention. By 1880, when
Gladstone became Prime Minister for the second time, Democrats and British Liberals
began developing relationships. Though, British Liberals favored Republicans in the
1870s because of their support of free soil and free labor, British Liberals grew tired of
Republicans’ protectionist policies and corrupt civil service.44 (Not mentioned earlier,
free trade advocates held a progressive attitude towards political corruption.) Many
Mugwumps, “who abandoned the Republicans in 1884 over party corruption, civil
service reform, and the presidential candidacy of James G. Blaine,” also became
associated with British Liberalism.45
In 1896, Republicans gained interest in British Liberalism. Chapter four discusses
the improved relations between the two nations which helped Republicans become open
to free trade advocates’ ideas.46 Interestingly enough, the year the waning British Liberals
threw their support towards Republicans, William McKinley received the Republican
42
Ibid.
43
Cain and Hopkins, 186-187.
44
Gerlach, 29.
45
Robertson, 1216.
46
British Liberals would support Republicans. “They lacked any sympathy for, or understanding
of, the Democratic Silverites, or…William Jennings Bryan.” Ibid., 1217.
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nomination for president. Ironically in 1891, Senator McKinley drafted the McKinley
Bill which turned into the McKinley Tariff. The tariff was one of the highest tariffs ever
passed, and was ultimately adopted by the Republican Party as a model for future tariffs.
Furthermore, the U.S. Open Door Notes (the subject under investigation for this thesis)
were created under the man and political party who had staunchly opposed free trade.
Free trade ideology did not enter the United States based just on American
politics. Between 1890 and 1899 the United States experienced a series of economic
problems created by capitalism. The Panic of the 1890s began in 1893 and ended in 1897.
During this time capitalists debated different solutions to the economic problems.
Meanwhile, labor responded to the economic crisis with strikes and marches. Coxey’s
Army, the Pullman Strike, and the rise of the Populist Party exemplify labor’s response to
the economic crisis. Many times the U.S. government ordered the United States’ military
to break up the protests, and some times even shoot down protesting workers. Economists
were in a generational shift. Many economists turned to the past, and argued that
protectionism would solve the problems. Some believed imperialist ventures would solve
the economic problems. Free trade advocates believed new markets needed to be
obtained. Thus, the Crisis of the 1890s stirred up an economic discussion which free trade
advocates participated in.
The economic discussions, as well as free trade advocates’ responses to events
between 1890 and 1899, produced a language that requires discussing. The language free
trade advocates used in the 1890s can be confusing to modern historians. Their language
is neither foreign nor archaic. Yet, meanings of their words have changed over time.
Thus, the problem is that free trade advocates’ words are familiar, but the ideas behind
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their words differ from today.47 Most confusion centers on terms associated with empire:
“imperialism” and “colonialism.” During the 1890s, free trade advocates interchanged
these words. For example, many U.S. historians know this to be true because they are
aware that the American Anti-Imperialist League (1898-1905) opposed obtaining
territorial acquisitions. Nonetheless, historians know that even the anti-imperialists could
be labeled “imperialists” under Lenin’s definition because they shared similar racial and
social-Darwinist thoughts.
Historians have not always been clear however about these distinctions.48 It is
difficult for historians after 1916 not to think about Lenin’s “Imperialism, the Highest
Stage of Capitalism.”49 Historian Erick Stokes however, reminded us that Lenin’s
theories only addressed the twentieth century.50 Thus, Lenin’s imperialistic theory should
not be applied to the 1890s while examining free trade advocates terminology. J.A.
Hobson complicated matters however. Hobson, like Lenin, wrote about imperialism
47
In order to decipher their language, I had to remind myself that I really was not familiar with
their words either.
48
For more about defining the language used about empire, and historian’s confusion between the
definitions and theories, see in order: D.K. Fieldhouse, “‘Imperialism’: an Historiographical Revision,”
Economic History Review 14 (1961): 187-209.; Eric Stokes, “Lat Nineteenth-Century Colonial Expansion
and the Attack on the Theory of Economic Imperialism: A Case of Mistaken Identity?,” The Historical
Journal 12 (1969): 285-301.; Norman Etherington, “Reconsidering Theories of Imperialism,” History and
Theory 21 (Feb., 1982): 1-36.
49
V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers,
1972).
50
“In the vital question of chronology Lenin made it plain that the era of monopoly finance
capitalism did not coincide with the scramble for colonies between 1870and 1900but came after it.
[Quoting Lenin] ‘for Europe [he wrote] the time when the new capitalism definitely superseded the old can
be established with fair precision: it was the beginning of the twentieth century. . .Thus the beginning of the
twentieth century marks the turning point, not only in regard to the growth of monopolies (cartels,
syndicates, trusts). . .but also in regard to the growth of finance capitalism.’” Eric Stokes, 289.
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beyond colonialism.51 Yet at times Hobson even interchanged “imperialism” and
“colonialism.”52 It is best to remember that Lenin’s and Hobson’s theories differ. Labeled
Marxist, their ideas are often treated one and the same.53 But as Stokes reminded us, “the
theory of economic or capitalist imperialism does not stand or fall on the authority of
Hobson but of Lenin.”54
All this to say, remember that free trade in the 1890s originated as a colonial
policy. When free trade advocates speak about “imperialism,” they speak about
“colonialism.” Free trade was only a different tactic of maintaining and obtaining empire.
British Liberals (free trade advocates) however, wanted empire just as much as British
protectionists. American free trade advocates did not want colonialism, but they did not
want Lenin’s economic imperialism. Rather, American free trade advocates wanted
markets. In order to avoid confusion, I have used the language of the times to express my
ideas since Lenin’s “imperialism” did not exist yet. Nonetheless, I do not wish to serve as
an apologist for free trade advocates. Applying Lenin’s theories in hindsight, revealed
that U.S. imperialists and free trade advocates had much in common ideologically (racial
beliefs, U.S. dominance, etc.).
Also, to clarify the arguments in my thesis, I would like to point out the three
different schools of thought my thesis engaged. The first and second school of thought I
51
J.A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1967).
52
Stokes, 288.
53
To understand how “labeling” creates dismissal and confusion, see: Bruce Cumings, “‘Revising
Postrevisionism,’ or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic History,” Diplomatic History 17 (Fall 1993):
539-569.
54
Stokes, 289.
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engaged came from the two most fundamental texts of U.S. twentieth century foreign
relations. While reading George F. Kennan’s American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 and
William Appleman Williams’ The Tragedy of American Diplomacy in dialogue with each
other, I began to wonder where the U.S. Open Door Policy ideology originated. Each
author had two very different views. Kennan essentially claimed that British Liberals and
beneficiaries in the Chinese Customs house orchestrated the creation of the U.S. Open
Door Policy.55 In response to this statement Williams wrote that the Open Door Policy
was not “an alien idea foisted off on America by the British,” and thus U.S. policymakers
were conscious of their actions.56
As I read more closely I realized that there was actually some sort of median
between these two arguments. That, as Kennan noted, “the Open Door doctrine…[was
so] old that it was referred to in the British Parliament in 1898 as ‘that famous phrase that
has been quoted and requoted almost ad nauseam’”57 But, that as Williams noted, the
U.S. Open Door Policy also had “deep roots in the American past.”58 I became interested
in where these “roots” came from, and what I found was quite interesting. I argue that
55
Kennan’s story is that the Open Door Notes were created to change British policy. He claims,
in short, a Mr. Hippisley, who was second in command of the Chinese Customs Service, while on a leave
of absence visited with W.W. Rockhill. Rockhill was a friend and colleague of John Hay. Hippisley urged
Rockhill, Hay, and the United States to create an open door policy in China. If the ports were not
controlled by the spheres of influence, then Hippisley would benefit from this. Hippisley’s plan according
to Kennan was twofold. First, secure the necessity of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs Service.
Second, put “pressure on the British government to behave in a manner less threatening to the interests of
the Customs Service in China.” Britain, only a few years earlier had sought the United States’ support in
pursuing an open door policy in China. George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy: Expanded Edition
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), 22-31.
56
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1972), 52.
57
Kennan, 25.
58
Williams, 52.
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many of these roots came from Great Britain, and in particular British Liberalism, which
had long championed free trade and spheres of influence. The idea that Americans
actively took and adjusted British imperial policy is very different than what Kennan
said. Interestingly enough, Williams appears never to have ruled this interpretation out.
The fact that he stated that the Open Door Policy was not “an alien idea foisted off on
America by the British” still allows the possibility that the origins of the ideology might
be foreign or transatlantic.59
Furthermore, Williams noted these British connections, particularly within
economic thought. As he mentioned, William Graham Sumner, an expansionist
intellectual, and “an economist and sociologist who believed almost fanatically in the
virtue and viability of the old order of laissez faire individualism….was connected with
that of Herbert Spencer [1820-1903], the British philosopher of laissez faire.”60 Spencer
considered himself an anti-imperialist, and greatly championed classical-liberal
economics, like free trade. There were many other economists in the United States who
were affected by British liberal economic thought. Martin J. Sklar in The Corporate
Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916 discussed several other American
economists who adopted British liberal ideas that were in part responsible for the creation
of the U.S. Open Door Policy.61 These American liberals were reacting to the crisis of the
1890s and according to Williams and Sklar began creating a corporatist society.62
59
Ibid.
60
Ibid., 33.
61
See chapter one in Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism,
1890-1916: The Market, The Law, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 1-40.
62
Williams, 29.
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However, many of the historians listed above particularly examined those who
made policy.63 I wanted to know more specifically if there was public awareness that
these British ideas were affecting the creation of what would ultimately be coined the
U.S. Open Door Policy. I found evidence that British ideas reached the American public.
Furthermore, as Robert Beisner’s Twelve Against Empire has shown, there were
significant amounts of influential Americans who publicly opposed empire—the antiimperialists.64 I found that many of these anti-imperialists also developed and critiqued
British imperialism in front of the public’s eye through periodical articles. Furthermore, I
found significant amounts of influential Americans who publicly opposed empire while
endorsing obtaining markets—the free trade advocates. Americans championing British
ideas might not sound too surprising when one imagines the amount of British Victorian
culture that had greatly affected American lifestyles.65 As Melani McAlister’s Epic
Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East argues, strong cultural
perceptions shape U.S. foreign policy.66
The third school of thought which helped frame my thesis was the transatlantic
idea. Daniel Rodger’s Atlantic Crossings best exemplified ideas I used to originally
63
This statement is by no means a criticism. These elites, especially in the Gilded Age and
Progressive Era had a lot of power. The shear social-stratification of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era is
identified in Nell Irvine Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1987).
64
Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900.
65
For a good social history which also examines the Victorian culture of the Gilded Age and
Progressive Era see: Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 18761915 (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992).
66
McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945-2000.
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frame my thesis’s arguments.67 Rodger’s created a transatlantic history of the Progressive
Era’s social politics. Rodger’s book focused on the cross-pollination of ideas across the
Atlantic. I found Rodger’s idea to be inspiring, and due to its relative closeness in time
period to the inception of the U.S. Open Door Policy, I began asking if there was a
transatlantic history of the U.S. Open Door Policy. After a little research, I found Murney
Gerlach’s book, British Liberalism and the United States. Gerlach was inspired by
Rodger’s book as well. 68 Gerlach produced a book detailing the transatlantic history of
British Liberalism. Gerlach argued that British Liberalism developed from ideas found in
the United States and Great Britain. Gerlach provided nuanced detail about the exchange
of ideas, which helped me focus on certain people and periodicals. I decided that a
transatlantic cross-pollination examination proved too time consuming for this thesis. I
narrowed my observations to just look at British Liberal ideas in the United States.
Nonetheless, both books helped me clarify how I wanted to engage my primary
documents and structure my arguments.
The dialogue between Williams and Kennan, in consideration with Rodger’s
transatlantic model, lead me to ask if there was a gap to be filled in Williams’ and
Kennan’s arguments. Let us now examine the evidence my questions led me to in three
different chapters spanning over the 1890s.
67
Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: The
Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998).
68
Gerlach, xvii.
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CHAPTER II
OPENING THE FREE TRADE DEBATE, 1890-1894
Introduction
Between 1890 and 1894 British and American free trade advocates introduced
British Liberal ideology to the United States through U.S. periodicals.69 The British
Liberal ideology consisted of: free trade and antimilitarism. Both elements can be found
within the U.S. Open Door Policy. Free trade ideas however, remained unpopular with
Americans at this time. American protectionists revealed a strong distrust of Great Britain
and British Liberal ideals. I divided this chapter into three main parts. The first two parts
examine the British Liberal ideology on free trade and antimilitarism. The third part
examines Americans’ reactions to British Liberal ideology. Interestingly enough,
examining free trade advocates’ ideas revealed their closeness in ideological principles to
American imperialists throughout the chapter.
The debate squared off between the two nations’ political vanguards of each
respected policy. The first article in 1890 championing free trade in the United States,
included two-term Prime Minister William E. Gladstone, and two-term Secretary of State
James G. Blaine.70 Both men politically epitomized their position. Gladstone was the
avowed leader of the British Liberal Party. After three separate terms as Prime Minister,
he instituted what is now known as “Gladstonian Liberalism”: free trade, low-taxation,
69
Articles in this chapter, came from the following U.S. periodicals. The Nation, The Forum, The
North American Review, and The Arena.
70
See Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the
Present, 2d ed. (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1994), 174-178.
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and spheres of influence.71 Blaine by this time had a successful political career. He was
nominated for the Presidency by the Republican Party in 1876 and 1880. Simply stated,
Blaine, representing the Northeast and the Republican Party, represented big business’
interests abroad. To him this meant following the historical Republican protectionist
policies.72 The rest of the first debate also included Roger Q. Mills, previous chairman of
the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives between 1887 and
1889.73 Justin S. Morrill, longtime Senator from Vermont, supported Blaine and
protectionism in the second reply.74 The first debate was the most extensive written
debate between protectionists and free trade advocates in the 1890s.
The North American Review published the first debate in January 1890.75 Between
1890 and 1894 other political and social elites entered the discussion. Editor of The
Nation—Edwin Godkin,76 American economist—David A. Wells,77 and Statesman—
71
For more on Gladstone, see Chapter 1.
72
Blaine at this time was Secretary of State under President Benjamin Harrison. He had served
previously as Secretary of States under Presidents James Garfield and Arthur Chester, and he also had been
a longtime Senator from Maine. A supporter of greenbacks in his younger political days, he had now
disapproved coining silver. Diplomatically speaking, Blaine was most famous for his involvement in
building and protecting trade relations with Latin America. For more about Blaine, see: LaFeber, The
American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 174-178.
73
Mills supported Gladstone and free trade in the first reply. As a Democrat, and pro-Southerner
(he had served in the Confederate Army) Mills supported lower tariffs for the agricultural community he
represented in Texas. Roger Q. Mills, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Q._Mills> (21 June 2007),
Wikipedia.
74
Morrill was famous for the Morrill tariff, which he passed as a Representative in 1861. This
tariff doubled the tax duties in order to collect “war funds.” Justin S. Morrill,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin_Smith_Morrill> (21 June 2007), Wikipedia.
75
Replies were published in February and March of 1890.
76
Godkin often best voiced free trade advocates concerns and critiques. As the first editor of The
Nation in 1865, he used his position to critique American society and politics. Godkin believed that the
American Republic had declined since the end of the Civil War. He believed “the source of America’s
immorality, vulgarity, and corruption” could be found in the “material prosperity and democratic
government” of the post-Civil War era. (Beisner, 54) His critiques and criticisms of American society
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Robert Ogden, all supported free trade. Republican Representative—Henry Cabot
Lodge,78 Republican Senator—George F. Hoar,79 and British industrialist, 1st Baron
attracted a fairly large audience. The historian Robert Beisner compared him to journalists Walter
Lippmann and H.L. Mencken because of the way “college students adopted Godkin’s opinions as their
own.” (Beisner, 55) But Godkin’s influence extended beyond young collegiate fellows. His articles
required attention from the rest of the journalistic world, whether in approval of or in opposition to his
opinions. (Beisner, 55)
Beisner tells a good story about Godkin and his influence. But Beisner’s interpretation of
Godkin’s actions and criticisms lacked exploration into Godkin’s British Liberal beliefs. As Beisner notes,
Godkin was born in Ireland in 1831 and emigrated to the United States in 1856. (Beisner, 54-55) Godkin
favored Gladstone’s home-rule position towards Ireland. (Beisner, 78) And Beisner also noted Godkin’s
return to England in protest and disgust of U.S. expansion. (Beisner, 79) But the needle that sews the thread
between these events was Godkin’s admiration for and belief in British Liberal ideals. Godkin believed in
free trade, not just home-rule. Understanding Godkin’s ideological makeup, as well as his influence in
American society, gives credence to the importance of his articles.
Cited from: Robert Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968).
77
Wells lived an educated and eclectic life. At the time he was one of “the foremost American
authority on economics.” Besides publishing several college texts on a variety of natural science subjects,
he actively published on U.S. economic issues including The Silver Question (1877), Why We Trade and
How We Trade (1878), Our Merchant Marine (1882), A Primer of Tariff Reform (1884); and Recent
Economic Changes (1889). Cited from: David Ames Wells, 4 March 2007,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Wells> (20 March 2007), Wikipedia.
78
Lodge at this time was a representative from Massachusetts. He eventually became a senator in
1893, and served until 1924. Lodge began fighting liberal ideology in the early 1890s against free trade, but
later he more clearly defined his position by stymieing the United State’s involvement in President
Wilson’s League of Nations. Outside the political realm, Lodge engaged in scholarly activities. He earned
his doctorate in history and government from Harvard in 1876.78 Investigating historical aspects of policy
was important to Lodge. Cited from: Lodge, Henry Cabot, (1850-1924),
<http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000393> (20 March 2007), Biographical
Directory of the United States Congress 1774-Present.
79
As a senator from Massachusetts, Hoar had been devoutly loyal to the party, and he would
remain that way until 1898, when he would become what the historian Robert Beisner labeled a
fainthearted Mugwump. (Beisner, 140) As Beisner noted, “He supported civil service reform, high tariffs,
international bimetallism, and civil rights legislation.” (Beisner, 140) Furthermore, he had been a shining
star in the Republican Party due to his ability to avoid scandal that plagued some of his fellow party
members in the 1870s and 1880s.
Hoar is important for other reasons as well. He would later be involved in the anti-imperialist
movement in 1898. Hoar did not support McKinley’s war of expansion. He fell out with the Republican
Party over the issue. Nonetheless, he held onto many other Republican policies, like protectionism. Beisner
described Hoar as a complicated individual. Many free trade advocates were anti-imperialists and
Democrats or mugwumps. Hoar was neither, yet he could not support U.S. expansionism.
Hoar’s national intellectualism and historically patriotic ancestry partly explain his decisions. Hoar
was a Massachusetts elite. “His…ancestors included a president of Harvard, two great-grandfathers, a
grandfather, and three great-uncles who fought at Concord Bridge, and another grandfather, Roger
Sherman of Connecticut, who signed the Declaration of Independence.” (Beisner, 140) I suspect his
interests in U.S. colonial history as well as history in general helped him formulate his “exceptionalist”
understanding of the United States and its republican virtues. Hoar’s belief in the United States’ republican
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Masham—Samuel Lister,80 supported protectionism. The transatlantic discussion had
begun.
Part 1: Free Trade
Free trade led the charge in the transatlantic discussion between Great Britain and
the United States. The other British Liberal principals supplemented free trade’s
existence. Great Britain had long practiced free trade, while the United States had long
practiced protectionism.81 Free trade advocates looked to the future, describing an
“American Century” that would lead the West’s moral charge while stomping out
economic unrest at home. American protectionists turned to the past arguing that the
United States’ position in the world was due to the long-held protectionist policy.
Free Trade Advocates’ American Century
History of the U.S. Open Door Policy leads us to believe that the policy itself was
“exceptional.” And indeed it is. Americans took foreign ideas and formed them to fit the
socio-political environment. But the belief that America was exceptional and needed to
take leadership amongst the world was not unique to Americans. The U.S. Open Door
Policy was designed to conquer the world by obtaining markets. Where did the idea the
United States would be the world leader in the twentieth century because of its economic
virtues caused his limited separation from the Republican Party in 1898. To him, a democratic republic
could not be an empire. Cited in: Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900.
80
Masham was also President of the Fair Trade Club in Great Britain.
81
The introduction discussed why 1890 became the year the two nations began the free trade
debates.
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capabilities come from? LaFeber showed the domestic intellectual formulation of these
beliefs in The New Empire.82 But, this intellectual formulation was not just domestic. The
foreign intellectual formulation that America was exceptional was just as, and at times
more, blatant.
Gladstone examined the economic capacity of the United States and foresaw an
“American Century” if it adopted Open Door Policy ideology. In a brief passage that
reflected similar themes in Henry Luce’s The American Century, Gladstone outlined the
potential of free trade in the United States.83 His outline eerily predicted the United
States’ adoption of British Liberal ideology in U.S. foreign policy. It predicted that after
America’s ascendancy to power by the means of free trade, ideas such as modernization
and international institutions would be implemented.84 As Gladstone noted, “…if
America shall frankly adopt and steadily maintain a system of free trade, she will
probably take the place which at present belongs to us[, ‘commercial primacy’].”85 He
further argued that if this happened “…the American future viewed at large….[would be]
a vista so transcending all ordinary limitation as requires an almost preterhuman force
and expansion of the mental eye in order to embrace it.”86 Specifically, the United States
82
Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 1998).
83
Henry Luce, “The American Century” in Michael J. Hogan, ed., The Ambiguous Legacy: U.S.
Foreign Relations in the “American Century” (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
84
This can especially be seen under Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and Woodrow Wilson. See:
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1972), 64.
85
W.E. Gladstone and James G. Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” The North
American Review, January 1890, 2.
86
Ibid., 26.
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would be “a vision of territory, population, power, passing beyond all experience.”87 This
aggrandizing view of the United States was not penned by an American, it was penned by
a Britain. Gladstone foresaw the power the United States would become. He attempted to
wake the sleeping giant, to make it conscious of its potential and true size. In short, he
was trying to persuade Americans how awesome they could be.
Gladstone’s prophecy was genuine. He honestly believed, like other free trade
advocates, that free trade would allow the United States world dominance. Why did
Gladstone share this information? Did Gladstone want Great Britain to be surpassed?
Gladstone did not want Great Britain to be surpassed by the United States. According to
Murney Gerlach, U.S. protectionism was hurting Great Britain during the early 1890s.
Gerlach suggested that Gladstone (and other British Liberals) tried persuading the United
States to accept free trade out of selfish national reasons.88 The historians P.J. Cain and
A.G. Hopkins suggested similar reasons as Gerlach’s.89 Furthermore, Gerlach argued
that Gladstone had long admired the United States, had done much to build relations
between the two nations, and that the United States influenced Gladstone’s ideas.90
Gladstone believed race connected Great Britain and the United States. This racial
connection afforded Gladstone to take liberties with the United States he would not take
87
Ibid.
88
Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the
Late Victorian Age (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 76-78.
89
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman,
2002), 186.
90
Gerlach, 163-201.
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with other nations.91 Gladstone wanted the United States to understand that if they
became a world power, they would represent and be responsible for the Anglo-American
race, “the children of the senior races.”92 Gladstone’s point came from classical origins.
He wanted the United States to understand that great power required great responsibility.
Gladstone told Americans, “with and behind these vast [economic] developments there
will come a corresponding opportunity of social and moral influence to be exercised over
the rest of the world.”93 And Gladstone asked Americans, “What will be the nature of this
influence? Will it make us, the children of the senior races, who will have to come under
its action, better or worse? Not what manner of producer, but what manner of man, is the
American of the future to be?”94 Gladstone, trying to sell free trade to Americans,
answered his rhetorical question:
The [United State’s] exhibition to mankind, for the first time in history,
of free institutions on a gigantic scale, is momentous, and I have
enough faith in freedom, enough distrust of all that is alien from
freedom, to believe that it will work powerfully for good….Will it be
instinct with moral life in proportion of its material strength! Will he
uphold and propagate the Christian tradition with that surpassing
energy which marks him in all the ordinary pursuits of life? Will he
maintain with a high hand an unfaltering reverence for that law of
nature which is interior to the Gospel, and supplies the standard to
which it appeals, the very foundation on which it is built up?….And
will he be a leader and teacher to us of the old world in rejecting and
denouncing all the miserable degrading sophistries by which the archenemy, ever devising more and more subtle schemes against us, seeks
at one stroke perhaps to lower us beneath the brutes, assuredly to cut us
off from the hope and from the source of the final good?95
91
Free trade advocates do emphasize race. Chapter 4 discusses these race relations between the
Anglo-Americans in more detail.
92
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 26.
93
Ibid.
94
Ibid.
95
Ibid., 26-27.
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Trying to pitch free trade to Americans, Gladstone’s quote outlined some ideas
behind the U.S. Open Door Policy. Gladstone planted the idea that the United States
would become leader of the “free” world. He synthesized the Gospel and economic
expansion into one foreign policy.
Gladstone tried convincing Americans that being a super-power was their future,
and that the only way to obtain it was through free trade. Americans wanted to obtain
world supremacy. But, believing their ascendancy would come through free trade and
commerce was hard for Americans to accept in an international system defined by
balance-of-power ideology. Americans believed avoiding entanglement in European
treaties and markets was to avoid loss of power, and ultimately obtainment of power
through patience, as the great European nations ground themselves down, and the United
States through protectionism became independently stronger. After all, since when did
Europe have the best interest in mind for the United States? This mindset stymied
Gladstone’s argument.96
Nonetheless, some Americans shared Gladstone’s sentiments. American free trade
advocate, Mills wrote:
“Then, having all her [Great Britain] raw material free of tax, and labor
cheaper than any other country on earth except ours (and we were out
of the contest), she took the world’s markets, and holds them to day
against all comers, and will continue to do so until we unload our
burden of taxation on materials, when we can and will produce cheaper
than she can, and she must take a secondary place in the contest.”97
96
This distrust of Great Britain will be discussed later in the chapter.
97
Roger Q. Mills, “The Gladstone-Blaine Controversy,” The North American Review, February
1890, 151.
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But many Americans did not believe this argument yet. Not until 1897 did a significant
majority of Americans begin to share free trade advocates’ vision. Thus, selling free trade
to Americans would have to rely on more than the chance for world power.
Free Trade Advocates’ Solutions for Economic Problems
Free trade advocates believed free trade would solve the United States’ economic
problems, while also allowing the United States to obtain world power. Free trade
advocates used solving (and preventing) economic problems in the United States as
another selling point for free trade. Free trade advocates believed acquiring foreign
markets provided a place to export surplus products. Unloading surplus products would
supposedly keep prices and jobs stable in the United States, while also bringing in more
money from the products sold abroad. Furthermore, activity in foreign markets
supposedly provided more opportunities for foreign direct investment. Thus, free trade
advocates believed they had the solution for the United States’ surplus products, unsettled
labor, and abundant capital.
In the articles, free trade advocates highlighted the United States’ economic
problems, while protectionists downplayed U.S. economic problems and argued that
everything the United States had economically came from a protectionist policy. For
example, Free trade advocate Mills revealed the economic hardships confronted by the
American people. Mills argued that between 1870 and 1880, “…instead of enormous
increase of prosperity, there never has been a period in the history of the country so black
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with disaster.”98 He pointed to two separate historical events as evidence for his
statement. First, he described the depression of the 1870s.99
For more than half the decade all the industries of the country were
stretched upon their backs. The roads and highways were filled with
tramps and beggars. Immigration was falling off year by year, and
emigration increasing year by year. State after State was tottering on its
foundation and calling on the general government for aid to keep it on
its feet.100
After highlighting the economic problems in general, Mills brought attention to U.S.
labor problems. Mills described the first labor strike at Andrew Carnegie’s steel industry
in Homestead, Pennsylvania.
The central city of the iron and steel industry was set on fire by starving
workingmen who were out of employment, and there was not power
enough in the State of Pennsylvania either to suppress the disorder or
extinguish the flames. During a large part of that decade it was
estimated that three millions of men were out of work.101
Free trade advocates argued that free trade solved these economic problems. Reversing
their deductions they concluded protectionist policies created these conditions. Thus, free
trade advocates believed the United States’ economic problems signaled the time for
economic policy change.
Protectionists however, juxtaposed free trade advocates’ images of the United
States. Protectionist Blaine argued that,
98
Ibid., 157.
99
For more on the depression of the 1870s, see: Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The
United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987), 15-18.
100
Mills, “The Gladstone-Blaine Controversy,” 157.
101
Ibid.
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The benefit of protection goes first and last to the men who earn their
bread in the sweat of their faces. The auspicious and momentous result
is that never before in the history of the world has comfort been
enjoyed, education acquired, and independence secured by so large a
proportion of the total population as in the United States of America.102
And so every time free trade advocates offered images of the future, protectionists
offered images of the past and present. Protectionists reminded Americans that they
already had more than most in the world. Thus, hard-lined economic questions remained
unanswered by protectionists. For example, Blaine, instead of engaging the possibility of
a surplus in products, constantly turned to the past, claiming, “Every statement of Mr.
Gladstone carries weight, but in this case his opinion runs directly counter to the fifty
years of financial experience.”103 Likewise, fellow protectionist Senator Morrill regularly
focused on the past, not just of the United States, but also of Great Britain:
After nearly 400 years of the most unexampled protection, Great
Britain acquired the command of capital, machinery, steam power, and
of long-trained labor, including even that of children, by which to
compete successfully in the chief markets for the trade of the world.104
By turning to the past, rather than surveying the future, protectionists avoided free trade
advocates’ economics.
Free trade advocates’ economics centered on surplus products. Free trade
advocates believed that markets had to be obtained for exports. Mills asked and stated,
“What does Mr. Blaine propose to do with its accumulating surplus? We must find
markets for it somewhere.”105 For free trade advocates, unleashing the United States’
102
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 54.
103
Ibid., 39.
104
Justin S. Morrill, “Free Trade or Protection: Continuation of the Gladstone-Blaine
Controversy,” North American Review, March 1890, 284.
105
Mills, “The Gladstone-Blaine Controversy,” 6.
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surplus on world markets not only would solve their economic problems, but would also
begin the United States’ ascendancy to world power. Finding foreign markets
simultaneously meant conquering the world. The U.S. Open Door Policy reflected this
free trade ideology. The free trade debate reflected what Martin J. Sklar labeled, “The
corporate reconstruction of American capital.” The free trade debates made up a part “of
conflict within ascending and declining movements” in the “corporate reconstruction of
American capitalism” between 1890 and 1916.106 In simplest terms, free trade debates
were only debates within capitalism.
Free Trade Advocates Address Labor Problems
Free trade advocates also addressed the United States’ labor problems. During the
depression of the 1870s, as Nell Irvin Painter noted, “strikes broke out in many
industries.”107 The depression “undermined belief in the harmony of interests” between
labor and business.108 Free trade advocates highlighted the tension between labor and
business. They argued that free trade would solve labor problems, and provide harmony
only capitalism could produce. Free trade advocates argued that free trade lowered prices
for workers. Specifically, free trade advocates argued that without tariffs, competition
between domestic and foreign businesses would lower product prices. Supposedly, free
trade provided a lower cost of living for workers. The lower cost of living supposedly
106
Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The
Market, The Law, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 14.
107
Painter, 15.
108
Ibid.
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would keep workers content. The theory seemed sound considering that “in the late
nineteenth century…most workers earned less than about $800 a year.”109
Protectionists countered free trade advocates arguments. Protectionists argued
free trade lowered wages. Free trade advocates conceded that fact, but also argued that
free trade lowered product prices.110 Note that labor participated little in the debate. The
debate focused on how best to control labor. Nonetheless, Gladstone’s arguments
summarized free trade advocates’ arguments about labor. Gladstone argued that the
individual under protectionism was vulnerable. He argued that the protectionist system
had “no mercy upon labor, but displace[d] it right and left.”111 Furthermore, Gladstone
argued that free trade represented the individual better than protectionism, because free
trade derived from classical liberalism, “the law of equal rights, and…even from the tone
of genuine personal independence.”112 This is how free trade advocates advertised free
trade to Americans. Free trade advocates promised lower prices and an ideology serving
the individual.
Capital
Free trade advocates also promised Americans better return from their abundant
capital. Though “free trade” dominated free trade advocates rhetoric, investing capital
also contributed to their ideology and their selling point. Gladstone argued foreign direct
109
Ibid., xx.
110
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 9.
111
Ibid., 23.
112
Ibid., 25.
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investment served free trade ideology as crucially as flooding foreign markets with
products. Supposedly, foreign direct investment allowed a nation to gain access to
markets, as well as obtain political leverage within the invested nation. Stated otherwise,
to Gladstone, controlling the international political economy, literally meant owning parts
of that economy.113 In order “to own” parts of the economy, free trade advocates argued
that capital had to be able to move as free as products. Removing capital-flow restrictions
between nations represented an aspect of free trade.114
Gladstone showed great interest and admiration for Americans’ capital. He
criticized however, American protectionists’ belief that capital should stay at home. He
questioned the protectionists’
contention…that protection is (as I should say freedom is) a mine of
wealth; that a greater aggregate profit results from what you would call
keeping labor and capital at home than from letting them seek
employment wherever in the whole world they can find it most
economically.115
Touching on the United States’ economic problems, Gladstone asked, “If protection is
necessary to keep Americans capital at home, why is not the vast capital now sustaining
your domestic agriculture, and raising commodities for sale at free-trade prices, exported
to other countries?”116
Answering protectionists’ questions, Gladstone argued that the United States
remained competitive economically despite the protectionist policies, because of the
113
This is why free trade differs from Lenin’s “imperialism.” Gladstone believed foreign direct
investment could lead to political control of a nation or region. Lenin’s theory about imperialism applied to
a model where the world’s territory had already been divided politically. See Chapter 1.
114
The U.S. Open Door Policy would also try and remove capital-flow restrictions.
115
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 13.
116
Ibid., 15.
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shear amount of capital retained in the United States. Specifically, Gladstone showed
how U.S. capital hid inefficiencies in the protectionist system. His example showed that
American “ship-builders [did] a small trade with a large capital instead of doing (as
before) a large trade with a (relatively) small capital.” He ironically continued with, “I
will not now stop to dilate on my admiration for the resources of a community which can
bear to indulge in these impoverishing processes…”117 Gladstone argued that if the
United States removed protectionist policies and spread their capital throughout the
world, both the United States and the world would be better off.
Eventually Americans would accept that foreign direct investment played an
important part in their economy and foreign policy, as expressed within U.S. Open Door
Policy tactics. Until then however, Americans only took Gladstone’s admiration instead
of also taking his ideas. Gladstone understood that the United States held the most
precious resource in the industrial age. According to Gladstone, “America invites and
obtains in a remarkable degree from all the world one of the great elements of production,
without tax of any kind—namely, capital.”118
Free Trade Advocates’ Moral and Scientific Justifications
Free trade advocates believed moral and scientific reasons founded and justified
free trade. Free trade advocates at times reflected upon free trade’s history in Great
Britain. By examining free trade’s history, free trade advocates interpreted free trade to
be morally justified, and scientifically proven. Their points attracted criticism from
117
Ibid., 17.
118
Ibid., 13.
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protectionists.119 Protectionists argued that free trade was not a moral nor scientific
argument. This section examines free trade advocates’ justifications for free trade, and
protectionists’ responses.
Free Trade Advocates’ Moral Justifications
Free trade advocates spoke clearly about their justifications. Gladstone believed
free trade was divinely inspired and justified.120 Gladstone wrote about protectionism,
“…that all protection is morally as well as economically bad.”121 Other free trade
advocates approached their justifications similarly (though not always as clearly).
Protectionists resented free trade advocates statements. Protectionists reacted by attacking
free trade advocates’ claims.
Protectionist Henry Cabot Lodge denied that free trade promoted the moral wellbeing of humanity, and in fact argued free trade developed out of greed. Lodge
reexamined Adam Smith’s works, The Wealth of Nations and The Moral Sentiments, and
concluded free trade’s intellectual origins emphasized, “selfish interests of mankind,”122
and “the selfish side of human nature.”123 Lodge wanted readers to understand that greed
drove all forms of capitalism, and that “the world at large has found no trouble in
119
More of the criticisms are examined under the “Distrust of Britain Section.”
120
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 27.
121
Ibid., 25.
122
Henry Cabot Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” The Arena, November 1891, 652.
123
Ibid.
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forgetting it.”124 Selfishness bears no morality. Lodge argued that Smith, “never for a
moment thought of putting his political economy on a plane of pure morality.”125 Lodge
argued that the Manchester School, established by economists like David Hume and
Adam Smith in England, attempted “to give to the entire free trade system a moral
coloring…”126 To Lodge, this is how free trade obtained moral color.
Free trade advocate David Wells interpreted Wealth of Nations differently than
Lodge. Wells believed, “Adam Smith’s definition is nearly co-extensive with the theory
which seeks to establish the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number.”127
Essentially, Wells conceded to Lodge’s point, but argued that it was the only way to
obtain at least a small amount of morality. Wells believed free trade moved wealth
around the world which “constitute[d] the very foundation of practical moral
progress…[and gave] hope of making a man moral, decent, or religious.”128 Wells’ idea
of modernization incorporated arguments found in Andrew Carnegie’s “Gospel of
Wealth” written in 1889. Carnegie argued that “the man of wealth thus becoming the sole
agent and trustee for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom,
124
Ibid.
125
Ibid.
126
Ibid., 653.
127
This in part reveals John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism influence, which many liberals (especially
British) argued for. David A. Wells, “Reply: Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” The Arena, November
1891, 11.
128
Ibid., 12.
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experience, and ability to administer-doing for them better than they would or could do
for themselves.”129 This literature intertwined Christianity with capitalism.
Lacking Gladstone’s succinctness, Wells expanded on the “divine” inspiration
behind free trade. Wells told a story about a Dutch missionary, Vanderkemp, who had
been in South Africa near mid-nineteenth century. Well’s story had two points. Well’s
first point was Vanderkemp’s conclusion “that while the spirit of God might come into a
brush hut with a cow-dung floor…he had no doubt that it would come quicker and abide
longer in a house with a tile roof, clean floor, and glazed windows.”130 (One only
wonders how God abided in the tenement buildings in New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia in this same time period, which provided this modernized shelter.) The
second point was to encourage a good neighbor policy beyond national borders. Wells
criticized the Rev. Edward Everett Hale who advocated a high tariff, but also organized
“Lend a Hand Societies,” which proposed helping poorer neighborhoods through
donations.131 Wells’ response was, “Does he propose to confine his lending of a hand to
the unfortunate of his own neighborhood, or country, and not only withhold his hand in
kindness, but use it to inflict a blow upon some other unfortunate who happens to have
fallen on the other side of an imaginary line which we term a boundary?”132
Wells’ themes eventually become reflected in the U.S. Open Door Policy. As
socio-Christian values were associated with wealth, so were socio-Christian values
129
Andrew Carnegie: The Gospel of Wealth, 1889, August 1997,
<http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1889carnegie.html> (22 March 2007), Modern History Sourcebook.
130
Wells, “Reply: Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 12.
131
Ibid., 15-16.
132
Ibid.
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associated with Westward expansion as defined by Manifest Destiny. Historian John
King Fairbank explored “the missionary enterprise,” at which these different themes—
Christianity, capitalism, and expansion—intersected in China.133 Like Wells, U.S
imperialists believed expanding free trade went hand in hand with missionary expansion,
because as people became wealthier, they supposedly became more moral.
Wells may have not believed free trade was completely moral, but his utilitarian
outlook allowed him to claim protectionism produced more harm than free trade. Wells
argued that protectionism led to slavery.134 Wells concluded that, “Slavery, as it existed
in our Southern States before the war, was an exemplification of the theory of protection
logically carried out.”135 In hindsight, Wells’ point seems ironic since the South opposed
tariffs. Nonetheless, Wells argued:
The objective in both cases, slavery and protection, is always the same,
namely: to restrict or prevent, apart from the requirements of State for
its economical support, the producer of laborer from determining for
himself how he shall use the results of his labor—product, wages, or
salary; and the plea in justification of such restriction is always the
same, namely: general good as manifest from the restrictionist
standpoint.136
After this example, Wells described “Sambo” running to the abolitionists, who would be
like the workingman “escap[ing] to the free traders, when they c[a]me to appreciate that
free trade is only another name for an attribute of personal liberty.”137
133
John King Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1974).
134
A fairly common argument amongst free trade advocates, Edwin Godkin also made the same
argument.
135
David A. Wells, “Reply: Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 15.
136
Ibid.
137
Ibid.
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In short, examining free trade advocates’ moral justifications revealed aspects of
free trade’s history as well as how Americans came to understand and use free trade.
Similar moral themes as free trade advocates discussed in this section eventually helped
form the U.S. Open Door Policy. Furthermore, examining how the United States
advocated the Open Door Policy through the twentieth century, from McKinley, Wilson,
Truman, and beyond, one realizes that Wells’ understanding of free trade was eventually
adopted by future American liberals. This adoption jaded many Americans. Lodge, ever
the realist, reminded Americans in 1891 that:
Adam Smith’s distinction was a broad and sound one; and deeply
important as political economy and questions of tariff are, they are in
no sense matters of morals. They are purely questions of self-interest,
of profit and loss, and can be decided properly on these grounds
alone.138
Free Trade Advocates’ Scientific Justifications
Free trade advocates often presented data clearly, and made confident statements
about free trade, sometimes based on small numerical models.139 As far as I have found,
no free trade advocate argued that economics was an exact science. Free trade advocates
however, did present their economic data as if it were definitive. After all, they were
trying to persuade Americans about their ideas. Protectionists disapproved of free trade
advocate’s use of political economy. Lodge argued that political economy could not be
defined or represented by mathematics alone. Second, Lodge believed that when humans
were introduced into the equation, an element of control was lost.
138
Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 653.
139
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 3-24.
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More specifically, Lodge believed political economists were “handling a subject
where new facts are always entering in to modify old conclusions, and where there are
many conditions, the effect of which it is impossible to calculate.”140 To Lodge, humanity
could not be quantified. He argued, “In fields like these, where the personal equation of
humanity plays a controlling part, it is absurd to attempt to argue as if we were dealing
with a mathematical formula.”141 Lodge’s logic in part reveals why he rarely engaged the
free trade advocates’ economic arguments. Furthermore, his logic reveals why he found
many free trade advocates’ arguments unsatisfactory. Lodge believed free trade was an
imperfect system.
The exact science notion is the misconception of cloistered learning
which can build impregnable systems where there are none to attack
them, but which has no idea of practical difficulties of an
unsympathetic world where the precious system must meet every
possible objection and not merely those devised by its framers.142
Part II: Anti-Militarism
Free trade advocates sought foreign markets with minimal military protection.
The third part of this chapter examines free trade advocates ideas about obtaining foreign
markets while maintaining an anti-militarism position. Protectionists also favored
minimal military protection, though they opposed creating a larger merchant marine.
Because the United States had a long history opposing militarism, free trade advocates
found little opposition to their anti-militarism ideas.143 Free trade advocates had a more
140
Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 654.
141
Ibid., 653.
142
Ibid., 654.
143
Traditionally, not until the 1890s, and more noticeably in the 1930s, in the United States
enlarging the military never took priority, especially the navy. Beginning in the 1820s policy towards the
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U.S. military and navy was defined by “the report of the Board of Engineers dated February 7, 1821, with a
supplement dated March 1, 1826.” (Wieigley, 60) According to Weigley, this “became the basic statement
of a strategy of national maritime defense and remained so until the 1880s.” (Wieigley, 60) Essentially the
report believed the navy should mainly be used in a coastal defensive manner only. At the time of the
report, Americans never believed they would “possess a navy large enough to guarantee against invasion
by the great naval powers of Europe.” (Wieigley, 60)
During the 1850s, there was a brief “surge of naval interest and construction.”143 But as Weigley
noted: “The United States did not keep pace with the European naval powers in quantity of the new types
of vessels, and despite experimentation with the ironclad ‘Stevens battery,’ it produced no equivalent of
France’s thirty-six-gun ironclad frigate Gloire (1858) or Great Britain’s iron battleship Warrior (1859)”
(Wieigley, 64) Naval expansion of the 1850s became a fleeting idea. Americans saw no
“fundamentally…[or] sufficiently important national interest to be served.” (Wieigley, 65)
When the Gilded Age arrived, there was no gild to be found on the United States Navy. As Robert
Beisner wrote, “historians have found the Gilded Age U.S Navy….tempting to satirize…it seemed to many
fit only for firewood.” (Beisner, 58) During the 1880s, Congress “never spent more than 1 percent of the
gross national product on the military.” (Beisner, 59) Historian Lance C. Buhl wrote, Congress did this
because they saw “absolutely no reason to compete with European nations. The integrity of the hemisphere,
despite two early crises with France and Spain, was not at stake; nor could any conceivable interest be
served by addition of territory across the seas.” (Beisner, 59) Mahan himself in 1882 said, “We have not
six ships that would be kept at sea by any maritime power.” (Beisner, 58)
By the 1880s, under President Chester A. Arthur, “Efforts to refurbish the navy began…under the
leadership…Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler, and Commodore Stephen B. Luce. Under their
aegis Captain Alfred T. Mahan’s bookish talents found a shore side platform in the new Naval War
College. A modest rebuilding program started, and it quickened in the 1890s. (Beisner, 8). Even though
much refurbishing took place, Beisner went on to note: “Though by 1898 the navy could easily outmatch
Spain’s ramshackle fleets, the glare of brilliant victories at Manila and off Cuban shores diverted attention
from remaining weaknesses….on the eve of war in 1898 the navy possessed only eight heavily armored
ships, none of which met the European standard for ‘battleship.’” (Beisner, 8)
Several factors explain refurbishing efforts of the U.S. Navy. By 1890 the importance of the
military, particularly the navy began to change in the United States. First, the United States, like most of
the Western World, believed that technology became a sign of the civilized. (Adas) These ideas reinforced
racist attitudes, and created a “new sense of what it meant to be civilized and the conviction that only
peoples of European descent measured up to standards appropriate to the industrial age.” (Adas, 195) As
Michael Adas in Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western
Dominance wrote, “As the evidence of their material achievement multiplied and pervaded all aspects of
life in industrializing societies, Europeans and (increasingly) Americans grew more and more conscious of
the uniqueness and, they believed, the superiority of Western Civilization.” (Adas, 143-144) It was
believed that exemplifying one’s technology was a way to maintain and show one’s racial superiority in the
world. These beliefs were rooted in the Social Darwinian theories of the time. Thus, the United States
began to emphasize the navy in part due to Social Darwinism.
Industrialization was another factor as to why emphasis was placed on strengthening the United
States Navy. Industrialization can be labeled as both a cause and effect. Industrialization created a surplus
of goods that needed to find other markets. Industrialization also created the transportation network
responsible for delivering the surplus goods. Like the railroads of the West which connected goods with
markets, building a modern navy required certain industries in order to build the ships efficiently and in
mass quantity. By the 1890s those industries, particularly steel mills, were capable of creating a larger U.S.
fleet.
Additionally, naval officers began to emphasize the importance of refurbishing the navy. As
Beisner noted, “however safe the country, by the end of the seventies its naval officers saw the need for
some kind of revival.” (Beisner, 59) Examining the author of the book, The Influence of Sea Power upon
History published in 1890, substantiates this claim. When Alfred Thayer Mahan, a U.S. naval officer wrote
this book, it is doubtful that he knew his book would greatly affect U.S. policy, as well as many European
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difficult time persuading Americans that they needed a larger merchant marine. I divided
this part of the chapter into two main sections. First, I examined free trade advocates
desires for a larger merchant marine in the United States. Second, I examined free trade
advocates adverseness towards militarism.
A Merchant Marine
Free trade advocates wanted a large merchant marine. Obtaining foreign markets
meant creating international infrastructure to move domestic products. Free trade
advocates argued that the United States needed a merchant marine. Gladstone asked why
Americans subsidized railroads to reach markets but not steamships.144 Protectionist
Blaine argued that according to, “the Free-Trader…if the steamship lines were
established, we could not increase our trade because we produce under our protective
tariff nothing that can compete in neutral markets with articles of the like kind from
nations. Mahan’s book argued for more than just strengthening the United States Navy, it argued that sea
power would be the lynchpin to obtaining national power.(Mahan)
This book has been thoroughly examined by many historians. LaFeber in The New Empire: An
Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 credits Mahan’s book as part of the intellectual
formulation for American empire in 1898. (LaFeber, 81-101) Weigley in The American Way of War: A
History of United States Military Strategy and Policy spent an entire chapter examining Mahan’s influence
on the strengthening of the U.S. Navy. (Weigley, 167-197) Beisner, in From the Old Diplomacy to the
New, 1865-1900, even examined Mahan, the person, as “hovering over” president McKinley as part of the
“clique of eager imperialists.” (Beisner, 121) The importance of Mahan’s book cannot be understated;
nonetheless there were still many other factors that influenced U.S. imperialism besides Mahan’s work.
Works cited from: Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New: 1865-1900 (Arlington
Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1986); Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Men: Science, Technology,
and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989); Walter LaFeber, The New
Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998), 81101.; Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History.; Russell F. Weigley, The
American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1973). For more on Social Darwinism, see: Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in
American Thought (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992); And, Mike Hawkins, Social Darwinism in European and
American Thought, 1860-1945: Nature as Model and Nature as Threat (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1992).
144
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 24.
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England.”145 Of course Gladstone argued that Blaine’s statement would not be true if the
United States also accepted free trade. Free trade advocates argued that free trade
principles were inseparable. Each principle supported another like a tower of cards.
Free trade advocate Mills argued that “American statesman [should] favor
granting subsidies to steamships to hunt for commerce which our continental position
forbids us to receive.” Mills agreed with modeling the “English policy to hunt new
markets and make a way to reach them with English products.”146 Furthermore, Mills
argued that “thousands of Americans” should carry United States’ commerce rather than
“paying 150 millions to foreigners” to do the same job.147 Mills believed that the United
States needed oceanic passages in order “to hunt” the best markets available for U.S.
products. “Hunting,” according to free trade advocates, meant, finding an insatiable
foreign market for domestic products.
Despite free trade advocates’ arguments and the United States history of having a
strong merchant marine, during the early 1890s Americans generally had more interest
about land than oceans. As Mills wrote, “…before we begin the contest with other
nations we must get rid of the Pennsylvania idea that it is better to hang a man than make
a seaman of him.”148 Furthermore, Americans probably found it difficult to understand
building infrastructure across the oceans, when the American West had a growing
145
Ibid., 51.
146
Mills, “The Gladstone-Blaine Controversy,” 151.
147
Ibid., 161.
148
Ibid.
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population and little infrastructure itself. Mills argued however, that the American West
provided no large market for U.S. products.149
Free Trade Advocates’ Anti-Militarism
Free trade advocates admitted the international infrastructure they wanted
inherently created a need for its protection. Free trade advocates understood the need for
a navy, but feared the need for the military would create “militarism.” Stated otherwise,
free trade advocates feared “a policy of aggressive military preparedness” or a
“predominance of the military class or its ideal [possibly by the] exaltation of military
virtues and ideals.”150 Americans already shared free trade advocates’ concerns about
militarism. As the military historian Russell Weigley in The American Way of War: A
History of United States Military Strategy and Policy argued, “The great structural
question throughout most of the history American policy was that of the proper form of
military organization in a democratic society, approached through a running debate over
the proper weights to give to citizen soldiers and to military professionals in the armed
forces of the United States.”151 Free trade advocates reinforced these concerns.152
Nonetheless, unlike many Americans, free trade advocates supported having a military
149
Ibid., 151.
150
Militarism, <http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?sourceid=Mozillasearch&va=militarism> (12 April 2007) Merriam-Webster’s Online Dictionary; Also, historian Michael S.
Sherry has defined militarism in as “more politically charged—evocative of Prussia, Nazi Germany, or
imperial Japan—and it refers more to a static condition than to a dynamic process.” Michael S. Sherry, In
the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), xi.
151
Weigley, xx.
152
As Cain and Hopkins noted, Gladstone in particular “had very little sympathy for those who
worried about military and naval security.” See: Cain and Hopkins, 186.
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large enough to serve as a tool to obtain foreign markets abroad, and provide the
infrastructure necessary to increase and protect shipping. This aspect about free trade
advocates reveals their similarities with American imperialists.
Note however, that at the same time free trade advocates sought limited military
building, American imperialists argued for a militaristic buildup. American imperialists
like Theodore Roosevelt championed ideas from Alfred Thayer Mahan’s recently
published book, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Mahan’s book served as a
megaphone and geopolitical strategy for ideas championing imperialism. Mahan argued
that the United States needed an immense navy to exert power on the seas and foreign
nations. Sometimes The Influence of Sea Power Upon History aligned with free trade
advocates’ ideas. But in general, Mahan focused his ideas on imperialistic principals
rather than free trade.
Godkin addressed Americans’ concerns about militarism, while also promoting
free trade ideas. In three articles, Godkin examined militarism, and what he labeled,
“navalism.” Godkin tried answering Americans’ questions about how free trade would
affect the military. He answered questions such as: How powerful would the army and
navy become? How much power would professional officers have in the military
branches? For example, some Americans asked how much power officers in the navy
would have to make diplomatic negotiations. Also, did the younger naval officers, who
would have to be promoted to command the new ships, understand the gravitas of their
new position? Did increasing the size of the military and navy to obtain foreign markets
mean that the military itself would obtain new power in the American political system?
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Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
In answering these questions, Godkin made clear that free trade advocates did not
want a military for the sake of fighting wars. According to Godkin, free trade advocates
feared that society would take on a war ethos; where war would be an answer to
problems.153 Also, free trade advocates feared the power military officers would receive
in a society that emphasized the military.154 Godkin’s article, “Navalism,” exemplified
free trade advocates’ concerns.155 Godkin discussed his concerns about the creation of a
larger navy, and the military in general. He used the term “navalism” to represent a naval
militarism. Godkin’s definition of militarism essentially was the same as today, “the
influence exerted on society and Government by the existence of an immense army.”156
Godkin believed the best example of militarism at the time could be found on the
European continent where the auspice of militarism placed too much emphasis on “the
soldier” and “honor”, which drove European governments to keep the soldiers “in good
humor.”157 According to Godkin, keeping soldiers “in good humor” meant keeping large
modernized armies as well as the promise to use them as a political means.158
153
This is why many free trade advocates were opposed to the Spanish-American War in 1898.
They did not believe the military should be used to solve the economic problems of the United States. They
did not care for the war ethos that spread across society, and they certainly did not want any colonial
possessions.
154
As historian Beisner pointed out, many of the people championing for a larger navy were
military men. This probably concerned many free trade advocates. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the
New: 1865-1900, 59.
155
E.L. Godkin, “Navalism,” The Nation, January 1894, 44.
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid.
158
For a better understanding of war as an extension of politics, see: Carl Von Clausewitz, On
War. This fundamental military text was published in Germany in 1832, and was translated in English in
1873.
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Godkin criticized continental Europe’s militarism because it hindered the business
world. Specifically, Godkin believed that militarism prevented stable civil governments
which hindered international commerce. Godkin, writing in 1894, said that militarism
kept “the European air…full of war rumors and keeps the European business world in
such a constant tremble, and surrounds the future of public liberty and civil government
in all Continental countries with so much uncertainty.”159 Free trade ideology required a
stable system where commerce flowed freely. To a free trade advocate, war opposed and
stymied commerce. Free trade advocates’ ideas resembled what economist Joseph
Schumpeter eventually labeled “commercial pacifism.”160
Godkin argued that Great Britain was the one European nation that the United
States should model while creating a larger navy. According to him, their lack of
militarism developed from their general adverseness to a standing army. Godkin believed
this made Great Britain an excellent model for the United States. Furthermore, Godkin
believed that “the growth of English liberty would never have been possible but for the
159
Godkin, “Navalism,” 44.
160
This argument worked two ways. First, Schumpeter argued that free trade needed a peaceful
international system to thrive in. Second, they argued that free trade would also create a peaceful
international system. Essentially, liberal economists believed free trade was a self-feeding machine that
perpetually increased peacefulness and commerce around the globe. Schumpeter exemplified this idea in
“The Sociology of Imperialisms,” when he wrote, “where free trade prevails no class has an interest in
forcible expansion as such.” Adam Smith addressed these same themes earlier in the Wealth of Nations,
arguing that, “…commerce and manufacturers gradually introduced order and good government, and with
them the liberty and security of individuals, among the inhabitants of the country, who had before lived in a
continual state of war with their neighbors, and of servile dependency upon their superiors. This though the
least observed is by far the most important of all their effects.” Michael W. Doyle, Ways of War and Peace:
Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 230. For more on Liberalism
in general, see part two, chapters 6, 7, and 8.
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stern determination of the people, from the earliest times, not to have a standing army.”161
Godkin then went on to write (ignoring the Civil War), that
the absence of any such force and of all necessity for it has been one of
the happy conditions of the existence of the United States. We have
never had, either afloat or ashore, any large and respectable and
respected body of men among us interested in war, or eager for war, or
able to force us into war in order to oblige them. Militarism has been
unknown in this country, and fighting, on the whole, an unpopular
profession. In truth, it was the American Government which first
introduced into international relations the practices of negotiating as
business men, and not soldiers. With this practice it has won
extraordinary diplomatic triumphs.162
Godkin emphasized placing business before war, “negotiating as business men, and not
soldiers.”163 Free trade advocates maintained that focusing on business, instead of war,
prevented militarism. Nonetheless, free trade advocates recognized the importance of a
modern navy in order to carry out business. According to Godkin, “common prudence
requires that we should have on the ocean force capable, if need be, of protecting
American commerce, repelling chance aggression, now that the world has grown so wide
and America such a huge and far reaching organization.”164
Godkin’s championing of a new and bigger navy came with many warnings.
Overlooking the Mexican War (1846-1848) and the Indian Wars (c.1600-1890), Godkin
reemphasized the need to “tenaciously…cling to the great traditions of peaceableness and
good sense which have from the beginning marked out diplomacy.”165 To Godkin, this
meant that active career soldiers should remain out of policymaking positions. Godkin
161
Godkin, “Navalism,” 44.
162
Ibid.
163
Ibid.
164
Ibid.
165
Ibid.
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believed that this made the United States unique. He claimed that “professional fighting
men have never managed to fill the departments at Washington with their peculiar love of
glory and sense of honor.”166
Over time however, Godkin’s arguments did not always match. Deciding how
much civilian power rested over the military troubled Godkin. For example, Godkin
disagreed with Secretary of the Navy Benjamin Tracy, when (according to Godkin) Tracy
took
foreign relations out of the hands of the State Department, and turned
them over to the Admirals and Captains and Lieutenant-Commanders
of our new navy, who, except the Admirals, are mostly young men, full
of fight and eager to show what the new ships can do—so that they
may fairly be considered firebrands in every foreign port.167
Godkin disliked naval officers handling non-military affairs of the state. Nonetheless, two
years later, Godkin criticized the fact that the U.S. Navy was headed by lawyers rather
than the sailors who had learned “to manage subordinates in the army or navy by having
himself served under orders.”168 Godkin wished the U.S. Navy was more like continental
European navies which were “governed by admirals” rather than “civilians.”169
Nonetheless, in general, free trade advocates desired a modern navy that would not
influence the nation-state it was supposed to serve.
166
Ibid.
167
This was in reference to the Barrundia affaire, in which Godkin argued, “Mr. Blaine, either
through weakness or blindness, acquiesced and, indeed, cooperated with the State Department to
nothingness and handling the foreign policy of the government over to navalism.” E.L. Godkin, “Naval
Alarm in England,” The Nation, 4 January 1894, 5.
168
Ibid.
169
Ibid.
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Free Trade Advocates’ Critique of Mahan
Earlier, I mentioned that sometimes Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon
History aligned with free trade advocates’ ideas. The questions remaining to be answered
are: How did Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History align with free trade
advocates’ ideas? To what degree did free trade advocates support Mahan’s theories?
And, how did free trade advocates critique Mahan’s work? Free trade advocates
answered these questions. Godkin, while addressing militarism also engaged Mahan’s
work.
Free trade advocates avoided immediately criticizing Mahan’s work. In 1892
Godkin expressed concern about the effect Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon
History may have upon the United States. Godkin feared that heeding Mahan’s advice
would lead to militarism. Nonetheless, Godkin also believed in a larger modern navy, and
in 1894 in an article titled, “Naval Alarm in England” he aligned with some of Mahan’s
points. For example, Godkin criticized the U.S. Navy for not being more militarily
professional.170 In the same article Godkin even praised Mahan’s book.
Our Capt. Mahan’s ‘Influence of the Sea Power’ has in particular done
yeoman service on the Conservative side. It is in all respects a
remarkable book, and shows, in flowing and eloquent English, how
from the earliest days supremacy on the sea has carried with it
supremacy on land.171
170
Ibid.
171
Of course Godkin also criticized part of his book claiming, “a good deal of its reasoning on this
head has been weakened or vitiated by the invention of railways, which has considerably diminished the
importance of water transportation.” But nothing was ever perfect for Godkin. And overall, he left the book
alone, leaving it with the idea that overall he approved of Mahan’s writings. Ibid.
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Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
Godkin’s opinion changed however by 1898. Godkin described how the nation
had appeared to move towards militarism.172 It had appeared to Godkin that America had
fallen in love with the idea of “war.”173 To Godkin, no war to an American should be
“splendid.”174 Furthermore, the Spanish-American War spurred drastic increases in the
military. In 1890 the U.S. Army had about 28,000 men, and “it ranked about thirteenth in
the world, smaller than Bulgaria’s…[it] ranked even lower as a military force.”175 In less
than a decade, the army increased ten times in size. According to the Department of
Defense, 306,760 people served in the Spanish-American War in 1898. Specifically,
280,564 served in the army, 22,875 served in the navy, and 3,321 served in the
marines.176
The U.S. military’s fast growth and the oncoming Spanish-American War spurred
Godkin to reevaluate Mahan’s work. In an article published a couple of months after the
Spanish-American War began, Godkin wrote that the early victories in the war were due
to America fighting a just war on behalf of the Cubans, and “because a century’s peaceful
industry has given us tremendous resources, and because our education and system of
172
E.L. Godkin, “Sea Power,” The Nation, 15 September 1898, 198-199.
173
See Robert Beisner’s Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1898-1900 for others who
had concerns about the war with Spain. For more about the Spanish-American War’s popularity, see Walter
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, Ch. 7,
“Turning Point: The McKinley Years (1896-1900); Also see, Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry Steele
Commager, and William E. Leuchtenburg, The Growth of the American Republic, vol. 2 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980), Ch. 10, “Imperialism and World Power”; For a more broad interpretation
for expansion, see: Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 18601898.
174
In reference to John Hay’s famous title for the Spanish-American War, “The Splendid Little
175
Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New: 1865-1900, 7.
War.”
176
Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the
Present, 208.
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government and institutions have given us a population of remarkable independence,
morality, and sense of justice.”177 He did not believe that militarism caused the United
States’ early victories in the war. Rather, Godkin preached against militarism and its
downfalls. Godkin in 1898 openly disagreed with Mahan. Specifically, Godkin argued
that Mahan supported imperialism. Godkin interpreted Mahan to say that, “no matter how
much territory, how many ports and vessels you may have, if you do not have some
foreign possessions, to be held by the aid of the ‘sea power,’ you are ‘nowhere,’…”178
Interpreted this way, Mahan disagreed with the anti-imperialist stance many American
free trade advocates took. Godkin attacked Mahan’s ideas. He warned against letting the
quest for “sea power” turn into the historical quest for “land power.”179
Free trade advocates did not want the oceans to turn into the condition continental
Europe was in, “literally in arms.”180 To free trade advocates, “putting all the young men
of the country under arms,.…brought to a standstill…the ordinary business of life.”181
And free trade advocates were most concerned about “business.” Under international
militarism, free trade was stymied. American free trade advocates criticized Mahan for
helping invent militarism in the United States by arguing that, “Captain Mahan [was]
trying to show us that the more of it we have, the better off we shall be.”182 Godkin
177
E.L. Godkin, “Sea Power,” 199.
178
Ibid., 198.
179
Ibid., 198-199.
180
Ibid., 198.
181
Ibid.
182
Ibid.
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believed that it did not matter how many ships one nation had, but what character the
nation had.183 As earlier, Godkin believed the United States should aspire to England’s
well-being. Godkin said, “She [England] owes her superiority, in short, to her freedom,
her laws, her spirit of justice, her love of industry; not to the ‘sea power.’”184 Ultimately
Godkin summed up his argument by citing the Emperor of Russia who had been recently
fighting against the other European Powers for ports in China. Citing the monarch for
liberal principles, Godkin quoted,
that the mad race [for sea power] should stop, just as we are beginning
it; that the peoples of Christendom should turn their attention and
talents, not to the work of destroying each other, but of averting
disease, prolonging life, promoting the arts and sciences, or, in other
words, making the lot of man on earth less and not more miserable. He
acknowledges that the use of national savings for the past fifty years to
promote ‘land power’ and ‘sea power’ is all a mistake; that it is time to
stop it and think of things more becoming to out religion and
civilization.185
In short, free trade advocates maintained an anti-militarism stance. According to
free trade advocates, militarism stymied international commerce, and prevented the most
efficient system for business to thrive—free trade. At times, free trade advocates’ ideas
aligned with Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon History. Free trade advocates
however, differed with Mahan about imperialism. Most free trade advocates were antiimperialists. Interestingly enough, origins of the U.S. Open Door Policy’s anti-militarism
principles can be seen in free trade advocates’ rhetoric. As William Appleman Williams
183
Ibid., 198-199.
184
Ibid., 199.
185
Ibid.
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wrote, the Open Door Policy “was neither a military strategy nor a traditional balance-ofpower policy. It was conceived to win the victories without the wars.”186
Part III: U.S. Reactions to Free Trade Advocates
The first two parts of this chapter examined free trade advocates’ two main
principles. This part of the chapter examines reactions to free trade advocates in the
United States. Free trade advocacy did little to change the mind of Americans between
1890 and 1894. Americans associated free trade with Great Britain. Between 1890 and
1894 many Americans distrusted Great Britain. Protectionists had an easy time arguing
that Great Britain could not have the United States’ best interest in mind. The fact that
free trade was a transatlantic discussion born out of British Liberalism worked against
free trade advocates. Coincidentally, protectionists’ criticisms and general distrust for
Great Britain revealed consciousness of some free trade effects. Furthermore, free trade
advocates who highlighted the connections between Great Britain and free trade actually
hindered persuading Americans to accept free trade. Protectionists understood that there
were other nations who practiced protectionism and did well. Thus, free trade advocates
made their case in the midst of a lot criticism from protectionists.
Distrust of Great Britain
Protectionists criticized free trade because the idea (and some of the advocacy)
came from Great Britain. Coincidentally, protectionists’ criticisms and general distrust
for Great Britain revealed consciousness of free trade effects. Between 1890 and 1894
186
Williams, 57.
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many Americans, especially protectionists, distrusted Great Britain. This section
examines the protectionists’ distrusts of Great Britain in the debates. Why would
Gladstone, leader of the strongest nation in the balance-of-power system, give Americans
the playbook for world domination? What incentive did he have to do this? Many
Americans did not realize how bad the United States’ protectionist policy hurt Great
Britain.187 Furthermore, Gladstone had long admired the United States, and believed the
two nations’ fates were bound because of their connection through race.188
Protectionists were skeptical of Gladstone’s opening comments in the first free
trade debate of 1890. Gladstone wrote, “…if America shall frankly adopt and steadily
maintain a system of free trade, she will by degrees…outstrip us in the race, and will
probably take the place which at present belongs to us”189 Protectionists wondered why
Gladstone so willingly shared this information. Gladstone argued that if the United States
accepted free trade, “that she will not injure us by the operation. On the contrary, she will
do us good. Her freedom of trade will add to our present commerce and our present
wealth, so that we shall be better than we now are.”190 Near the end of the article
Gladstone wrote again, “if America…surpassed in industrial discoveries the race from
which her people sprang, we do not grudge her the honor or the gain.”191 Protectionists
found Gladstone’s arguments unpersuasive.
187
Gerlach, 186.
188
Ibid., 163-201.
189
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 2.
190
Ibid.
191
Ibid., 23.
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Protectionists responded to free trade advocacy. Protectionists argued that free
trade ideas were only applicable to Great Britain. Thus, free trade ideas could not be in
the United States’ best interest. Protectionists wanted to completely establish free trade as
a British idea. They gave a history of free trade, and showed how it developed in Great
Britain. While examining free trade’s history in Great Britain, protectionists highlighted
free trade’s negative points. Interesting enough, when protectionists highlighted free
trade’s negative points, they revealed consciousness about free trade’s misdeeds.
Furthermore, protectionists told Americans that protectionist ideology was not alone, and
that most European nations practiced protectionism. Free trade looked like a British plot
for world dominance by the time protectionists finished attacking it.
Protectionists first tried to claim that free trade was a British idea. Blaine
informed Americans that free trade only resided in Great Britain, and that “The most
eminent statesman on the continent of Europe hold opinions on this subject directly the
reverse of” free trade advocates.192 Furthermore, Blaine claimed that, “free trade, in all its
generalizations and specifications, is fitted exactly to the condition of Great Britain.”193
Blaine’s claim established the foundation for protectionists’ arguments. From this point
Lodge investigated free trade’s history in Great Britain. In the process, Lodge highlighted
free trade’s negative points, and revealed consciousness about free trade’s misdeeds.
Lodge wanted Americans to understand that free trade had a long history, because Lodge
wanted Americans to know that free trade had not fulfilled its promises over its long
existence. Lodge claimed that none of free trade’s promises could be seen after
192
Ibid., 39.
193
Ibid., 46.
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examining Great Britain’s history under free trade. Free trade advocates claimed free
trade would be better for labor, and replace war with negotiations. Lodge found neither
promise fulfilled in Great Britain’s history under free trade. If anything, Lodge found the
opposite. Slightly telling, free trade advocates dismissed Lodge’s claims instead of
engaging them.194
Despite all the statistical models free trade advocates used in their articles, which
supposedly showed free trade was better for labor, Lodge found abundant labor problems
in Great Britain. Lodge argued that free trade did not benefit labor, nor prevented labor
strikes. According to Lodge,
the great problems of labor, of poverty, and of over-population seem as
severe in free trade England as in protective countries. Free trade again
does not seem to have prevented the rise of trusts and syndicates, nor to
have stopped the accumulation of vast wealth in a few hands.195
Furthermore, Lodge reminded Americans that free trade had not “put an end to strikes,
for strikes have never been more frequent anywhere than they have been in Great Britain
of late years,” nor had it “perceptibly diminished poverty, if we may judge from such
recent books as The Bitter Cry of Outcast London and Through Darkest England.” 196
Lodge spoke most adamantly about labor. Trying to disprove that free trade benefited
labor, Lodge showed how free trade had ignored labor problems and increased
industrialists’ wealth. Lodge wrote that
194
Wells, like the previous discussion, did not directly engage Lodge’s points. He dismissed them,
and guided the debate away from such evidence. Wells, “Reply: Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 16.
195
Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 656.
196
Ibid.
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there is no evidence that free trade has had any effect on the most
serious questions of the day, which touch the welfare of the great
masses of the people. All that can be said is that the manufacturing and
industrial interests of Great Britain seem to have thriven under it.197
Lodge had just revealed the greatest truth about free trade. Free trade was just another
capitalist methodology in order to obtain the most out of the proletariat while enriching
the bourgeoisie. Note, Lodge did not sincerely care about labor. Lodge’s comments were
meant to defend protectionism; what Republican businessmen wanted in the early 1890s.
Lodge concluded investigating free trade’s effects on labor by examining an issue
close to many Americans. Lodge revealed free trade’s effects on Ireland. Irish labor could
not find jobs, or if they did, could not afford the cost of living. As Lodge wrote, “The
state of Ireland has not been indicative of a healing and life-giving prosperity,” that free
trade promised.198 With thousands of Irish immigrants coming into the United States
starting with the potato famine in the 1840s, Ireland’s condition was literally close to
home.199 According to Lodge, labor did not benefit at all from free trade.
Besides labor, Lodge also attacked free trade advocates’ claim that free trade
reduced and even prevented war. Lodge wrote,
197
Ibid.
198
Ibid.
199
Irish immigration: 1830: 54,00; 1850: 962,000; 1880: 1,967,000; 1900: 2,663. Note: “these
numbers show the foreign population in each census and people will usually show up for several
census….The 1830 numbers are from immigration statistics as listed in the 2004 Year Book of Immigration
Statistics. The 1830 numbers list un-naturalized foreign citizens in 1830 and does not include naturalized
foreign born. The 1850 census is the first census that asks for place of birth. The historical census data can
be found online in the Virginia Library Geostat Center.” Found in: “Immigration summary 1830 to 2000,”
Immigration to the United States, 26 March 2007,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_States#Immigration_1850_to_1930> (25 March
2007), Wikipedia.
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Free trade, according to its originators, was to usher in an era of peace
and good-will. It was, in its extension, to put an end to wars. It has
certainly not brought peace to England, which has had a petty war of
some sort on her hands almost every year since the free trade gospel
was preached.200
Lodge assumed free trade policies were in place since the 1840s. In which case,
Lodge’s comment seemed true. At the time of his article Great Britain had been involved
in at least eighteen wars, including the Crimean War (1854-1856), the Second Opium
War (1856-1860), and the First Boer War (1880-1881). Of course shortly after his article,
when free trade dominated British thought, Britain was involved in at least another two
wars: the Second Boer War (1899-1902) and the Boxer Rebellion (1900).201 Lodge
lacked understanding the grasp free trade held in Great Britain. Some of the earlier wars
actually led Great Britain to adopt more free trade policies. Nonetheless, Lodge’s
statement that, “I do not mean to say that this is in the least due to free trade, but it is
quite obvious that free trade did not stop fighting,” arguably was true.202 Lodge disagreed
that if more nations accepted free trade, a universal understanding that war hurt business
would prevent war from occurring. Lodge believed the selfishness inherent in capitalism
prevented free trade’s warless world.
After claiming that free trade was a British idea and that free trade had not solved
labor problems or prevented war, protectionists argued that free trade was not in the best
interests of the United States, but was in the best financial interest of Great Britain.
200
Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 655.
201
The four wars before World War I: Anglo-Zanzibar War (1896); Second Boer War (1899–
1902); Boxer Rebellion (1900); Anglo-Aro war (1901-1902); World War I (1914–1918). As found on: List
of British Military Encounters, 26 February 2007,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_military_history#19th_Century> ( 25 March 2007), Wikipedia.
202
Lodge, “Protection Or Free Trade—Which?,” 655.
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Blaine and Morrill argued that free trade only financially benefited Great Britain. Blaine
described how Great Britain “with a vast capital accumulated, with a low rate of interest
established, and with a manufacturing power unequaled…underbid all rivals in seeking
for the trade of the world.”203 Under these conditions Blaine argued that, “The traffic of
the world seemed prospectively in her control. Could this condition of trade have
continued, no estimate of the growth of England’s wealth would be possible. Practically
it would have had no limit.”204 Blaine argued that early industrialization placed Great
Britain in the unique position to practice free trade.
Protectionists believed free trade allowed Great Britain to dominate the markets.
Blaine argued that the United States had once before almost come under Great Britain’s
economic control. He claimed if Great Britain “ha[d] retained her control of the markets
of the United States as she held it for the four years preceding the outbreak of the Civil
War… the American people would have grown commercially dependent upon her in a
greater degree than is Canada or Australia to-day.”205 Blaine however, credited
American’s realization that Great Britain was trying to take advantage of the United
States. Blaine claimed, “The American people had, by repeated experience, learned that
the periods of depression in home manufacturers were those in which England most
prospered in her commercial relations with the United States...”206 Thus, Blaine gave
historical resonance to the free trade debates of the 1890s, by examining previous free
203
Gladstone and Blaine, “A Duel: Free Trade verse Protection,” 31.
204
Ibid.
205
Ibid.
206
Ibid.
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trade “attacks” on the United States. Furthermore, Blaine’s analysis revealed
consciousness about how free trade benefited the larger economic partner in the
relationship between two nations, as well as infringe on the economically weaker nation’s
sovereignty.
Protectionists’ greatest fear was that the United States would become
commercially dependent on Great Britain. Blaine expressed this fear, and even showed
concern that free trade ideology had already entered the United States. Blaine revealed
free trade ideology within President Grover Cleveland’s speech delivered to Congress in
December, 1887.207 Blaine responded to the speech by pointing out that, “Mr. Cleveland
stands without a rival at the head of the free-trade party in the United States, and it is
instructive to see how exactly he adopts the line of argument used by the English FreeTrader.”208 Besides attacking a political rival in the Democratic Party, Blaine wanted
Americans to fear free trade ideology.
Blaine argued that the United States did not need Britain commercially, but that
Britain needed the United States. Indeed, Blaine believed the United States was
exceptional. Blaine stated that Britain’s “life depends upon its connection with other
207
Cleveland’s entire speech: Delivered to Congress in December, 1887: “Our present tariff laws,
as their primary and plain effect, raise the price to consumers of all articles imported and subject to duty, by
precisely the sum paid for such duties. Thus the amount of the duty measures the tax paid by those who
purchase for use these imported articles. Many of these things, however, are raised or manufactured in our
own country, and the duties now levied upon foreign goods and products are called protection to these
home manufacturers, because they render it possible for those of our people who are manufacturers to make
these taxed articles and sell them for a price equal to that demanded for the imported goods that have paid
customs duty. So it happens that, while comparatively a few use the imported articles, millions of our
people, who never use and never saw any of the foreign products, purchase and use things of the same kind
made in this country, and pay therefore nearly or quite the same enhanced price which the duty adds to the
imported articles.” Ibid., 43.
208
Ibid.
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countries. Its prosperity rests upon its connection with other countries.”209 Blaine thus
argued that free trade was part of Britain’s strategy to maintain and increase their
“connections.” Thus, free trade only served the interest of Great Britain. Blaine and
Morrill argued that free trade was not in the best interest of the United States. Essentially
protectionists feared that if the United States adopted free trade it would again become
Great Britain’s colony. Both Blaine and Morrill understood free trade as a form of
imperialism. This conclusion is critical. Protectionists understood free trade was a geopolitical strategy to conquer the world. Thus, to Morrill and Blaine, protectionism was a
way of halting British imperialism. Specifically, according to Blaine, “protection…‘is
prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain,’ that ‘it lessens our
dependence upon Great Britain,’ and…‘it interferes with profits made by British
merchants’” 210
Blaine and Morrill made sure that Americans understood free trade was
imperialism. Drawing on patriotic memories from the past, Blaine made the new free
trade debates appear like the United States’ war for independence. Blaine suggested that
Mr. Gladstone’s pregnant suggestion really exhibits the thought that
lies deep in the British mind: that the mechanic arts and the
manufacturing processes should be left to Great Britain and the
production of raw material should be left to America. It is the old
colonial idea of the last century, when the establishment of
manufactures on this side of the ocean was regarded with great jealousy
by British statesman and British merchants.211
To drive the point home, Blaine compared the new form of imperialism (free trade) with
the old form of imperialism (colonialism).
209
Ibid., 29.
210
Ibid., 46.
211
Ibid.
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Some years before the Revolutionary struggle began, Parliament had
declared that ‘the erecting of manufactories in the colonies tends to
lessen their dependence on Great Britain.’ A few years later the British
Board of Trade reported to Parliament that ‘manufactures in the
American colonies interfere with profits made by British merchants.’
The same body petitioned Parliament that ‘some measures should be
provided to prevent the manufacturing of woollen and linen goods in
the colonies.’” Finally Parliament declared that ‘colonial manufacturing
was prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain.’ These
outrageous sentiments (the colonists characterized them much more
severely) were cherished in the time of the glorious Georges, in the era
of Walpole and the elder Pitt….there is a remarkable similarity to the
old policy in the fundamental idea that causes him in 1889 to suggest
that Americans produce ‘too much cloth and to much iron,’ and should
turn their labor to ‘low-priced cereals and low-priced cotton.’212
Morrill made similar historical patriotic comparisons.
Supplemental to British free trade, and inseparable from it, will be
found the following: A land and house tax, paid by occupiers as well as
by owners; a tax on legacies and successions; a stamp tax on bills of
exchange, receipts, and patents; a tax on carriages, horses, manservants, guns, and dogs; an excise on gin and all other spirits; and a
tax on incomes. The woes of our rebellion gave us all the experience in
this sad line of taxation we shall ever covet.213
Morrill came to a similar but more succinct conclusion as Blaine. Morrill wrote, “As
dependencies of Great Britain, we were annually robbed and had no protection, and
therefore declared our independence.”214 Morrill however, wanted Americans to
understand the maliciousness behind British imperialism. Morrill examined how free
trade affected Ireland’s relationship with Great Britain. Morrill asked, “after years of
close contact with a great free-trade kingdom…[can anyone] believe that the free-trade
policy has been best for Ireland?” 215 Morrill concluded that, “The sublime virtue of
having no prejudices in favor of their own country does not seem to have taken root in
212
Ibid.
213
Morrill, “Free Trade or Protection: Continuation of the Gladstone-Blaine Controversy,” 295.
214
Ibid., 290.
215
Ibid., 283.
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that part of the United Kingdom.216 In a more direct quotation about free trade effects,
Morrill clarified and revealed free trade’s true nature:
He [Gladstone] cannot finish what he calls his ‘indictment against
protection’ until he has anathematized it as ‘morally as well as
economically bad’—not that all Protectionist are bad, but that the
system tends to harden all ‘into positive selfishness.’ This is an
indictment with which all nations are graciously covered except the
British, and the British may stand up and thank God that they ‘are not
as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this
publican.’ The world, however, will be slow to believe that free trade
was adopted, or is now upheld, for any other reason than its supposed
advantages, not to moral, but to British material and trading, interests.
If any nation has exhibited more of purely financial selfishness than
embroiders the history of some British administrations, it has not been
recorded. This part of the indictment against protection is as gratuitous
as it would as it would be to say that not all Free-Traders are liars, but
the system tends to harden all into positive falsification. Though we
might highly appreciate the good opinion of Mr. Gladstone, he leaves
us in no doubt that it cannot be won unless we ‘frankly adopt and
steadily maintain a system of free trade.’ We must, however, frankly
and steadily maintain that the terms are too exorbitant.217
At this point Morrill reminded Americans that
…Mr. Gladstone forgets that he and his countrymen are not entirely
without sin, and may not, therefore, cast the first stone across the
Atlantic even to hit Americans. But others have not forgotten that free
trade was begotten by greed for the trade of the world, that it was the
British war power which forced, and continues to force, the opium
trade upon China, by which the Indian government obtains an annual
income of near forty million dollars….and that soil of the United
Kingdom is in fewer hands than that of any other country in Europe.218
The late-nineteenth-century debate about which capitalistic tactics worked better
brought out truths about capitalism that became shrouded in the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Protectionists understood free trade as imperialism. Since Great Britain
wanted the United States to adopt free trade, protectionists believed there was no reason
to trust the British. Stated otherwise, protectionists’ interpretations about free trade
216
Ibid.
217
Ibid., 298.
218
Ibid., 298-299.
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helped create an extreme distrust of Great Britain. Morrill directly questioned
Gladstone’s motive.
Of course Mr. Gladstone is sincere. He is among the first, if not the
foremost, of loyal Englishmen, and could not be induced to advocate
any measure that would not benefit his own country. He sees that free
trade with America would offer a prodigious market for British
manufactures, and that absorbing advantage hides everything
beyond.219
Morrill believed in nationalities, and that an Englishman’s first loyalty would be to his
nation. With this Morrill concluded Americans should be weary of Gladstone’s
proposition “that ‘you cannot have too much of free trade; doubtless feeling that other
nations cannot have too much of it to suit Great Britain.”220 And he reminded Americans
by quoting Virgil, “I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.”221 The amount this
distrust held back free trade’s adoption in the United States cannot be quantified, but it
certainly played a role.
Republicans, championing the protectionists’ cause, adopted an anti-free trade
platform. George Hoar, on behalf of the Republican Party, wrote what the Republican
Party would not stand for.
I confidently predict that it will not commit itself by any declaration to
which it can be held in regard to any single practical measure. It will
not say to Alabama and Tennessee and West Virginia, ‘We are for free
iron.’ It is quite doubtful whether it will even venture to say again to
Ohio, ‘We are for free wool.’ Nor will it say to the textile
manufacturers of New England, ‘We are for free woolens.’222
219
Ibid., 295.
220
Ibid., 290.
221
Ibid., 294.
222
George F. Hoar, “Reasons for Republican Control,” The Forum, June 1892, 123.
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Furthermore, American protectionists, like free trade advocates, found support
from Great Britain. Masham, President of the Fair Trade Club in London, claimed in the
The Forum that free trade advocates in the Cobden Club in 1892 had
ceased from seeking to convert the United States, on the pretence that
British interests may be best served by that country adhering to
Protection, thereby (according to their doctrine) crippling its producing
power. This utter negation of the Free Exchange policy by modern
British Free Traders is worthy of note…showing…how completely the
scientific theory is discredited in Europe, even among its professed
followers.223
Masham’s comments lent to Americans’ distrust of free trade advocates.
Masham criticized free trade because of the likelihood that Great Britain would
become dependent on other nations. Masham highlighted the potential consequences
Great Britain could suffer if it remained dependent on other nations for food stuffs.
Masham wrote, “To become more and more dependent on these external supplies, with
decreasing exchange commerce, is a menace not merely to the productive capacity of the
United Kingdom internally, but even to its national pre-eminence.”224 Masham believed
that loosing a nation’s ability to be self-sustaining would endanger the national security
of the nation. Masham’s ideas struck accord with American protectionists. Masham
wanted a self-sustaining empire. Like the protectionists Republicans Morrill and Lodge,
Masham believed in tight national boundaries. Masham praised the United States’
protectionist policy, and argued that protectionism was in Americans best interest.225
In short, American protectionists’ distrust of Great Britain revealed
protectionists’ consciousness about free trade’s effects. Protectionists feared the results of
223
Masham, “Has England Profited by Free Trade?,” The Forum, September 1892, 325.
224
Ibid.
225
Ibid., 336.
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free trade on the United States. In the early 1890s some Americans knew about free
trade’s effects. Their ideas were not penned in some stack of private papers, memoirs, or
journals. They published their ideas in an open forum, in front of thousands of Americans
in articles still available today. Protectionists offered many criticisms about, and spurred
much distrust for free trade. Highlighting free trade’s supposedly unfulfilled promises—
an end to war and labor strikes—as well as the imperialistic ideas found in free trade
ideology, delayed the United States acceptance of free trade. Many of the future Open
Door Policy’s tenets and promises can be seen in the debate. Using the Open Door Policy
to build an empire can perhaps be easier seen in protectionists’ criticisms about free trade
than liberal ideology surrounding the Open Door Policy in the twentieth century.
Summation
Between 1890 and 1894 British and American free trade advocates introduced
British Liberal ideology to the United States through U.S. periodicals. Through three
different parts of the chapter, I examined two aspects of British Liberal ideology—free
trade, and minimal militarization—as well as Americans’ reactions to free trade. As
Americans engaged free trade, whether to criticize or support it, British Liberal ideas
remained imprinted on them. As the Crisis of the 1890s began in 1893 with a series of
depressions, Americans became more open to supposed solutions to their economic
problems. Shortly after Americans implemented imperialism in 1898, they became open
to more efficient imperialistic methods. Dealing with crisis and dilemmas helped move
free trade advocates ideas to the forefront of American politics. Free trade advocates’
ideas were eventually expressed in the U.S. Open Door Policy. Origins of the policy’s
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elements were highlighted throughout the three parts of the chapter. Nonetheless, at this
point, between 1890 and 1894, free trade advocates only left small imprints on the
American mind, while also displaying their similarities with American imperialists.
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CHAPTER III
THE VENEZUELAN CRISIS, 1895-1896
Introduction
Between 1895 and 1896 the Venezuelan Crisis reinforced that free trade
advocates in Great Britain and the United States worked together. The Venezuelan Crisis
also established divisions between free trade advocates, and affected how free trade
advocates would champion free trade in the future. Specifically free trade advocates
Edwin Godkin and Charles Eliot Norton226 published articles in U.S. periodicals
addressing the Venezuelan Crisis.227 Some free trade advocates, like Andrew Carnegie228
and Edward Atkinson,229 helped prevent the crisis from turning into war by working with
British Liberals in Great Britain. Overall however, Americans generally disagreed with
free trade advocates’ opinions.
Throughout the Venezuelan Crisis, free trade advocates’ opinions ran counter to
most of the United States’ actions during the crisis. Free trade advocates disagreed with
the administration’s new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, opposed war with Great
Britain, and in general supported England’s action in apologetic articles. Free trade
advocates blamed American society for rejecting free trade and other British Liberal
ideals, which free trade advocates believed represented “the civilized.” Free trade
advocates’ elitism was more apparent during the Venezuelan Crisis. Furthermore, free
226
Charles Eliot Norton is better introduced in the section “The Barbarian Society.”
227
Free trade advocates published in The Nation and The Forum.
228
The famous Irish-American industrialist who founded U.S. Steel.
229
Edward Atkinson is better introduced in the section “The Monroe Doctrine.”
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trade advocates’ elitism revealed their similarities in principles to imperialists, especially
about race.
The chapter begins with a brief overview of the Venezuelan Crisis. I divided the
rest of the chapter into different sections examining free trade advocates’ opinions during
the crisis. Furthermore, within the different sections, I was able to highlight various
themes of the chapter as a whole. The first section after the brief introduction examined
free trade advocates’ opinions about the United States’ use of the Monroe Doctrine. This
section reveals free trade advocates’ general reactions to the Venezuelan Crisis. I then
examined free trade advocates’ opposition to war with Great Britain. This section reveals
free trade advocates’ transatlantic connections. I then examined free trade advocates’
apologetic attitude towards Great Britain during the Venezuelan Crisis. This section
reveals some divisions between free trade advocates. The last section examined free trade
advocates’ opinions about Americans. This section reveals free trade advocates’ elitism
and racism that mirror imperialists. The discussions about the “the Barbarian” societies
indicated a change in free trade arguments that highlighted race. Race eventually became
a major factor for free trade advocates between 1897 and 1899.
The Venezuelan Crisis
The Venezuelan Crisis between Great Britain and the United States during 1895
and 1896 is increasingly overlooked. The stakes increased in the border dispute between
Great Britain and Venezuela when the United States demanded that it arbiter the dispute.
Globalization theories as well as democratic peace theories have attempted to remove the
word “crisis,” from this event. For example, Cain and Hopkins argued in British
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Imperialism 1688-2000, the event only “threatened to become a major crisis.”230 The
British historian, Kenneth Bourne, also believed that the United States and Great Britain
were too close in political nature for war to break out between them. Bourne argued the
crisis was largely “unimportant” because it was based on a “simple misunderstanding.”
Bourne believed that given other European alliances and events taking place in the
international system, upsetting a potential ally on the issue of “pride” dictated Brittan’s
acquiescence and decision not to go to war.231 These perceptions are false. In 1895 and
1896 many Americans perceived war as a viable solution to the border dispute in
Venezuela.232 The historian Walter LaFeber argued that the crisis that ensued ranked
third in importance “in the development of the new empire, only the economic effects of
the 1893-1897 depression and the battle of Manila Bay in 1898 rank” above it.233
The event began in 1895 when the United States decided to involve itself in a
long debated border dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. Upon entering the
debate as an arbiter, Great Britain refused to recognize the United States’ opinion. The
border dispute between Venezuela and Great Britain began in 1841 with a British
surveyor. However the cause of the United States’ involvement arguably started in 1893.
230
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688-2000, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman,
2002), 250.
231
Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy of Victorian England 1830-1902 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1970), 171.
232
This is revealed in other secondary sources, as well as the primary documents I examined for
this chapter.
233
Walter LaFeber’s chapter, “Reaction: The Venezuelan Boundary Crisis of 1895-1896” is
perhaps one of the finest pieces of literature on U.S. foreign relations in the Venezuelan Boundary Crisis. I
cite it heavily, and greatly agree with its interpretation of the event. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An
Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 35th Anniversary Edition, (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1998), 242-283.
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The 1893 depression escalated the belief that expansion could solve U.S. economic
problems.234 The United States mainly focused on Latin America as the solution to these
economic problems.235 In particular, American businessmen viewed the mouth of the
Orinoco River as a “potential for tapping trade with the interior of South America.”236
Furthermore, gold found near the disputed territory escalated the desire of the United
States and European nations to obtain the area.
During this time, the Cuyuni gold fields had recently produced the world’s largest
gold nugget.237 England, Germany, France, and the United States238 were on the gold
standard, since 1870 the gold standard served “as a basis for international monetary
affairs.”239 As the economic historian Barry Eichengreen in Globalizing Capital: A
History of the International Monetary System wrote, “only then [since the 1870 gold
standard] were pegged exchange rates based on the gold standard firmly established.”240
Thus the importance of gold, especially in its use for trade, cannot be understated.
Latin America’s potential for trade, foreign direct investment, and gold sources,
drew attention from European nations besides Great Britain and the United States.
234
See Chapter 1.
235
LaFeber, 242.
236
Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 2nd ed. (Arlington Heights:
Harlan Davidson, 1986, 109.
237
Ibid.
238
The United States was not officially on the gold standard until 1900. Nonetheless, gold strongly
influenced the United States’ economy.
239
Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 9, 21.
240
Ibid., 9.
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Germany and France began encroaching on Latin America. Germany in 1886 “made a
bid for informal influence by mounting an export drive consisting of manufacturers,
military aid, and settlers backed by the Deutsche Ueberseeische Bank.”241 France “also
tried to enlarge her share of trade and investment, particularly through the agency of the
Crédit Mobilier and the Banque de Paris et des Pays Bas.”242 The interplay between these
nations in Latin America reflected interplay in the larger international system.243 As Cain
and Hopkins noted, “Britain reacted vigorously to this new foreign challenge by
tightening her grip on areas which were considered to be worth holding…attention was
concentrated increasingly on the three most important countries, Argentina, Brazil and
Chile.”244 The United States began tightening its grip in Latin America too. According to
Beisner, Germany, Great Britain, and France increased their presence during this time
period.245
241
Cain and Hopkins, British, 250.
242
Ibid.
243
As Robert Beisner notes, “The scramble for empire had intensified in the thirty-three months
between Cleveland’s inauguration in March 1893 and his bellicose message on Venezuela. In Asia, France
had reduced Laos to a protectorate and joined Russia and Germany in forcing Japan to disgorge the
mainland gains from her war with China. In Africa, Italy had come to terms with England on shares of East
Africa and launched a campaign to conquer Ethiopia; Belgium was attempting to find territory on the
Upper Nile; Germany had carved out the boundaries of the Cameroons in agreements with Britain and
France, while the latter had taken over Guinea, the Ivory Coast, the Dahomey and begun the conquest of
Madagascar; Britain had made a protectorate of Uganda, occupied Matabeleland, annexed Pondoland and
Togoland, organized Rhodesia and the East African Protectorate, and annexed ‘British’ Bechuanaland to
her Cape Colony. As for the Western Hemisphere, Joseph Smith has shown that ‘the assumption of
diplomatic conflict between the United States and Europe over Latin America was illustory,’ including in
Venezuela.” Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 114.
244
These three nations, “…on the eve of World War I, accounted for 85 per cent of Latin
America’s foreign trade and 69 per cent of all publicly issued British capital placed in the continent.” Great
Britain began tightening its grip in other places around the world too. As Cain and Hopkins noted, Great
Britain also tightened their control “in the Ottoman Empire, China and Africa.” Cain and Hopkins, 251.
245
In particular, “…Germany and Britain had displayed an alarming interest in the Brazilian
rebellion; France had seemed menacing while hectoring Santo Domingo with naval demonstrations and
claiming Brazilian territory for French Guiana (which led to combat between French and Brazilian troops
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President Cleveland, his administration, and the public believed that Venezuela
could solve their economic hardships. Cleveland in particular backed the gold standard.
Since the “crime of ’73,” the congressional decision “not to resume the free coinage of
silver,” the Bland-Allison Act of 1878 and the Sherman Act of 1890 had been passed
allowing silver to be coined on a miniscule level. Cleveland’s desire for a gold standard
differed with other Americans’ opinions. For example, William Jennings Bryan proposed
adopting a silver standard.246 Nonetheless, Cleveland and most Americans did not want
Great Britain to directly obtain the Cuyuni gold fields. The fact that Great Britain had just
begun building a railroad into the gold fields probably escalated these concerns.247
Furthermore, many American businessmen believed obtaining Latin America’s
trade was necessary. They believed the mouth of the Orinoco River was especially
important for capturing trade since it wound deep into the northern tip of South America.
And even though Venezuelan’s voices often remained unheard in the crisis, they played
the “Orinoco trump card for all it was worth.”248 With these beliefs in mind, American
businessmen pressured the administration for action to protect future markets. In
February 1895, Congress passed a resolution on Venezuela.249 In May, Don Dickinson, a
Democrat from Michigan, and loyal supporter of Cleveland, delivered this speech:
in May 1895)’ and Great Britain had not only been badgering Nicaragua, but had also occupied the islet of
Trinidad despite the prior claims of Brazil.” Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 114115.
246
Ironically, After Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” speech he ultimately usurped the Democratic
presidential nominee after Cleveland.
247
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 252.
248
Ibid.
249
Ibid., 250.
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We are a great nation of producers; we need and must have open
markets throughout the world to maintain and increase our prosperity. .
. .Whereas our interests in the early days were largely at home, our
material interests today depend upon the markets abroad. We have
entered the lists in the great contest of live and let live with commercial
Europe, and our diplomacy should be alert to secure and protect favors
and advantage from all peoples that buy and sell or have a port our
ships can enter.250
What Dickinson meant by “open markets” was that markets should remain open to the
United States. Some Americans feared that even if Great Britain implemented free trade
in Latin America the United States would not be able to compete with the manufacturing
power of Great Britain. The only free trade desired by most American businessmen in
Latin America was one just between the Americas.251
With a strong American voice pushing for action,252 Cleveland and his Secretary
of State Robert Olney issued a dispatch to Great Britain on 20 July 1895. As many
historians on the topic have already noted, the dispatch “was an amazing document.”253
The dispatch reinterpreted the Monroe Doctrine. Olney’s famous statement, (as cited by
Beisner, LaFeber, Bourne, and Bradford Perkins) declared:
250
Ibid., 251.
251
Ibid., 249.
252
Walter LaFeber believed public opinion motivated the congressional resolution and further
actions. See: LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898. But other
historians, like Robert Beisner argue that, “The American public…remained generally unaware of the
dispute until Congress passed resolutions in favor of arbitration in the early months of 1895 and the press
picked up the scent.” Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 110. Though public
opinion is hard to measure, I have sided with LaFeber because his evidence is more apparent, and my
evidence leads me to believe that there was public consciousness and motivation before the congressional
resolution, which stimulated such results.
253
Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 110.
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Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and
its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its
interposition…because, in addition to all other grounds, its infinite
resources combined with its isolated position render it master of the
situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other
powers.254
As we will see, free trade advocates disagreed with Olney’s interpretation and
statement. But many Americans reacted with patriotic support.255 The British were
caught off guard by the bold language. Joseph Chamberlain, Colonial Secretary of Great
Britain, said “The Americans are not people to run away from.”256 Many of the British
believed the United States was weak. Lord Salisbury, Prime Minister and acting as his
own foreign minister, responded with a harsh reply on 7 December 1895. Salisbury
essentially rejected all of Olney’s claims and desires, from U.S. arbitration to the newly
found interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. Cleveland replied on 17 December 1895
with what Robert Beisner has called, “one of the greatest bombshells ever tossed into the
halls of Congress.”257
Cleveland’s December response revealed America’s desire for expansion.258 He
stated that the United States had a
duty …to resist by every means in its power as a willful aggression
upon its rights and interests the appropriation by Great Britain of any
lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory
which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to
Venezuela.259
254
Ibid.
255
Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895-1914 (New
York: Atheneum, 1968), 18.
256
Ibid., 17.
257
Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 111.
258
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 242.
259
Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 111.
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Cleveland admitted to the world that he was “fully alive to the responsibility incurred,
and…all the consequences that may follow.”260 He was referring to war. Many
Americans patriotically supported President Cleveland’s message.261 In general, free
trade advocates opposed Cleveland’s message, but they were the minority.
Though Americans readied for war, they certainly wished to avoid it. Or as
Perkins wrote, “to twist the lion’s tail was one thing…to face the possibility of an English
war was quite another.”262 Great Britain also desired to avoid war. Cleveland’s harshness
frustrated Englishmen, but “three hundred and fifty M.P.’s [more than half] signed a
petition urging arbitration…”263 In part this was due to a more immediate and important
arena of conflict. The imperialistic European land grab had created a serious standoff
between Great Britain and Germany in South Africa. On 2 January 1896, the German
Emperor telegraphed the president of the Transvaal Free State (an independent Boer
state) and congratulated him for capturing the Jameson raiders.264 As LaFeber noted, “An
intense anti-German feeling erupted in Great Britain, and the Venezuelan difficulty was
relegated to the background.”265
With conflict brewing between Great Britain and Germany, Great Britain,
desiring to keep the United States as an ally, conceded to Cleveland’s demands.
260
Ibid.
261
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 270.
262
Perkins, 18.
263
Ibid.,17.
264
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 276.
265
Ibid., 276.
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According to Beisner, Great Britain had become, “acutely aware of the diplomatic
isolation in Europe, Britain suddenly realized the value of a friendly United States.”266 I
argue later, with the evidence I examined, that other factors behind the scenes helped lead
to arbitration instead of war. For example, many free trade advocates worked on both
sides of the Atlantic to prevent war. Nonetheless, in summary, “On 12 November 1896,
Pauncefote and Olney signed the arbitration agreement, which was negotiated in a
convention of general arbitration on 11 January 1897.”267 The ultimate arbitration in
October1899 and conclusion misleads historians to believe that the event might be
“unimportant,” since Great Britain received everything they had originally wanted.268
However, the event is important because it revealed two key aspects about the
United States and Europe. First, the Venezuelan Crisis revealed U.S. expansionists’
desires, and their willingness to go to war. These actions only prefaced upcoming events
like the Spanish-American War. Second, the crisis’ conclusion revealed that other powers
would be less willing to check American power. As the British historian Bourne noted,
Great Britain
bowed before the American adoration of the Monroe Doctrine, as she
had never avowedly done before. And the crisis did play a vital part in
alerting British opinion and British statesman to the dangers of clashing
with the new-found enthusiasm of the United States.269
Great Britain’s actions set a precedent. When the United States arguably unfairly
declared war on Spain right when Spain had begun conceding to the United States’
266
Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1865-1900, 112.
267
Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the
Late Victorian Age (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 235.
268
Bourne, 171.
269
Ibid.
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demands, European nations sat on their hands when “in the view of most European
statesman the Americans forced the war just when the Spanish Government seemed to be
coming to its senses.”270
Free trade advocates participated in the Venezuelan Crisis described above. Free
trade advocates opposed the United States’ actions and for the most part supported Great
Britain. In general, free trade advocates opposed patriotic Americans supporting
expansion and war with Great Britain. They challenged new interpretations of the
Monroe Doctrine. At the same time, many free trade advocates became disappointed with
American society’s lust for war. They searched for reasons to explain what they called
American society’s “deterioration.” However, despite their sense of loss, their ideas were
not completely ignored. Aspects of free trade ideology could be seen in U.S. policy
towards Latin America.
The Monroe Doctrine
Many free trade advocates opposed Olney’s and Cleveland’s interpretation of the
Monroe Doctrine which claimed, “the Western Hemisphere was to be under American
commercial and political control, not European.”271 Essentially they disagreed with using
the document to justify expansionist ideas which seemed to result in creating “closed”
rather than “open” doors for trade. Free trade advocates clearly opposed using the
Monroe Doctrine for expansionism, whereas their opinions about “open” and “closed”
doors remained in subtleties and caveats.
270
Ibid., 171-172.
271
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 242.
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LaFeber briefly mentioned some free trade advocates’ opinions. Specifically he
noted the New England Free Trade League’s opposition to Olney’s and Cleveland’s
interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine.272 LaFeber also described Edward Atkinson’s
response to Cleveland’s decision, but he did not identify Edward Atkinson specifically as
a free trade advocate. Atkinson’s response to Cleveland’s actions represented many free
trade advocates’ opinions. He shouted to a reporter, “This is ridiculous, ridiculous,
ridiculous!”273
Atkinson, according to Beisner, was “a prominent anti-jingo spokesman.”274 He
supported free trade as strongly as he opposed formal empire. However, his displeasure
for formal empire only applied to the United States. As Beisner noted, Atkinson had an
admiration for British policies.
He…admired British colonial policy because it opened the door of
trade to all comers and increased the ability of colonial peoples to pay
for Western goods. He deplored the kind of imperialism that was
practiced by France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany in an effort
to retain the ‘sole control’ of their subjects’ commerce. The British, by
contrast, were not only merciful to subject peoples but provided an
opening for American merchants. ‘What a boon it would be to the
world,’ Atkinson wrote in the North American Review, ‘if systems
corresponding to English law, English administration and the English
regard for personal rights, could be extended over the continent of
South America.’275
Murney Gerlach summed up Atkinson’s description. According to Gerlach, Atkinson was
one of the prominent American leaders of free trade and British Liberalism.276 In many
272
Ibid., 271.
273
Ibid., 272.
274
Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900, 90.
275
Ibid., 91.
276
Gerlach, 57-58, 224, 257.
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ways, Atkinson and E.L. Godkin’s277 opinions on free trade and British Liberalism
aligned.
Godkin also attacked the administration’s use of the Monroe Doctrine. He wrote
several articles addressing the issue. Essentially he believed that the United States should
not interfere with interactions between European nations and Latin America. He argued
that
the Monroe doctrine nor any other doctrine known among civilized
men gives us the right to protect the South American states against the
natural consequences of their own insolence and folly. If they quarrel
with a bigger power, rob its subjects, or assault and insult its
representatives they must take the consequences, which are usually a
fine with some sort of security till it is paid.278
Godkin chided Latin America. “There are eighteen Spanish-American states, with a
population of about 50,000,000. Not one of them has ever exhibited the slightest desire to
accept out influence or control except when it got into a row with some European
power.”279 Godkin’s ultimate conclusion, and suggested policy, relied upon his belief that
Latin America was “…independent sovereign states, de facto and de jure. We are in no
way responsible for them…”280 Thus, Godkin believed protecting the “inferior” Latin
Americans would harm the United States, not benefit it.
Godkin’s historical understanding of the Monroe Doctrine guided his argument.
He believed the “the kernel and spirit” of the Monroe Doctrine “was the fear that
European monarchies would…impose government on the people by the use of foreign
277
E.L. Godkin’s importance and description can be located in previous sections of the thesis.
278
E.L. Godkin, “More About the Monroe Doctrine,” The Nation, 31 October 1895, 304.
279
Ibid.
280
Ibid.
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force—and that a set of such governments on this continent would then endanger…
republican institutions here.”281 Based on this, Godkin believed the need for the Monroe
Doctrine had weakened over time, considering that the United States “grew stronger and
the European Powers more liberal and less aggressive.”282
With all these arguments in mind, Godkin spoke for many other free trade
advocates when he wrote, “The doctrine has no place in international law until all other
nations agree to it.” 283
Free Trade Advocates’ Opposition to War
Free trade advocates opposed war with Great Britain during the Venezuelan
Crisis. The seriousness in the approach of free trade advocates’ articles reveals the
intensity of the war anxiety at the time. Free trade advocates grew weary about the prowar environment developing in the United States.284 Furthermore, examining free trade
advocates’ opposition to war between the United States and Great Britain reveals free
trade’s transatlantic characteristics. Interestingly enough, Gerlach spent an entire section
of his book (section title “Liberalism and informal diplomacy over Venezuela”)
describing how British Liberals on both sides of the Atlantic fought for U.S. arbitration
hoping to prevent war.285 In particular, Gerlach highlighted Atkinson’s and Andrew
281
E.L. Godkin, “Development of the Monroe Doctrine,” The Nation, 2 January 1896, 4.
282
Ibid.
283
Ibid.
284
Part of chapter two examined free trade advocates’ concerns about militarism.
285
Gerlach, 219-227.
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Carnegie’s efforts. Free trade advocates’ opposition to war reinforces the general antimilitarism nature of the eventual U.S. Open Door Policy, as well as highlights the
policy’s origins from British Liberal free trade ideology.
Free trade advocates’ opposition to war with Great Britain began with attacks
against the new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, which according to them, made
war likely.286 As Godkin pointed out,
As he [Olney] and the President have left the doctrine to-day, it is
simply a challenge to the world to fight the United States, and has no
more law in it than Napoleon’s invasion of Russia…. All he [Olney]
need have said to Lord Salisbury was, ‘If you don’t arbitrate that
boundary line with Venezuela, we shall go to war with you as soon as
we hear from you.’287
Of more concern to Godkin and other free trade advocates was the war ethos
developing in the United States. That is to say, free trade advocates believed that many
Americans accepted war as a viable solution to solve their dispute with Great Britain.
Godkin, and other free trade advocates like Atkinson and Charles Eliot Norton, viewed
this “sound and fury” for war as making the United States “a ludicrous spectacle as a
nation.”288 The departure from what they viewed as America’s earlier distaste of war
gravely concerned them. In Godkin’s own words:
We have developed a fierce desire to display anywhere, and for any
reason, our power to do violence, to drown arguments, to silence law,
to strengthen throughout the world the reverence for might as against
right, and to treat the services or uses of foreign nations to civilization
and humanity as of small consequence compared to the demonstration
of our ability to destroy their commerce, ruin their cities, shut up their
colleges, and slaughter their young men, without similar damage to
ourselves.289
286
Godkin, “Development of the Monroe Doctrine,” 4.
287
Ibid.
288
Godkin, “More About the Monroe Doctrine,” 304.
289
E.L. Godkin, “Jingoes and the British Case,” The Nation, March 1896, 210.
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The anxiety of war was upon the United States.
Free trade advocates believed diplomacy, not war, should resolve the crisis. In
multiple statements Godkin argued, “We need more men in public life, in the press, who
seek national greatness in the sphere of mind and law, and resist the popular longing for
more bloody corpses, desolated towns, and the general ‘hell of death and destruction’
called war.” 290 Godkin made many logical arguments claiming, “the dispute is…one to
be settled by lawyers and surveyors, not by big guns.” 291 He even attacked the U.S.
government stating, “better legislators and better administrators would do more for the
national fame, and command more foreign deference, than a thousand battle-ships.”292
The new U.S. war ethos made Godkin question his earlier support for a larger and
modern military. For Godkin, the war ethos, “together with the boyish eagerness for a big
fighting force, like a fleet…is rapidly causing us the loss of the great place in the
international forum…”293
Free trade advocates’ opposition to war in U.S. periodicals may have helped
prevent war, but free trade advocates on both sides of the Atlantic attempted other
methods. Gladstone organized British Liberal leadership to oppose war in Great Britain
and the United States through newspapers, periodicals, and meetings with influential
statesmen in both countries. The American free trade advocates Carnegie and Atkinson
290
E.L. Godkin, “More About the Monroe Doctrine,” 304.
291
Ibid.
292
E.L. Godkin, “American Hatred of England,” The Nation, 16 January 1896, 46.
293
Godkin, “More About the Monroe Doctrine,” 304.
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opposed war through newspapers and periodicals in both countries, as well as traveled to
Great Britain to pressure influential pro-war Britons to accept arbitration. Determining
free trade advocates’ influence on persuading Britain to accept arbitration is hard to
measure. But as Gerlach noted,
In the autumn of 1896, a vast array of prominent American and British
leaders who had worked so arduously for Anglo-American friendship
congratulated each other on their contributions. Liberals in Britain were
convinced that they had had a leading hand in the final settlements.294
Free trade advocates in the United States surely felt relieved as well. Especially men like
Carnegie, who had the markets of the world as long as peace with Great Britain lasted.
Apologetic for England
The new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine and the opposition to war revealed
American free trade advocates’ sympathies towards Great Britain. Free trade advocates
generally supported the British position. Interesting enough, the Venezuelan Crisis
revealed that not all free trade advocates agreed. Free trade advocates’ view about
England’s actions differed depending on class. Most free trade advocates wrote
apologetic articles about Great Britain’s actions in the Venezuelan Crisis. Furthermore,
most free trade advocates tried persuading Americans that Great Britain was not as bad as
mainstream opinions concluded. Interestingly enough, the Democratic administration’s
harshness towards Great Britain helped push some Democratic free trade advocates
294
Gerlach, 235.
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towards the Republicans in the next election.295 Nonetheless, not all free trade advocates
sympathized with Great Britain’s actions. As LaFeber noted,
Andrew Carnegie was especially pleased, since the crisis provided him
with the perfect opportunity to publicize two of his pet projects: the
disposal by Great Britain of her colonial empire in the Western
Hemisphere, and international arbitration.296
American capitalists, industrialists, and manufacturers celebrated removing Great Britain
from Latin America without war. For this group of men, free trade in Latin America
without competing against Great Britain’s manufacturing and foreign direct investment
would be considered good.297 As LaFeber wrote about in Inevitable Revolutions: The
United States In Central America, Latin America in general became flooded with
American capital and exports.298 Carnegie, a bourgeoisie, was a capitalist first and free
trade advocate second. Carnegie competed for markets, looking out for his industrialists’
interests first. While other free trade advocates resided in ivory towers, Carnegie sought
markets.
However, more romantic minded free trade advocates like Godkin, Norton, and
Atkinson did sympathize with Great Britain. First, they argued that Venezuelans could
not be any better than the British. According to Godkin, “the Venezuelans are no more
295
This was not the only factor. William Jennings Bryant succession to the Democratic
Presidential nomination also contributed to Democratic free trade advocates movement towards the
Republicans.
296
LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 272.
297
For the economic benefits of this situation, see: Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Faletto Enzo,
Dependency and Development in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).
298
Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States In Central America, 2nd ed. (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1993).
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moral than the British, and no less greedy...” 299 From Godkin’s earlier racist position
towards the Venezuelans, I imagine Godkin left the analogy open that Venezuelans could
be “less moral” and “more greedy” than the British. Furthermore, to Godkin, size and
power meant little in the dispute. He said, “We cannot ask her [Great Britain] to consider
herself in the wrong because she is the more powerful, or confess that weakness, any
more than might, makes right, because we should never think of applying such a rule to
ourselves.”300 Godkin overstretched this argument. Godkin was right when he argued that
being stronger or weaker had little to do with determining who was right, but being
weaker or stronger (or perceived weaker and stronger by means of race or religion) in the
Gilded Age often determined who got their way.
Besides the defense of Great Britain’s claims, Godkin and other free trade
advocates blamed Americans’ “superstition” that Great Britain was out to get them.
Godkin’s “superstition” probably referred to something similar to the historical patriotic
rhetoric protectionists’ used in the previous chapter, where Great Britain always schemed
to someday take back the United States. According to Godkin, “To a great many
Americans, ‘abroad’ or ‘foreign powers’ always means England, and England is a
monster who is always trying to seize more territory.” 301 Godkin continued, arguing that,
This superstition causes, too, a widespread but comic popular belief
that anybody who opposes any bit of aggression or fanfaronade on our
part, is either in the pay of Great Britain or is secretly working for her
interest and aggrandizement, and he is therefore not listened to.302
299
Godkin, “More About the Monroe Doctrine,” 304.
300
Ibid.
301
Ibid.
302
Ibid.
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This last part revealed the criticisms he and other free trade advocates received for
opposing war with Great Britain and championing free trade. Nonetheless, many free
trade advocates supported Great Britain, even if not on a payroll.
The “Barbarian Society”
Free trade advocates sought to understand why American society had changed.
They wanted to know what had caused this expansionist attitude, the new war ethos, and
the betrayal of other British Liberal ideologies like the gold standard. Free trade
advocates examined the population within the United States’ borders in order to try and
explain why American society had changed. This examination resulted in an elitist and
racist rationalization which included Social Darwinian aspects. Instead of focusing on the
new corporatist society developing,303 and capitalism’s new extremes based on the free
soil and free labor after the Civil War,304 free trade advocates focused on the shiploads of
“barbarian” immigrants.305 A “nativism”306 developed which could be compared to the
303
Martin J. Sklar, The Corporate Reconstruction if American Capitalism, 1890-1916: The
Market, The Law, and Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
304
Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the
Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970).
305
For a brief historiography on immigration in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, see: Oscar
Handlin, The Uprooted, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little Brown, 1990).; Alan M. Kraut, The Huddled Masses: The
Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921 (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1982).; and John Bodnar,
The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1985).
306
For more on “nativism,” see: John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American
Nativism, 1860-1925 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1955). And also: Ray Allen Billington,
The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1964).
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better known “Orientalism.”307 The free trade advocates, mainly petty-bourgeoisie to
bourgeoisie, created a false and racist image of the immigrants, usually proletariats.
Revealing free trade advocates’ ideas about race revealed their similarities to imperialists.
The historian Matthew Frye Jacobson discussed these views of immigrants in his
book, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and
Abroad.308 However, I intend to examine these beliefs specifically from a free trade
advocates’ point of view, as well as relating to the Venezuelan Crisis. As Godkin noted,
the new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine summed up all the points free trade
advocates saw wrong with society. Godkin and free trade advocates believed the new
interpretation, which okayed war as well as revealed expansionist desires, diverted the
United States from its supposed honorable and admirable historical tradition. (Obviously
free trade advocates overlooked the United States wiping out Native Americans to
expand westward.) Furthermore, Godkin compared this degradation to various forms of
Christianity, claiming, “Abyssinian Christianity is considered a good way off from the
New Testament Gospel, but it is not nearly so far from it as the Monroeism of Olney and
Lodge and Chandler, and the general Jingo multitude, from the Monroeism of
Monroe.”309
According to free trade advocates, the degradation that caused this was the
immigrants. Charles Eliot Norton explained these views in an article titled, “Some
307
See: Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978).
308
Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at
Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2000).
309
Godkin, “Development of the Monroe Doctrine,” 4.
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Aspects of Civilization in America.”310 Norton and Godkin shared “gloomy views on the
state of the nation.”311 So similar were their ideas, that Beisner examined them together in
one chapter in Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900. As Beisner
noted, “For more than thirty years Godkin and Norton sustained and fed each other’s
pessimism….They believed that American morality had declined precipitately since the
early days of the republic.”312 Norton was an academic from Harvard, with a love for
Latin Classics and art. To Norton, “man had reached his greatest moral and intellectual
heights in ancient Greece and medieval Italy.”313
Norton’s studies in the ivory tower helped create his sense of despair for the
United States. Ultimately this despair turned into elitism, nativism, and racism expressed
in the articles he contributed to or edited for The Nation, the Atlantic Monthly, and the
North American Review.314 Norton’s connections to British Liberalism came after he
“spent most of 1868, 1869, 1872, and 1873 in England, and carefully studied the political
and social conditions in Britain, which he found fascinating.”315 While there he
befriended many British Liberals, and began adopting their ideas.316
310
Charles Eliot Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” Forum, February 1896, 641-
651.
311
Robert L. Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York:
McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), 53.
312
Ibid.
313
Ibid., 57.
314
Ibid.
315
Gerlach, 24.
316
Specifically, he befriended, “the positivist Frederic Harrison; MP from Elgin Boroughs, Grant
Duff; Fellow at Christ Church and cousin of William Harcourt, Vernon-Harcourt; and [John] Morley.”
Ibid., 24-26.
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To take the argument further than Gerlach’s, it is apparent that Norton believed
British Liberal ideas represented the “civilized,” and he sought to explain why Americans
opposed or rejected these ideas in his article, “Some Aspects of Civilization in
America.”317 The article, published in February 1896, was actually written before the
Venezuelan Crisis. As Norton footnoted in the publication:
The foregoing article was written before the issue of President
Cleveland’s astounding message respecting the Venezuelan boundary
dispute. To the forecast in my paper of danger to the Nation from
existing conditions of public intelligence and morality, this message,
and the popular reception of it, have given lamentable and most
unexpected confirmation. The harm done by the defection of the
President and of the Secretary of State from the path of good sense and
national dignity is irreparable, even though (and this is still uncertain)
the worst consequence which [most?] naturally result from it be
escaped.318
Nonetheless, as Norton mentioned, the conditions for Cleveland’s actions were in place.
Expansionism concerned Norton the most. He argued that newly arrived
immigrants and the Western states bore the seeds for expansionism. He believed that the
immigrants and the Western states were too far away from “civilization.” To Norton,
America had “set the first example” of “the meaning of modern democracy...—the rapid
rise to comfort and to power of masses of men.”319 Yet, he saw his America fading away,
arguing that the common American “has become, not merely an optimist, but to a great
degree a fatalist.” 320 By “fatalist,” Norton meant that Americans had reached an attitude
317
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 641-651.
318
Ibid., 651.
319
Ibid., 641-642.
320
Ibid., 642.
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of passive acceptance, that life had achieved its highest point so no more effort was
needed to push further.
Furthermore, to Norton, and other free trade advocates, the new industrial classes
(from bourgeois to proletariat) detracted from pure American Republicanism and British
Liberalism.321 James Livingston, author of Pragmatism and the Political Economy of
Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940, discussed the debates between the gentry or “old
money” capitalists and the industrialists and manufacturers.322 The fact that many of the
immigrants—“the eastern and southern European immigrants”—made up the new
industrial working class, only reinforced Norton’s and other free trade advocates’ dislike
for them323
Thus, according to free trade advocates, the “newer” peoples that made up
American society in the 1890s caused the degradation of the United States. The
immigrants were the largest group believed to be the major cause of degradation. By the
time Norton wrote this article in 1896, many Irish had ascended to skilled labor and
political positions, while many of the “eastern and southern European
immigrants…formed a new industrial working class.”324 Similarly, as the historian Nell
Irvin Painter noted, the German Jews had ascended to the “middle- and upper-class by
321
See: James Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 18501940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997) and Origins of the Federal Reserve
System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); and
Sven Becker, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie,
1850-1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
322
Livingston, Pragmatism and the Political Economy of Cultural Revolution, 1850-1940.
323
Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W.W.
Norton & Company, 1987), xxiv.
324
Ibid.
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the time of heavy Russian Jewish immigration.”325 But to Norton, class did not hide the
degradation immigrants had brought to the United States. Furthermore he blamed
industry for creating the demand of workers which often came in the form of immigrants.
In short, Norton was racist towards non-Anglo-Saxons.326
Norton believed that the immigrants, the new industrial classes, and the nouveau
riche were ignorant, and this in turn, with their growing numbers, degraded the nation
and innately betrayed the mythical republican values Norton believed in. According to
Norton,
the ignorant lack the sense of measure and proportion, and are prone to
unwarranted self-satisfaction. The enormous growth in our population
having been largely due to the immigration of the lower and most
ignorant people of the Old World, the century closes not only with a
numerically greater, but also a proportionately larger part of our
community in a state of ignorance than that with it began.327
Norton believed this “ignorance” led to foolish ideas like expansionism.
On a side note, but in line with Norton’s logic, Godkin and other free trade
advocates also believed blacks contributed to the degradation of society. In one of
Godkin’s articles he outlined how the new free labor supposedly had an “ignorant” free
vote. 328 Godkin believed that blacks contributed to blocking free trade arguments. While
defending Cobden, and his failed prophecy that free trade would span the globe, Godkin
said,
325
Ibid.
326
Racial Anglo-Saxonism has a long and complicated history itself. See: Reginald Horsman,
Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1981).
327
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 642.
328
E.L. Godkin, “Free Trade in England,” The Nation, 18 June 1896, 468.
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The failure of ‘Cobdenism’ to spread is really not nearly so wonderful
or so unexpected as the control, thirty years after his death, of the
currency of a commercial nation of 70,000,000 by a popular assembly
partly composed of ignorant and venal negroes, whom the two adverse
interests accuse each other of purchasing for cash.329
Cobden predicted that blacks would become “free labor,” but as for blacks obtaining a
political say, Godkin argued, “Cobden did not foresee this, and would not have believed
it; why should he?”330
Norton also argued that all the “ignorance” in the nation was not necessarily
foreign. Norton believed the movement West could be interpreted as a movement away
from civilization. He wrote,
It is not only the ignorance of the foreign immigrant which is a danger
to the commonwealth, but that also of the native-born who are on the
outskirts or outside the pale of civilization. The settling of the vast new
territory of the United States during the past century has reduced a
large section of the most vigorous part of the people to the condition of
pioneers and adventurers, who have shared in small measure the
advantages of civilization and hardly felt its restraints.331
By this interpretation, Norton understood expansionism as a movement towards
barbarism. Nonetheless, in his shrewdness, Norton correctly interpreted Western
expansion as empire building.332
Godkin expanded on Norton’s contention, arguing that it was the “ignorant”
Westerners pushing for coined silver. American and British Liberals supported the gold
standard. The fact that the largest banking institutions, which handled international trade
329
Ibid.
330
Ibid.
331
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 644.
332
For Western expansion as a form of empire, see: Ray Allen Billington, Westward Expansion: A
History of the American Frontier, 5th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1982).; and Patricia Limerick, The
Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Pats of the American West (New York: Norton, 1987).
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used gold, drew free trade advocates’ support. Furthermore, Godkin believed that the
protective tariff policy created the desire to coin silver. He combined these beliefs in a
partisan attack on Republicans.
…the protective policy has brought on us the silver craze and its
accompanying barbarisms. The plan of bringing in a number of small,
scantily peopled silver States to keep down and counterbalance the
rising anti-protective ideas of the East, or, as they frankly expressed it,
to make sure of the McKinley tariff for ten years, was a device of the
Republican majority in the Reed Congress of 1890. 333
Furthermore, Godkin found Western mining towns barbarous.334 He believed, “…the
submergence of our government” had come from “a tide of semi-barbarism from the
mining towns.” 335 Quoting the Evening Post, he grew gravely concerned about the
“harum scarum lot” of the West obtaining as many votes in the Senate as the East
Coast.336 In the popular language of the day, Godkin concluded his comments by
comparing the silverites with one of the nastiest popular analogies for barbarism, the
“mediaeval monarchs.”337
Godkin’s criticisms about the Western “barbarians” receiving votes only
represented the tip of the iceberg of free trade advocates’ concerns about the effects
“barbarians” would have on the United States’ liberal institutions. The society the
“barbarians” championed, sickened Godkin, Norton, and other free trade advocates. The
333
E.L. Godkin, “Some Results of the Tariff,” The Nation, 6 February 1896, 112.
334
For a more altruistic interpretation of the mining towns, see: The Growth of the American
Republic’s section on, “The Mining Frontier.” In this section, the authors argue the opposite of Godkin and
Norton, by describing the democratic societies set up in the mining towns. Samuel Eliot Morison, Henry
Stele Commager, and William E. Leuchtenburg, The Growth of the American Republic, vol. II, 7th ed. (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 9-15.
335
Godkin, “Some Results of the Tariff,” 112.
336
Ibid.
337
Ibid.
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white,338 native, land owning elite—the society free trade advocates so dearly loved—
appeared to be changing. And, according to free trade advocates, the society that lacked
these characteristics produced corrupt liberal institutions.
Essentially Godkin’s and Norton’s concerns about the corruption of the United
States’ government institutions stemmed from the rise of the new corporatist society
which highlighted profit and emphasized materialism as bottom line factors within
society. Godkin believed,
Legislation which enables a large body of rich men all over the country
to calculate and enter in their ledgers the exact sum which a certain act
of Congress will put into their individual pockets, is probably the
greatest indirect incentive to corruption ever devised.339
Furthermore, the fact that this new industrialist society required mass amounts of
labor—usually composed of immigrants—also concerned Godkin and Norton. They were
concerned about how labor’s relationship with their bosses would play out in the voting
booths. Godkin described this concern.
…in a country of universal suffrage, it dries the employers of labor
irresistibly into teaching not only their own employees, but all the poor
and ignorant, that the chief function of Government is the making of
profits and raising of wages, and causes all its other business to seem
insignificant.340
Norton also showed concern about the new materialistic society developing.
liberal opportunities and the political and social institutions of the
country have an immense and rapid effect in raising the ignorant,
whether of foreign or native birth, in the scale of material
civilization.341
338
At this time, there were divisions amongst whites, see: David Roediger, The Wages of
Whiteness: Race an the Making of the American Working Class (New York: Verso, 1991).
339
Godkin, “Some Results of the Tariff,” 112.
340
Ibid.
341
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 643.
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Essentially Godkin and Norton argued that the ignorant created this new society which in
turn bred more ignorant people. Or, as Godkin said, “Let a generation or two grow up
under this teaching, and you soon have the devil let loose.”342 Indeed, Godkin and Norton
did share a gloomy (and racist) outlook.
How did the nation become this “gloomy” picture Godkin and Norton described?
According to them, the decline of public education helped create this new “ignorant”
society. Godkin and Norton admired education and knowledge, and viewed them as
necessary pillars holding up proper government institutions. In Norton’s words, “The
American has become apt to ascribe to his own capacity and to his institutions’ blessings
which are in large measure the free gift of nature or the consequences of the increase of
knowledge.” 343 Without the increase of knowledge, Norton believed liberal institutions
and the United States were doomed. Norton had lost all faith in public education.
The fact is that large numbers of children grow up with little or no
schooling, and that even where the schools are most efficient and the
attendance upon them most general, they are ineffectual instruments for
providing the required education. It is a fallacy to suppose that any
schools, however good they may be, can educate…. ignorance has
increased and is increasing among us344
To Norton, Tammany Hall (the New York Democratic political machine where
the Scotch-Irish boss William Tweed became famous) exemplified where all these
factors—barbarians, corporate society, lack of education—cultivated to undermine liberal
institutions. According to him,
342
Godkin, “Some Results of the Tariff,” 112.
343
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 642.
344
Ibid., 643.
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The foreign boss of Tammany Hall, who rules the city of New York,
who has assumed the garb of civilization and sits at rich men’s feasts, is
still a semi-barbarian. The free school has not educated him, not the
hordes of his tribal followers. Yet while he and his fellows sell justice,
commit daily barratry, practice blackmail, and make a scoff and
byword of law, the self-complacent American looks on and says, with
an optimism which he flatters himself is the spirit of genuine
patriotism: ‘Oh, it will all come out right. Free education is the
safeguard of the Republic.’345
This section revealed free trade advocates believed the masses were ignorant.
They had an “I’m right and everybody else is wrong” mentality which they used to create
a series of racist, nativist, and elitist rationalizations. To free trade advocates, the masses
ignorance prevented adoption of free trade ideology. For example, Godkin stated that,
“Protection is the natural resort of the ignorant or inexperienced man.”346 Free trade
advocates believed that protectionism was championed by “the thoughtless or
uninstructed,” and that, “the great conditions of commerce and exchange are hard to
understand.”347 All this logic summed up free trade advocates’ views about free trades’
general condition in the world.
…in commenting on the failure of Cobden’s prophecies about the
adoption of free trade elsewhere, it fails to notice the fact that, since
Cobden’s day, the government of all the leading countries in Europe
has passed into the hands of a different class. That is, they have all
become democratic….Trade and currency have been taken hold of by
the masses, and they are learning their lessons about them. 348
Though I wish only to observe free trade advocates’ arguments, I find it necessary
to point out that free trade advocates’ economic vision was inconsistent with their
cultural values. Again, I must preface this brief segment with the fact that Norton and
345
Ibid., 643-644.
346
Godkin, “Free Trade in England,” 468.
347
Ibid.
348
Ibid.
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Godkin wrote under the auspice of an Anglo-Saxon racism, which in part explains their
logic. Nonetheless, Godkin chiding Americans for their support of an “…unexpected
attack on a friendly Power, accompanied and followed by a great outpouring of popular
hate of a foreign nation, with disastrous effects on trade and commerce and public credit”
seemingly holds two ironies.349 First, that he can hate foreign nations (i.e. eastern and
southern Europe), but others cannot. Second, that Godkin allowed profit and materialism
to trump other factors in determining policy, whereas he had just lectured Americans
about conceding to materialism.
Norton also showed irony when in the beginning of his article, “Some Aspects of
Civilization in America,” he commended U.S. expansionism by stating that, “We began it
on one side of a continent, poor and compelled to frugality; we end it, masters of the
continent from ocean to ocean, rich and prodigal.”350 After apparently praising
expansionism, he then turned and unabashedly criticized it? There are many explanations
for these ironies: racism, social Darwinism, debates about capitalism, etc. But it is
important to note that many of the ironies can be understood if one realizes that free trade
advocates wanted the United States to maintain a close relationship with Great Britain.
The Venezuelan Crisis made free trade advocates’ feelings towards Great Britain more
transparent.351
One of Norton’s most important points was that the masses’ “ignorance” hindered
the relationship between the United States and Great Britain. In his own words, the
349
Godkin, “Some Results of the Tariff,” 112.
350
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 641.
351
By the next chapter, many Americans publicly acknowledge Great Britain for their
policymaking ideas.
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ignorance “encourages that spirit of hostility to England which to their shame prevails in
a large contingent of both foreign and native voters, and which is far more threatening to
the welfare of the United States than it is to that of Great Britain.”352 For Norton, in an
incident like the Venezuelan Crisis, “The idea of war between the two countries is one
that no rational man should hold as within the range of possibilities.”353 Furthermore, he
outright despised such talk. The Venezuelan Crisis, as expansionism, only revealed to
him and Godkin that the Republic was near lost.
…the discourse of politicians seeking personal or party advantage by
jingoism is all the more to be condemned because it fosters that
barbaric lust of conquest and dominion which the progress of
civilization has done as yet little to extirpate from the hearts of the
uninstructed masses of mankind, and which is dangerously promoted
by some of the very felicities of our fortune.354
Summation
The Venezuelan Crisis of 1895 reinforced that free trade advocates in Great
Britain and the United States worked together. The Venezuelan Crisis also established
divisions between free trade advocates. Some free trade advocates supported Great
Britain’s actions in the crisis, and others disagreed with Great Britain’s actions out of
selfish reasons. Ultimately, the elitism and racism free trade advocates expressed during
the Venezuelan Crisis shaped future free trade advocates’ arguments. Free trade
advocates’ reaction to the Venezuelan Crisis—free trade advocates’ disagreement with
the administration’s new interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine, opposition to war with
352
Norton, “Some Aspects of Civilization in America,” 649.
353
Ibid.
354
Interestingly enough, during the Spanish-American War, Norton augmented this same
argument, claiming that expansionism (acquiring Cuba, the Philippines, etc.) could possibly create a nation
of “barbarians” if the natives obtained citizenship. Ibid.
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Great Britain, and general apologetic attitude towards Great Britain—revealed these
themes.
Overall, the Venezuelan Crisis disappointed many free trade advocates who had
once identified with the Democratic Party. Specifically, the Democratic administration’s
harshness towards Great Britain ostracized free trade advocates and their ideas from the
party. Furthermore, the rise of the silverites and William Jennings Bryan within the
Democratic Party also discouraged free trade advocates. Free trade advocates,
disappointed with the Democratic Party, began moving to the Republican Party. This
movement sets up the next, and last, research chapter of the thesis, and reveals in part
how the U.S. Open Door Policy would begin under a Republican administration.
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CHAPTER IV
CONCLUDING THE FREE TRADE DEBATES, 1897-1899
Introduction
Between 1897 and 1899 free trade advocates presented dichotomous themes. Free
trade advocates established connections between Great Britain and the United States in
order to persuade Americans that free trade would work in the United States. At the same
time, American free trade advocates placed boundaries on the comparisons between the
two nations. Thus, the dichotomous themes helped produce the nationalized uniqueness
found in the U.S. Open Door Policy. Furthermore, as in the other chapters, free trade
advocates’ principles about race and capitalism generally aligned with American
imperialists.
This chapter begins with a brief history of the events between 1897 through 1899.
The brief history, while providing an introduction to the events during the time frame
examined, also reveals how free trade advocates’ ideas eventually became accepted into
U.S. foreign policy. The rest of the chapter reveals the two dichotomous themes. Free
trade advocates tried establishing relations with Great Britain through diplomacy, race,
and class. Free trade advocates hoped that improved relations with Great Britain would
result in the United States adopting free trade ideology. However, American free trade
advocates had to place boundaries on their comparisons of, and admiration for, Great
Britain. As the United States became an empire, free trade advocates against imperialism,
had to be careful about glorifying or admiring the British Empire. Furthermore, as Great
Britain began departing from free trade ideology, American free trade advocates had to
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be more careful in general about arguing that Americans needed to accept Great Britain’s
policy.
A Brief History of Events Between 1897 and 1899
This section briefly examines the events between 1897 and 1899 in order to
provide context for free trade advocates’ arguments,355 and to reveal how free trade
advocates’ ideas eventually became accepted into U.S. foreign policy. Specifically, as the
United States made war upon Spain, and began building an empire abroad, free trade
advocates helped American imperialists conceive new tactics. The Spanish-American
War produced minimal casualties, but occupying the new colonies proved costly.
American imperialists sought new ideas about “empire.” Free trade advocates
unexpectedly provided answers.
By 1897 the Republican Party represented many American imperialists as well as
big-business interests.356 American imperialists’ influence on the Republican Party
explains how Republicans, also once the “protectionist party,” would adopt free trade
ideology and create the U.S. Open Door Policy.357 Imperialist Republicans both created
355
Stated otherwise, these are the events that free trade advocates focused on or were affected by
in their arguments.
356
Other Republicans who had once supported the Republican Party for its “free soil” policies
became political independents, known as “Mugwumps.” Some of these Mugwumps formed the AntiImperialist League in June of 1898. These anti-imperialists included societal elites such as: Carl Schurz,
William James, E.L Godkin, Charles Eliot Norton, Edward Atkinson, and Charles Francis Adams. Thus,
the Republican Party really did not have any notable anti-imperialist wing. Robert L. Beisner, Twelve
Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1968), xvii.
357
Even in 1897 the Republican Party still held protectionist ideals. On 7 July 1897 Republicans
passed the highest tariff in U.S. history. The Dingley tariff percentage averaged a 57 percent tax on
imports. As Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. notes, 57 percent was only the average. “…on woolen goods the tariff is
a crippling 91 percent, on sugar 97 percent (which affected business interests in both Cuba and Hawaii),
and on tobacco 119 percent.” (Schlesinger, Jr., 387.) Furthermore as Schlesinger Jr. noted, Republicans in
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and reacted to the Spanish-American War and its incurring events (e.g. the Philippine
Insurrection) with the goal of maintaining political and economic power.358 In the midst
of Republican actions, free trade advocates kept championing their ideology. American
imperialists came to the conclusion that some ideas of free trade advocates could be used
to carry out imperialist goals, like taking China’s economic market and managing empire
with potentially lower overhead costs. “Costs” in this case holding several definitions:
sacrificing U.S. liberal principles, decreasing U.S. military commitments and casualties,
and decreasing the monetary costs of maintaining colonies. American imperialists
1897 still believed protection was the “foundation of American prosperity.” (Schlesinger, Jr., 387.) The
Republican drawn up tariff should not shock historians. The Dingley Tariff reinforced Republican
attributes beginning in 1890 with the McKinley Tariff, which set the average percentage at 48.4%.
(Wikipedia) However, Republicans soon broke from their tradition, and helped redefine the United States
forever by accepting some free trade ideology. Cited from: Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., ed., The Almanac of
American History (New York: Barnes & Nobles Books, 1993).; McKinley Tariff,
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKinley_Tariff> (1 June 2007) Wikipedia.
358
The Republican Party really did have control of the United States by 1897. Whereas the last
chapter examined events mainly under Grover Cleveland and Secretary of State Richard Olney (i.e. the
Venezuelan Crisis), this chapter examines events under Republicans; Republican President William
McKinley, and three different Secretary of States: John Sherman of Ohio (1897-1898); William R. Day of
Ohio (1898); and John Hay of the District of Columbia (1898-1905). (LaFeber,784) John Hay of course
steals the attention of this chapter, because he pushed through the U.S. Open Door Policy. Furthermore, the
events in this chapter as well as the free trade debates take place under a Republican Congress. The antiimperialists, most of whom had spoke out against Republicans and McKinley before the league’s creation,
did little harm to the Republican Party’s power. In 1896, with William McKinley’s presidential win,
Republicans took the House and the Senate. Republicans held a 204 to 113 majority over the Democrats in
the House, and a 47 to 34 majority over the Democrats in the Senate. In 1898, Republican majority over the
Democrats was 185 to 163 in the House and 53 to 26 in the Senate. In 1900, President William McKinley
would win office again with a Republican majority over the Democrats, 197 to 151 in the House and 55 to
31 in the Senate. (Cherny, 143) Republican dominance continued through 1904. As Robert W. Cherny
noted, “Republicans formed the majority in the House of Representatives for 28 of the 36 years after 1894,
and in the Senate for 30 of those 36 years. Republicans won seven of the nine presidential elections from
1896 to 1932. Similar patterns of Republican dominance appeared in state and local government, especially
in the Manufacturing Belt. Only the Deep South and parts of a few northern cities remained Democratic
strongholds.” (Cherny, 130) Furthermore, Cherny noted, “After 1896, no one doubted that the Republicans
were the national majority. The economic problems of farmers, the depression, and the political campaigns
of the 1890s had caused some voters to reevaluate their partisan commitments and to change parties.”
(Cherny, 130) This data, when examined alongside the events between 1897 and 1900, suggests the
Republican Party supported imperialistic actions. Cited From: Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S.
Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1994.; Robert W. Cherny, American Politics in the Gilded Age 1868-1900 (Wheeling, Il: Harlan Davidson,
1997).
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adopted free trade advocates’ ideas in part because both groups shared similar principle
ideologies about race and capitalism.
The Spanish-American War changed the United States forever. Many factors lead
to the war for empire. Walter LaFeber discussed many of these tangible and less tangible
factors leading to the Spanish American War in his book, The New Empire: An
Interpretation of American Expansion.359 In this book, LaFeber argued that between 1860
and 1898 the United States developed an inclination for empire physically, intellectually,
strategically, and economically. As he noted, and as explored within this thesis, Latin
America sat in the American eye because of proximity and previous foreign policy
statements like the Monroe Doctrine and the Olney extension.360 When the Cuban Revolt
began on 24 February 1895 all the agents were in place for U.S. intervention and for the
grand scheme of U.S. Empire to begin.361
One of the economic factors LaFeber highlighted as cause for the SpanishAmerican War is linked to arguments in this thesis. LaFeber argued that the desire for
China’s market was one of the economic factors that led the United States’ to war.362
LaFeber highlighted the fact that the United States might have lost access to China in
359
Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898, 35th
Anniversary Edition, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).
360
See Chapter 3.
361
However, not all the Cuban insurgents showed excitement towards U.S. intervention. Josè
Martì (1853-1895), the father of the Cuban revolution, asked “And once the United States is in Cuba, who
will drive it out?” LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the
Present, 197.
362
For more about the United States’ interest in China’s economic markets, see: Thomas J.
McCormick, China Market: America’s Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1967).
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March 1898.363 U.S. capitalists grew concerned, “in the Journal of Commerce’s words,
the Far East crisis threatened ‘the future of American trade.’”364 China had long been
desired by many U.S. capitalists as the savior to the Crisis of the 1890s.365 U.S. capitalists
believed surplus products could be exported to China in order to increase U.S. industry
products without flooding domestic markets. Furthermore, large U.S. banking groups,
like banking groups in other European nations, saw China as a high yielding nest-egg for
foreign direct investment. With so many natives and a large geographical area, China
appeared to be the solution to U.S. economic problems. Trying to reach China’s market,
McKinley obtained the Philippines.366 The eventual colonial problems the Filipinos
363
In March 1898, potential U.S. financial involvement in China became endangered. LaFeber
speculated that McKinley’s statement, “Who knows where this war will lead us. It may be more than war
with Spain,” referred to action in China.(LaFeber, 200) The crisis in China began in 1894 and 1895 when
Japan defeated China in the Japanese-Sino War. From this point on, LaFeber gave a better description of
the event. “In 1897, Germany blocked Japan from grabbing further territorial spoils [in China]. Using an
excuse the murder of two German missionaries, Berlin officials demanded as indemnity from China the
port of Kiaochow (now Chiao Hsien). Located at an entrance to the rich Chinese province of Manchuria,
Kiachow controlled a trade route used by an increasing number of Americans. Other European powers and
Japan then clamored for important parts of China’s territory. The traditional U.S. open-door policy to all of
China faced extinction. Great Britain, which shared much of Washington’s concern about the open door,
asked McKinley for help in stopping the other Europeans. The president sympathized with the British
position, but he could not help. China was too far away, Cuba too close. McKinley had to deal with
revolution before he could help protect the open door.” (LaFeber, 200). Cited In: LaFeber, The American
Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present.
364
Ibid., 200.
365
For more on the Crisis of the 1890s see Chapter 1: “The Introduction.”
366
McKinley had dire choices to make. However, a solution seemed to have presented itself.
Filipinos began revolting under Spanish rule. This fact proved to be an opening to obtain a route to China
by acquiring the rebellious Philippines from Spain. As LaFeber noted, “McKinley carefully prepared his
policy to deal with the Cuban and Asian crisis at once.” (LaFeber, 201) McKinley understood how much
the Philippines meant to preserving access to China. (LaFeber, 201) This interpretation seems reinforced
when one realizes that McKinley overturned every other order given by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy
Theodore Roosevelt when his boss temporarily left the office, except the order given to Admiral George
Dewey to prepare to attack the Philippines. (LaFeber, 200) As LaFeber noted, “In actuality, Dewey had
earlier received orders to attack the Philippines in case of war with Spain. The president, meanwhile, had
been reinforcing Dewey’s squadron.” (LaFeber, 201)
LaFeber’s caveat to the traditional argument explains certain actions unexplainable by other more
simple interpretations. Furthermore, his interpretation better explains U.S. military actions in the
Philippines. More orthodox arguments believe that U.S. naval action in the Philippines during the Spanish-
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caused for the United States encouraged American imperialists to look for other ways to
obtain China’s market. By adopting some of the free trade advocates’ ideology, American
imperialists created the U.S. Open Door Policy in order to obtain China’s markets.
The Spanish-American war only lasted a few months, and only produced 4,108
U.S. casualties.367 On 26 July 1898, the war ended when Spain requested peace terms. On
10 December 1899, The United States and Spain signed the Treaty of Paris, ending the
Spanish American War. This treaty ceded the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the
United States. As for Cuba, Spain assumed “liabilities for $400,000,000 in Cuban debts
while abandoning all claims to the island.”368 Indeed, the war was short. The end of the
Spanish-American War however, was not the end to U.S. military actions. The quick
victories awarded the United States with violent occupations of Cuba and the Philippines.
The United States found occupying a distant land with natives difficult and defeating.
Though Cuba provides examples of this, examining the Philippines offers better
discussion and deserves more attention due to its importance for the United States’
involvement in China.
Occupation of the Philippines proved costly. In early March of 1899, Congress
authorized an additional 65,000 men increase in the army, and also asked for 35,000
American War was purely strategic. Certainly that is a legitimate point. But actual U.S. military actions in
the Philippines suggest more than just crippling Spanish naval power in the Pacific. Cited from: LaFeber,
The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present.
367
Of those, only 385 came from battle deaths and 1,662 from wounds not mortal (2,061 came
from other casualties). Ibid., 208. For more information about the military aspect of the Spanish-American
War, see: David F. Trask, The War With Spain in 1898 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.);
George J.A. O’Toole, The Spanish War: An American Epic (New York, Norton, 1984).; Brian McAllister
Linn, The Philippine War, 1899-1902 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000).
368
Schlesinger, Jr., 393.
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volunteers “to help in the suppression of the Filipino rebellion led by Emilio
Aguinaldo.”369 On 28 April 1899, Filipinos requested peace terms, but U.S. General
Ewell Otis rejected their request, wanting “nothing less than unconditional surrender.”370
On 19 July 1899, Secretary of War, Russel A. Alger resigned. In early October, Admiral
Dewey dispatched additional warships and troops to the Philippines. “By the end of
August, 30,963 soldiers will be stationed there.”371 On 24 November 1899, “The
President of the Philippine Congress, the Filipino Secretary of State and the Treasurer are
reported to be prisoners of General Otis in Central Luzon, an area which has just
surrendered to the United States.”372 Despite this, some fighting still took place. The U.S.
occupation of the Philippines proved very costly about the time the United States decided
to draft the U.S. Open Door Policy. The approximate 120,000 troops ultimately sent to
the Philippines reveals the islands’ other strategic importance.373
After the long violent occupation of the Philippines on 6 September 1899,
Secretary of State John Hay made a shift in U.S. foreign policy that would forever change
the very nature of the United States itself. Hay requested
369
Ibid. , 393.
370
Ibid.
371
Ibid., 394.
372
Ibid.
373
According to LaFeber, “At first, U.S. officers believed that they could subdue the barefoot
opponents with 20,000 or 30,000 men. Soon, the commanders asked McKinley for 40,000, then 60,000
regulars. In all, 120,000 U.S. troops finally fought in the Philippines. Nearly 4,200 were killed and 2,800
wounded. In turn, they killed outright 15,000 rebels, and estimates run as high as 200,000 Filipinos dying
from gunfire, starvation, and the effects of concentration camps into which the United States crowded
civilians so that they could not help Aguinaldo’s troops.” LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy
at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 215-216.
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“U.S. Ambassadors to countries already having commerce, treaties and
long-term leases with China to ask for an ‘open door’ policy by which
all nations receive equal treatment from China so as not to weaken the
old giant by further carving out ‘spheres of influence’ Early next year
Russia, Germany, France, England, Italy and Japan will consent to this
‘open door’ policy, thus preventing dismemberment of China.”374
After the Boxer Rebellion in the summer of 1900,375 the United States clarified the
conditions they wanted in the Second Open Door Note on 20 June 1900.
The Open Door Notes changed American imperialists’ tactics, but not their
overall strategy. The United States had always planned on solving their economic
problems by focusing on foreign markets—particularly on China. How the United States
obtained these foreign markets began to change.
While the United States was building empire, Great Britain began debating how
to manage empire. Events between 1897 and 1899 caused Great Britain to begin
questioning its free trade policy. The events causing Great Britain to begin questioning its
free trade policy can be categorized into two correlating categories. The first category
was the waning power of the British Liberal Party. After Gladstone resigned as Prime
Minister in 1894, the British Liberal Party became more divided than united.376 After
374
Schlesinger, Jr., 394.
375
For more information about the Boxer Rebellion, see: Lanxin Xiang, The Origins of the Boxer
War: A Multinational Study (New York: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); Jane E. Elliott, Some Did it for
Civilisation, Some Did it for Their Country: A Revised View of the Boxer War (Hong Kong: The Chinese
University Press, 2002).; Susanna Hoe, Women at the Siege, Peking 1900 (Oxford: Holo Books, Women’s
History Press, 2000).; Bin Hu, (Xinwei Zhang, trans.), “Contradictions and Conflicts among the Imperialist
Powers in China at the Time of the Boxer Movement.” Chinese Studies in History 20 (Spring-Summer
1987): 156-74.; Diana Preston, The Boxer Rebellion: The Dramatic Story of China’s War on Foreigners
that Shook the World in the Summer of 1900 (New York: Walker, 2000).; Paul Cohen, History in Three
Keys: The Boxers as Event, Experience, and Myth (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997).; Joseph
Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987).; William J.
Duiker, Cultures in Collision: The Boxer Rebellion (San Rafael, CA: Presidio Press, 1978).
376
Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States: Political and Social Thought in the
Late Victorian Age (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 163-164.
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Gladstone’s death in 1898, British Liberals became scattered, and the British
Conservative Party took command.377
The second category of events leading Britons to question their free trade policy
was generated from fear that Great Britain was losing its empire. By 1897, Great Britain
had witnessed other world powers gain strength through protectionist policies, like the
United States and Germany.378 Some of these new powers began halting British
imperialism, as well as vying for parts of the British Empire. As mentioned in the chapter
examining the Venezuelan Crisis, Great Britain eventually yielded to the United States’
demands. To make matters worse for British statesmen, Great Britain yielded to the
United States in South America in part to focus attention on their empire in South Africa.
In particular, Great Britain feared losing South Africa to newly European-colonial
independent states cheered on by the German Kaiser.379 Great Britain feared if they lost
control of South Africa (particularly the gold fields in Transvaal) that Germany, the
United States, or some other Western power would eventually seize the territory.
Furthermore, for a long time Western powers had shown little respect towards Great
Britain’s open door policy in China. Beginning in 1897, Britons began fearing that the
open door policy in China would eventually allow other Western powers to seize control
of China, and eventually push Great Britain out. Russia, Germany, and Japan had shown
377
For more details about the scattering of British Liberals and the usurpation of the British
Conservative Party, see: Stephen J. Lee, Aspects of British Political History, 1814-1914 (New York:
Routledge, 1994).
378
P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism 1688-2000, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman,
2002), 186.
379
Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895-1914 (New
York: Atheneum, 1968), 18.
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signs that they would like to each control China, instead of share it. When the United
States’ showed no support for Great Britain’s open door policy in 1897 when aggressive
actions by Germany towards Japan placed the open door policy on the edge of
“extinction,” Great Britain began abandoning hope of the open door policy and in
general, free trade ideology.380
Unbeknownst to American free trade advocates, these events encouraged the
United States to adopt free trade ideology. Through the fog of war and empire, historians
can witness free trade advocates’ ideas take precedent and become accepted into U.S.
foreign policy. As the Spanish-American War began and progressed, connections
between free trade advocates’ ideas and the arising U.S. Open Door Policy became more
transparent. These next sections of the chapter begin examining the print media that
affected, contributed to, and helped conclude the free trade debate between 1890 and
1899.
Establishing Relations with Great Britain through Diplomacy, Race, and Class
Free trade advocates tried improving United States’ relations with Great Britain
by emphasizing diplomacy, race, and class. Free trade advocates in both nations hoped
that improved relations with Great Britain would result in the United States adopting free
trade ideology. Examining free trade advocates’ rhetoric throughout their arguments
highlighted again the superiority free trade advocates felt over the rest of the world. Free
trade advocates’ incentive for the United States to improve relations with Great Britain
380
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
200.
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and adopt free trade, was the belief in an Anglo-American ruled world. During this part
of the chapter, more non-free trade advocate articles in both nations condoned and
supported free trade advocates’ ideas than ever before.
According to free trade advocates, when the United States’ adopted free trade, it
would position the Anglo-American race to act as a savior to the world. Thus, free trade
advocates not only foresaw the American Century described in chapter two, but also an
era of Western domination over the rest of the world. Free trade advocates believed the
West’s (The United States’ and Great Britain’s) domination would advance the rest of the
world. Free trade advocates defined “advancing the world” as conquering other nations’
markets, modernizing the natives with technology, religion, and education, and then
hoping the natives would implement liberal government institutions with their new
cultural education. Carl Schurz’s comments in his article, “Anglo-American Friendship,”
displayed these arguments.
In this way the Anglo-American friendship will signalize itself to the
world by an act that will not only benefit the two countries immediately
concerned, but set an example to other nations which, if generally
followed, will do more for the peace and happiness of mankind and the
progress of civilization than anything that can be effected by armies
and navies.381
Free trade advocates believed free trade and the relationship between the United States
and Great Britain would save the world from the old ways—militarism, colonization, and
war. These hopes inspired free trade advocates to improve relations between Great
Britain and the United States.
Interestingly enough, by 1897 improved relations with Great Britain had already
begun. The fact that free trade originated in Great Britain only brought American interest
381
Carl Schurz, “Anglo-American Friendship,” The Atlantic, October 1898, 440.
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to free trade advocates’ cause, instead of scorn like in 1890 through 1896. Free trade
advocates advertised these origins instead of downplaying them as previously done.382
After the Venezuelan Crisis, U.S. relations with Great Britain improved for several
reasons. First of all, free trade advocates like Godkin began writing about how well the
United States and Great Britain worked together in resolving the “long-festering dispute
over the killing of female seals in the Bering Sea” that occurred in 1892 and 1893.383
Furthermore, according to LaFeber, during the 1890s “U.S.-British relations also were
built on marriages of the children of American robber barons, who sought respectability,
to those of British aristocrats who sought dollars.”384 These occurrences, though small,
created a more amiable relationship between Great Britain and the United States. By
1898, the relationship between Great Britain and the United States had improved so
much, that politicians like Theodore Roosevelt noticed. In Roosevelt’s own words,
I feel very strongly that the English-speaking peoples are now closer
together than for a century and a quarter…; for their interests are really
fundamentally the same, and they are far more closely akin, not merely
in blood, but in feeling and principle, than either is akin to any other
people in the world.385
Free trade advocates expressed such sentiments since 1890. Now others, traditionally not
associated with free trade ideology, expressed similar feelings. Examining this same time
period, historian Murney Gerlach, author of British Liberalism and the United States
382
That is, until Great Britain showed signs that it might depart from free trade.
383
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
384
Ibid.
385
Ibid.
184.
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said, “The year [1898] proved to be a watershed in the political relationship of the United
States and Great Britain.”386
One of the agents who helped perpetuate these improved relations also drafted the
Open Door Policy Notes—John Hay. Hay is remembered as Secretary of State between
1898 and 1905.387 Hay had always been fond of Great Britain. This fondness, coupled
with his superior understanding of “how U.S. business and politics related to policy in
China,” resulted in support and adoption of Great Britain’s Open Door Policy.388 In
Hay’s own words, above all he wanted to prevent Europe’s attempts “to divide and
reduce China to a system of tributary provinces.”389 Before his position as Secretary of
State however, Hay served as ambassador to Great Britain390 from 1893 to 1897.391
Thus, while free trade advocates were trying to improve relations between Great
Britain and the United States, other agents were also doing the same. Nonetheless, free
386
Gerlach, 245.
387
As a footnote, McKinley understood Hay could save China for the United States. This
prompted McKinley to promote Hay to Secretary of State in 1898 with the charge of obtaining China.
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 220.
388
This interpretation places Historian George Kennan’s interpretation about Hay’s involvement
with the Open Door Policy into question. Kennan argued that the Open Door Policy fell into Hay’s lap.
Hay seemed too associated with Great Britain for Kennan’s assertions to be true, see: George F. Kennan,
American Diplomacy: Expanded Edition (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1984), “Chapter 2:
Mr. Hippisley and the Open Door,” 21-37.; LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and
Abroad, 1750 to the Present, 220.
389
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
220.
390
One of Hay’s greatest accomplishments while ambassador to Great Britain in the summer of
1896, was obtaining assurance from Great Britain that they would not interfere in war between Spain and
the United States. Prime Minister Salisbury told Hay that, “It’s no affair of ours, we are friendly to Spain
and should be sorry to see her humiliated, but we do not consider that we have anything to say in the matter
whatever may be the course the United States may decide to pursue.” Kenneth Bourne, The Foreign Policy
of Victorian England 1830-1902 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 172.
391
American Ambassadors to the United Kingdom, <http://london.usembassy.gov/rcambex.html>
(10 June 2007), Embassy of the United States London,, UK.
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trade advocates kept pushing towards improved relations. A world dominated by the
United States and Great Britain inspired free trade advocates’ efforts.
Changing the United States’ Diplomacy
Free trade advocates in both nations argued that changing the United States’ style
of diplomacy could improve relations between Great Britain and the United States, and
would be necessary as the United States became a world power. Free trade advocates
argued that the United States’ diplomatic corps was weak and inferior compared to
European nations. Free trade advocates understood the economic world was becoming
smaller, and a nation seeking power and riches could not ignore the European Powers.
In August 1897, an article in The Forum explained how U.S. diplomats had not kept up
with the times.392 Godkin expanded on this in late April 1898. In an article in The Nation
titled “Policy of Isolation,” Godkin argued that the United States remained isolated from
European affairs because of bad “political manners.”393 Godkin wanted, “a corps, not
only of competent and instructed diplomats, but of trained committees in the House and
Senate.”394 He argued however, that
…ever since we [the United States] became very strong, each
generation has been taught that we had nothing ‘to do with
abroad,’…that nothing foreign concerned us [the United States]
politically, as long as no European Power attempted a settlement on
this continent or sought to extend its borders in America. We were
taught not to care what Europe said or thought about anything we did or
how we did it. This…produced…complete indifference about the way
in which we kept our relations with Europe.395
392
“Statesmanship in England and the United States,” The Forum, August 1897.
393
E.L. Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” The Nation, 28 April 1898, 319.
394
Ibid.
395
Ibid.
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Because of this condition, according to Godkin, the United States
ceased to pay any attention to the qualifications of the men whom we
appointed to make our communications to Europe…[the United States]
ceased to appoint ministers or consuls with any reference to the duties
they would have to perform, any more than if Europe did not exist. 396
Godkin’s interpretation implies that the United States’ isolation created bad diplomats.
Ultimately, Godkin argued the solution to the problem came by abandoning
Washington’s Farewell Address advice, that the United States should not “entangle our
peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or
caprice.”397 Godkin’s concerns, often overwrought, held more legitimacy across the
nation this time. He argued that “…few of [the United States’] ministers concern
themselves about the countries to which they are accredited or about what is in them,” 398
and that there was “…not much study of languages or of foreign policy among our young
men…”
Most free trade advocates argued that improving U.S. diplomats would change the
United States’ diplomacy, as well as departing from Washington’s Farewell Address.
Some free trade advocates argued that the United States’ entire governmental system
needed change in order to improve diplomacy. Essentially, free trade advocates wanted
diplomats and diplomacy, businesslike. In part, free trade advocates desire for a business
savvy State Department reflected the rise of the corporatist society. But, free trade
396
Ibid.
397
Washington’s Farewell Address, <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm> (23 June
2007), The Avalon Project at Yale Law School.
398
Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” 319.
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advocates’ desires also represented what they wanted the State Department to do—broker
American business deals by obtaining markets.
Despite the complaints however, free trade advocates and British Liberals alike
received some change in February 1897. The British magazine The Spectator reported
that Colonel John Hay received appointment as the U.S. ambassador to England.399 The
British believed Hay’s appointment favored them. Hay’s appointment only gained British
favor, not necessarily respect. Great Britain (and much of Europe) held little respect for
U.S. diplomats and diplomacy. The Briton in the article echoed Godkin’s concerns about
U.S. diplomacy and diplomats. To the first point, he argued,
The truth is that the United States have not as yet wanted, and therefore
have not produced, the peculiar species which in Europe we speak of as
diplomatists. They have not been in any need of the reserved, cautious,
discriminating, subtle, sensitive, watchful minds which note every
expression, every contraction, every relaxation of nerve, in the
countenance of, those with whom they converse, and allow it to
influence heir emphasis and to give a certain significance to their
accent and their glance.400
The British blamed the poor diplomacy on the lack of “complex problems to solve.”401
By this, the author meant the United States’ poor diplomacy developed from the lack of
its European involvement. According to the article, the United States
have not had to weigh the advantages of cordiality with this Power
[Great Britain] against cordiality with that. They have not needed the
fine balance and the delicate appreciation of the give-and-take of
diplomatic suggestions acquired in a long inheritance of difficult
negotiations, failures, and successes. If they ever come to need
anything of the sort they…must feel the pressure of European
emergencies and needs, without which European methods of diplomacy
would be worthless and perhaps even prejudicial.402
399
The United States Ambassador,” The Spectator, 27 February 1897, 298.
400
Ibid.
401
Ibid.
402
Ibid.
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In that regard, the United States could be labeled “isolated.” To dabble in European
affairs, and play European games like arms-racing disobeyed the coveted and respected
Washington Farewell Address. The solution to these problems however, at least
according to the article, could not be resolved “till the Americans abandon their policy of
aloofness from European issues, and begin to interfere in European disputes.”403
The article’s discussion about Hay’s appointment and the United States’
diplomatic problems was not coincidental. Though I have no evidence of the author’s
intent, I believe that on the article’s surface, the author attempted to deliver advice to
Hay. Hay accomplished the article’s advice. He introduced the United States into
European problems in China as Secretary of State. Furthermore, as ambassador to Great
Britain, Hay negotiated with England the alliances of the Spanish-American War. To
emphasize important themes within this chapter, Hay’s actions deviated from
Washington’s Farewell Address. Hay became one of the first of a new breed of U.S.
diplomats the free trade advocates had long wanted. Both culturally and economically
savvy; a diplomat able to gain respect and negotiations from the European Powers.
Nonetheless, Hay should not be identified as a free trade advocate or a champion of
British Liberal ideas. Hay was an American imperialist. Hay’s characteristics represented
free trade advocates desires in a diplomat, but his ideology did not align with free trade
advocates. Thus again, it is easy to see similarities between U.S. imperialists and free
trade advocates.
403
Ibid.
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In 1897, free trade advocates probably focused more on the new occupant of
Secretary of State rather than the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain. Secretary John
Sherman, “aged, sometimes incapacitated, and too often senile,” looked backwards
towards protectionism and isolationism like other old Republicans.404 He anchored
movements towards war over Cuba, which at the time free trade advocates believed the
United States might help the “helpless” Cubans. Quoted in the Review of Reviews, he
said, “his chief policy as Secretary of State would be to keep the peace in every
direction.”405 Later free trade advocates and anti-imperialists grew concerned about
Sherman’s annexation treaty with Hawaii.406 Diplomats like Secretary of State Sherman
concerned Godkin. Godkin knew that McKinley tightly controlled Sherman, thus Godkin
believed Sherman to be only a pawn of the president Godkin cared little for.407 Godkin
grew concerned that “the people at large [remained ignorant] as to the manner in which
our Executive is conducting a negotiation, beyond readiness to go to war…”408 Godkin
grew angry about how to “the bulk of the population…foreign politics is a sealed book,
and no competent public man gives himself the trouble to explain it or comment on it.” 409
404
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
405
“Mr. Sherman as the Next Secretary of State,” Review of Reviews, February 1897, 137.
220.
406
It was no secret that annexation took place because the Republican’s Dingley Tariff moved
import taxes on sugar to 97 percent. Planters in Hawaii (and in Cuba) had expressed much frustration over
the tariff. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., 386.
407
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
408
Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” 319.
409
Ibid.
194-195.
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Godkin’s vituperative critiques derived from what his expectations were if the
United States became an empire. Godkin did not want an empire. His “expectations for
empire” were his way of arguing that the United States’ should not become an empire. In
an article titled, “Imperial Policy,” Godkin foresaw “a corps of administrators such as the
English have in India, in Egypt, in Burmah, in Jamaica, and all the crown colonies.”410
Specifically, for his American imperial vision, he desired,
a large body of men who have been trained from their youth up to the
discharge of the most delicate executive functions among a subject
ignorant, heathen population, with a religion to be respected which the
average American politician despises and laughed at, with prejudices to
be humored, with customs which cannot be safely meddled with, with
strange laws to be administered, with nice points of inheritance or
traditional land tenure to be elucidated.411
Godkin’s image of the diplomatic corps revealed what he really wanted in a diplomatic
corps, but it also (according to Godkin) argued that the present diplomatic corps was not
ready to manage an empire. Godkin wrote,
In our politics as practiced to-day, the last thing that would be thought
of would be the selection for such a place of a man who had resided in
any of these countries, or knew their languages, or was familiar with
their customs, or had practiced their laws.412
Nonetheless, Godkin helped describe the diplomatic corps free trade advocates wanted, a
diplomatic corps that both understood and civilized barbarians. This argument lends to
the “West as a savior” theme that free trade advocates desired.
Free trade advocates wanted more however than just an improved U.S. diplomatic
corps. Free trade advocates argued that Washington’s farewell address was no longer
applicable to the present condition of the United States. The English author, journalist,
410
E.L. Godkin, “Imperial Policy,” The Nation, 26 May 1898, 396.
411
Ibid.
412
Ibid.
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and statesman, Edward Dicey,413 discussed in great detail the United States need to leave
Washington’s farewell address in an article titled “The New American Imperialism,”
published in September 1898.414 Carl Schurz, one of Godkin’s fellow anti-imperialists,
argued the same as Dicey.415 Specifically, Dicey and Schurz argued avoiding
Washington’s advice discouraging the United States to “entangle our peace and
prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice.”416 In
order to obtain economic superiority internationally, free trade advocates understood that
the United States must engage European foreign affairs. Dicey wanted even more than
Godkin, claiming that the United States’ government needed to reorganize and create
new departments to monitor their empire.417
Ultimately, Godkin summarized the root principle of which all free trade
advocates and others wanted from U.S. diplomacy. Godkin, who unabashedly hated
certain aspects about capitalism, argued that government must be like business. In his
own words, “What we evidently need in our public affairs…is men who will remember
that government is business, and has to be conducted on the same principles and on the
same basis of probability as private affairs.”418 These were strong words for the man who
413
Edward Dicey, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Dicey> (11 June 2007), Wikipedia.
414
Edward Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” The Nineteenth Century, September 1898,
415
Schurz, “Anglo-American Friendship,” 433-441.
491.
416
Washington’s Farewell Address, 1796 <http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/washing.htm> (11
June 2007), The Avalon Project at Yale Law School: Foreign Relations of the United States.
417
Edward Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” The Nineteenth Century, September 1898,
418
E.L. Godkin, “Public Opinion and Empire,” The Nation, 13 October 1898, 270.
492.
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hated the corruption money-seekers had spread across the nation, including the spoils
system which spread into diplomatic appointments. Yet, Godkin’s words encapsulated
free trade advocates’ desires.
Improved Relations with Great Britain through Race
In order to improve relations with Great Britain between 1897 and 1899, free
trade advocates argued that Americans and Britons were connected through race. The
discussion of “race” both reflected and lent to the improved relations. Since 1890 free
trade advocates argued that the British and Americans differed little.419 In 1897,
following the Venezuelan Crisis, a great deal of articles in the United States and Great
Britain began championing that Great Britain was the best ally for the United States
because they were related by race. Accepting that the British and Americans were closely
related in race eased the passage of ideas from Great Britain to the United States. Stated
otherwise, Americans became more likely to accept free trade ideology because of
connections between races.
In August 1897, The Forum magazine opened the discussion about race. The
magazine concluded that Englishmen and Americans differed little. The article argued,
419
See Chapter 2.
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It will be hard to maintain that there is any great difference between
Englishmen and Americans by reason of race. The first settlers of this
country were Englishmen. Notwithstanding the great admixture of
other races,—an admixture chiefly of those Northern races of which
England herself was composed,—we are, in all essentials of national
character, Englishmen still. Their emigrants who come here lose their
distinctive character in a generation; or, if they come in childhood, their
nationality cannot be detected after they grow up. It would be difficult
for either country to establish the claim to an intellectual superiority
over the other. The difference between us is the difference in
institutions and local conditions.420
Race precluded government institutions. At this point in time, many authors on both sides
of the Atlantic emphasized race over the differences between “democracy” and
“monarchy.”
According to Andrew Carnegie, in his article, “Does America Hate England?”
published in December 1897,
race is always there at the bottom—latent, indeed, in quiet times, but
decisively shown in supreme moments when stirred by great issues
which affect the safety of the old home and involve the race. The
strongest sentiment in man, the real motive which at the crisis
determines his action in international affairs, is racial.421
Carnegie, as a successful Gilded Age and Progressive Era capitalist, understood the
importance of race. Carnegie himself subscribed to his own racist “Gospel of Wealth.”422
Carnegie believed all men were not created equal. He not only believed and advocated
Social Darwinism, he outright benefited from its beliefs—it kept him at the top. At the
top, Carnegie believed he should become “the sole agent and trustee for his poorer
brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to
420
“Statesmanship in England and the United States,” The Forum, August 1897, 712.
421
Andrew Carnegie, “Does America Hate England?,” The Contemporary Review, 4 December
1897, 661.
422
Andrew Carnegie, “Wealth,” North American Review, June 1889, 653, 657-662.
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administer-doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves.”423
Nonetheless, Carnegie’s and other wealthy elites’ racial theories kept them in the king’s
chair. Carnegie, the talented businessmen, understood this, and used his wisdom and
experience to interpret foreign policy actions.
Carnegie saw a real chance to build a racial theory between Americans and
Englishmen. As he noted, they shared
one language, one religion, one literature, and one law which bind men
together and make them brothers in time of need as against men of
other races. The racial sentiment goes deeper and reaches higher than
questions of mere pecuniary import, or of material interests.424
Carnegie’s hopes in such statements as the above, is that Americans and Englishmen
might conclude that, “On both sides of the Atlantic each should be careful hereafter to
give to the other no just cause of offence, and it may be taken as true that, Briton and
American being of the same race, what would be offensive to the one would be equally
so to the other.”425 Carnegie wanted peace between the two nations. His statement above
carried multiple objectives. He hoped that the United States would not interfere with the
British Empire, just as he hoped Great Britain would not interfere with the American
Empire (a.k.a. Latin America). It is important to note that Carnegie’s desires did not
always align with free trade advocates. Carnegie always placed his own interests above
anyone else’s. Thus, he aligned with free trade advocates’ when it was convenient for
him. For the most part however, Carnegie did align with free trade advocates’ racial
theories.
423
Ibid., 662.
424
Carnegie, “Does America Hate England?,” 661.
425
Ibid., 667.
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Free trade advocate Carl Schurz also commented on the new found race
relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Schurz emphasized that the two
nations would dominate over other nations because of race. He focused on the SpanishAmerican races, arguing that though they were perhaps better than the races in the
Philippines, “…the Anglo-Saxon race is in the long run more apt to assimilate itself to the
Spanish-American than the Spanish-American to the Anglo-Saxon.”426 Thus, Schurz
believed that the Anglo-Saxon race had a better cultural understanding of other races,
than other races, like the “Spanish-American,” had of the “Anglo-Saxon” race. Schurz’s
comments speak to his belief that other races were inferior. But, more importantly, his
comments carry an anti-imperialist tone. Essentially he argued that “Spanish-Americans”
should not be colonized.
Dicey, more than all the other authors, foresaw Western dominance throughout
the globe based on race.427 Dicey said, “…it is safe to assume, as a rule, that Americans
are actuated by much the same ideas, instincts, motives, and modes of thought as their
fellow-kinsmen in the Old World.”428 Stated otherwise, Dicey believed, “Other things
being equal, thoughts, ideas, tastes, and actions on any given subject may safely be
assumed to be the same with Americans as with Englishmen.”429 This ultimately led
Dicey to conclude,
426
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” 785.
427
As a modern-day comparison, Victor Davis Hanson’s books are reminiscent of some of
Edward Dicey’s comments about a Western superiority. See: Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture:
Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power (New York: Doubleday, 2001). And Victor Davis Hanson,
Why the West Has Won (London: Faber, 2001).
428
Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” 491.
429
Ibid., 491.
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On à priori reasoning, therefore, it would have seemed reasonable to
suppose that a desire to extend the area of dominion, a wish to become
a ruling power in the world by the subjugation of weaker races, would
have characterized the Trans-Atlantic branch of the Anglo-Saxon
community…The instinct of a ruling race was, as I contend, always in
existence in the Great Republic of the West….The West was to a great
extent a terra incognita…430
Thus, Dicey described the United States’ empire in the American West as a model for
what was to come from the United States’ empire in the world. The United States’ would
obtain an “area of dominion” and subject “weaker races.” Stated otherwise, the
annihilation of Native Americans in order to obtain land which harvested natural
resources and access to markets provided a model for American imperialism.
Improved Relations with Great Britain through Class
In order to improve relations with Great Britain between 1897 and 1899, free
trade advocates also argued that a “certain class” would have to work together in both
nations. Free trade advocates argued that emphasizing class helped create a better
relationship between Great Britain and the United States. Furthermore, free trade
advocates argued that though race needed to be emphasized to the general population in
both nations, class was more important to the men making policy. In his article “Does
America Hate England?,” Carnegie claimed that despite the Venezuelan Crisis, “…there
is no deep-seated, bitter national hatred in the United States against Britain, there is no
question but there has been recently a wave of resentment and indignation at her
conduct.”431 Carnegie did state however, that a certain class of Americans maintained
430
Ibid.
431
Carnegie, “Does America Hate England?,” 661.
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friendship with Great Britain. According to him, “…the educated class of Americans,
who were and are Britain’s friends…” could be the most trusted to support relations
between Great Britain and the United States.432
This is not the first time Carnegie emphasized class. In the Venezuelan Crisis
Carnegie disagreed with other free trade advocates like Godkin and Charles Eliot Norton
about unlimited free trade. As a bourgeoisie, Carnegie wanted Latin America just for the
United States, rather than sharing it with other capitalists around the world. Carnegie
believed the educated class, which meant mainly social elites in the 1890s, best
understood how improved relations between Great Britain and the United States meant
respecting each other’s spheres of influence. Carnegie assumed that other social elite
classes in Great Britain would understand the spheres of influence’s importance to
maintaining good relations between Great Britain and the United States. Carnegie
explained his idea in this statement referencing the Venezuelan Crisis:
… it is upon these educated classes, for reasons stated, that Britain
must depend for friends, because it is with education alone that there
can come a just estimate of the past, and a knowledge of the position
which the British people hold to-day in regard to colonial liberties and
to international arbitration. It is deeply to be regretted that, although
public sentiment in Britain forced Lord Salisbury to accept peaceful
arbitration, as requested by the United States Government, nevertheless
the majority of the American people cannot be successfully reached
and impressed with that fact. The educated people, who follow foreign
affairs, do know and appreciate that the best people in America had
with them the best people in Great Britain in favour of settlement by
arbitration, but to the masses it must unfortunately appear that Britain
refused arbitration until forced to accept it by the United States.433
Championing ideas like Godkin, Atkinson, and Norton, Carnegie had summarized one of
all the authors’ main points. According to them, as long as the upper classes in each
432
Ibid.
433
Ibid., 666.
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nation did not do something to stop the success of the upper classes in the other nation,
the upper classes in both nations would offer the most support to the other nation. To
Carnegie, and the other free trade advocates, the masses factored little into the equation.
Furthermore, free trade advocates emphasized class to improve relations between
Great Britain and the United States because free trade advocates believed entering deeper
into the world’s foreign affairs required an ally. According to free trade advocates,
“There is…no reason in the world why the two nations should not now again draw closer
and closer together.” 434 Godkin believed,
…the restoration of harmony or good feeling between England and
America is a consummation so devoutly to be wished that no
difficulties or obstacles should be allowed to stand in its way…England
has plainly recognized , at last that America is her best and only natural
ally and friend. We believe the most enlightened Englishmen have long
felt this and tried to show it…Is it a good thing for us? Is it a good
thing for liberty and civilization? No one who sees how things are
going in the great Continental states can well help answering these
questions in the affirmative.435
The “most enlightened Englishmen” Godkin referred to probably meant British Liberals.
Thus, the upper class free trade advocates on both sides of the nation would understand
best, and most clearly, how to improve and how to maintain relations between Great
Britain and the United States.
During the time of their rhetoric, free trade advocates saw improved relations
between Great Britain and the United States. Dicey’s realization that Great Britain and
the United States, “have common ties, common interests, common memories, common
kinship, which they do not and cannot possess with the world outside their own
434
Ibid., 667.
435
Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” 319.
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families…” took the lead in Americans thought.436 Even the weary Schurz conceded that
Great Britain could not be a “hereditary enemy.”437 Free trade advocates long waited
desire for better relations with Great Britain had begun. Free trade advocates hoped
Americans’ new appreciation for Great Britain would transpire into appreciation of Great
Britain’s free trade ideology. Even the depressed Godkin wrote, “we admit freely that the
reported entente cordiale with Great Britain will do a great deal to hasten the process.”438
As the United States became an empire, free trade advocates got more than what they
bargained for from the improved relations with Great Britain. What was to stop
Americans from admiring the mighty British Empire?
Placing Boundaries on the Comparisons between Great Britain and the United
States
American free trade advocates placed boundaries on their comparisons of, and
admiration for, Great Britain, despite wanting improved relations between the two
nations. As the United States became recognized as an empire, American free trade
advocates against imperialism had to be careful about glorifying or admiring the British
Empire. American free trade advocates even began criticizing aspects of British
imperialism. As American free trade advocate Carl Schurz wrote, “that under the policy
of conquest and territorial aggrandizement the British government did fall into a very
grievous state of profligacy and corruption, from which it emerged only after a long
436
Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” 490.
437
Schurz, “Anglo-American Friendship,” 433.
438
Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” 319.
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period of effort.”439 Free trade advocates’ emphasis on race and class helped Americans
overcome Great Britain’s egregious colonial policies as well as their monarchial history,
nonetheless, American free trade advocates did not want the United States to become an
empire, or model British imperial action. Furthermore, as Great Britain began departing
from free trade ideology, American free trade advocates had to be more careful in general
about arguing that Americans needed to accept Great Britain’s policy. This part of the
chapter specifically highlights American free trade advocates’ opinions about Great
Britain. Thus, the British sources in this part of the chapter were used to reveal Great
Britain’s beginning departure from free trade, not to reveal a transatlantic relationship
between free trade advocates.
By 1897 many authors recognized that the United States had already become a
continental empire. British author Dicey in the previous section about race, discussed
how the United States had become an empire of the continental West. The United States
had obtained an “area of dominion” and subjected “weaker races.”440 Authors at the time
drew different implications about what labeling the United States as an empire meant, but
most recognized change. An article in The Forum published in August 1897 stated that
“One Great change has taken place and is going on both in England and in this Country
[the United States]. It comes from the growth of empire.”441 According to the article,
empire had
439
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” 786.
440
Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” 491.
441
“Statesmanship in England and the United States,” 709.
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come upon us [the United States] by reason of our rapid growth in
population and in wealth since the War [the Civil War], and by reason
of the large number of matters which the more liberal construction of
constitutional powers prevailing since slavery was overthrown has
required us to deal with.442
This particular U.S. periodical saw “rapid growth in population and in Wealth” as
causation for U.S. continental empire. Interestingly enough, U.S. imperialists cited this
same causation as a justification for a new empire.443
The article in The Forum also suggested that the West would come to the
“economic wisdom of Cobden and Bright [free trade ideology]…when she needs
them.”444 But at that very moment, the article claimed, “What is wanted in this country
now is the honest, faithful, industrious, and intelligent management of its business affairs,
both in State and nation. And this the generation abundantly supplies.”445 The article
proved to be insightful. The agents that would lead the United States to the Open Door
Policy were already in place, or would soon be in place.
Carnegie, since 1897 believed the United States held a sphere of influence over
Latin America. Carnegie already compared Latin America to Britain’s colonies.
Furthermore, he even foresaw military action in Latin America, still several months
before the Spanish-American War.
442
Ibid., 710.
443
The historian Walter LaFeber pointed this fact out, and discussed similar themes as the West
being the old empire, and acquiring Cuba, the Philippines, etc. as being the new empire. See: LaFeber, The
New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898.
444
“Statesmanship in England and the United States,” 721.
445
Ibid., 722.
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…why should a European Power be permitted to make war on that
Continent thus dedicated to arbitration? Nations have their red rags.
Every one knows that Great Britain would fight in defence of her right
of asylum. Every one knows that she would defend her colonies to the
extent of her power. There should be no mistake made by the British
people upon this point, that the United States will not permit any
European nation to attack an American States in Consequence of a
territorial dispute. These claims are to be settled by peaceful
arbitration.446
Carnegie believed the United States’ sphere of influence over Latin America was
sovereign. Interestingly enough, he predicted that European involvement in that
hemisphere would probably lead to war.
Carnegie’s real point for making such comments was that Carnegie did not
believe in a globalized free trade, rather a world where Western Powers held spheres of
influence implementing free trade. By his definition of free trade, Carnegie believed that
free trade could provide discourse between the United States and Great Britain.
According to Carnegie,
Industrial competitors, and the workmen employed by them, are very
sensitive and easily irritated; and in our day, when every nation of the
front rank aspires to manufacture and produce for its own wants,
‘Foreign Commerce’ and ‘Free Trade’ do not always make for peace
and goodwill among nations, but the contrary. Nations are disposed to
resent industrial invasion, Free-Trade Britain not less than Protective
Germany.447
Carnegie’s argument paralleled debates beginning in Great Britain discussing their
nation’s departure from free trade. Carnegie explained the spheres of influence idea to
Americans. His comments also reveal that bourgeois class solidarity did not always
extend transnationally.
446
Carnegie, “Does America Hate England?,” 666.
447
Ibid., 660.
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Godkin, as usual, offered more comments than anyone else about the United
States as an empire. Godkin argued that there were alternatives to acquiring territories in
order to obtain markets. He argued that the United States had to adopt free trade, and
maintain a sphere of influence if it wanted into China. In an article titled “Imperialism,”
published in The Nation in December 1897, Godkin wrote, “China is apparently destined
to undergo, not the fate of Africa, for it is thickly peopled by a highly civilized race, but
the fate of British India…”448 The European Powers had divided Africa, but India
remained under control of only Great Britain. Godkin also argued that there was
“apparently no opening for colonization in China more than in India.”449 Godkin believed
free trade and a sphere of influence was the only way to obtain China’s markets, as well
as prevent one Western Power from gaining complete control in China. Godkin explained
why free trade advocates wanted China. Godkin argued that, “What is tempting in China
to the Powers which are apparently making preparations to dismember it, is first the
trade, and secondly the ‘imperial idea,’ which was started in England and has now spread
all over the world.”450 By “imperial idea,” Godkin meant territorial acquisition.
Still, Godkin recognized the United States had reached the point of being labeled
an empire. By defining imperialism as “another name for a wide extent of territory,
inhabited by divers[e?] races speaking various languages, and kept in order by an
immense apparatus of forts, native armies, and fleets,” Godkin argued that,
448
E.L. Godkin, “Imperialism,” The Nation, 30 December 1897, 511.
449
Ibid.
450
Ibid.
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The idea [imperialism] has run through Europe, and has even made its
way to America, that if a nation is to be great it must, like Rome, be
‘imperial’; that is, must reign over a large number of communities of
one sort or other as ‘war lord,’ and do them good, and elevate them, not
in their own way, but in yours. There was some excuse for this in the
case of nations like Great Britain and Germany, which had large
populations pressing on the limits of subsistence at home, and therefore
in real need of ‘fresh woods and pastures new’; but the idea has laid
hold of countries like France, which will not be able to people it own
soil in a century. Even among us men began to say four or five years
ago: ‘Sdeath, sir! We have no Malta, no Gibraltar, nor an island to our
name. nor a single conquered race of a brown complexion, and look at
England! These things are the signs of full growth in a nation, and we
have now reached our majority. We must have islands and dagoes.’451
Godkin despised this colonialism. Criticizing certain aspects of capitalism, Godkin
argued that,
There is probably no place in that vast empire in which Europeans
could live and make money without enslaving the natives, and this will
never be attempted—not that the sentiment in favor of making colored
men work by force is dead among our capitalists, but that democracy,
being largely made up of free labor, abhors it.452
Godkin believed free trade naturally accompanied democracy, and that colonialism
generated little if any profit over the cost. Godkin believed the only profit a colony could
generate, came from forced labor. Godkin, with his liberal virtues, abhorred forced labor
even if it was over what he deemed “inferior races.” Furthermore, Godkin believed that
even forced labor turned little profit and was not politically possible.
Godkin also discussed the factor which dictated the United States’ choice of
imperialism—China. A month before the Spanish-American War, Godkin discussed how
the United States’ “policy of isolation” endangered obtaining Chinese markets. Godkin
reminded Americans scornfully that Great Britain offered the only hope of delivering
China to the United States.
451
Ibid.
452
Ibid.
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Although England is taking much trouble and incurring some risk in
China, in order to secure certain commercial advantages, which we
shall share on equal terms, and to ward off certain dangers which,
though they will not affect us in the same degree, still will affect us in
some degree, we are able, owing to this policy of isolation, to offer her
nothing but our ‘moral support.’453
Godkin feared, like other business-minded Americans, that Germany’s recent actions
against Japan would make Great Britain’s open door policy extinct.454 Godkin argued that
Great Britain’s open door policy created the only access the United States had to China’s
markets. Furthermore, Godkin argued that if the United States wanted into China it would
have to leave its history of isolation, and help Great Britain maintain the open door in
China. Thus, the United States’ desire for China helped dictate the creation of the U.S.
Open Door Policy.
But the United States did not immediately respond to help Great Britain in China.
As the Spanish-American War began, and annexation discussions began, the United
States appeared far away from adopting free trade ideologies. Meanwhile, Great Britain,
with no immediate support from the United States, began moving away from free trade
ideology. American free trade advocates protested annexations while still championing
free trade. Unbeknownst to American free trade advocates, the American Empire
(something free trade advocates opposed), helped free trade advocates’ ideas become
incorporated into what became known as the U.S. Open Door Policy.
453
Godkin, “Policy of Isolation,” 319.
454
See section, “A Brief History of Events Between 1897 and 1899.”
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American Free Trade Advocates as Anti-Imperialists
American free trade advocates had always held an anti-imperialist position.455
American free trade advocates wanted markets, not empire. As the Spanish-American
War broke out, American free trade advocates had to be careful arguing that the United
States should adopt Great Britain’s ideology. After all, Great Britain was an empire.
American free trade advocates attacked both the United States’ and Great Britain’s
imperialism in U.S. periodicals. In order to clarify American free trade advocates’ ideas,
it is important to note that they opposed both territorial acquisitions and colonies. In the
late-nineteenth century, “territorial acquisition,” meant literally acquiring territory that
would be politically part of the United States. The American West is an example of a
U.S. territorial acquisition. Americans debated the pros and cons about territorial
acquisition. The West was easy to acquire because Americans believed that there were
few “civilized” natives in the territory. After the Mexican-American War (1846-1848),
debates about territorial acquisition arose. Ultimately Americans decided not to acquire
too much territory from Mexico because they did not want Mexicans to gain rights from
the U.S. Constitution. Similar debates arose in the United States in the Spanish-American
War about the future of Cuba and the Philippines. Some Americans argued that if the
islands remained colonies, they would technically not be under the U.S. constitution. Free
trade advocates opposed both views. Free trade advocates believed that free trade only
required obtaining markets and managing spheres of influence, like the United States’
relationship with Latin America.
455
Robert Beisner’s book best describes American anti-imperialists and their objectives. See,
Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898-1900.
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Not all anti-imperialists supported free trade, but American free trade advocates
supported the anti-imperialists’ platform. American free trade advocates aligned with
other anti-imperialists because American free trade advocates believed free trade
accompanied democracy instead of empire. American free trade advocates believed free
trade ideology reinforced their beloved liberal United States, and that formal empire
created monarchy. Interestingly enough, examining American free trade advocates’ antiimperialist literature also revealed the hopelessness and abandonment American free
trade advocates felt during and immediately following the Spanish-American War.
Free trade advocates disagreed with colonization. Carnegie, in 1897 essentially
outlined what other American free trade advocates felt about territorial acquisitions.
Whether at this day seeds of future hatred or affection are being sown
in the hearts of the millions to come in various parts of the world,
should be the vital question for statesmen engaged in Empire-building.
What an expanding nation would here do ‘highly, that should she
holily,’ for assuredly Empire founded upon violent conquest,
conspiracy, or oppression, or upon any foundation other than the
sincere affection of the people embraced, can neither endure nor add to
the power or glory of the conqueror, but prove a source of continual
and increasing weakness and of shame.456
Carnegie expressed what American free trade advocates believed; empire building
jeopardized the moral fabric of the United States.
As the war began and the possibility of annexation surfaced, American free trade
advocates became even more adamant about their feelings towards annexation. Free trade
advocates opposed keeping the Philippines. At the very beginning of the war, Godkin
could not fathom annexing “…fifteen hundred islands, inhabited by half savages and
bigoted Spaniards…”457 According to Godkin, Admiral George Dewey’s victory helped
456
Carnegie, “Does America Hate England?,” 663.
457
Godkin, “Imperial Policy,” 396.
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sell the idea of annexing the Philippines: “It seemed so easy to destroy a fleet that we all
rushed to the conclusion that it must be just as easy to rule a far-off province.”458 Godkin
could not understand how the nation became fond of empire so fast. Godkin argued that
“…men began to wonder how we had got on so long without them [colonies], and why
on earth we had so long regarded ourselves as different from and better off than the
monarchies of the old world…”459 If Godkin had realized the war started out of
imperialists’ actions and desires instead of for moral and liberal reasons, Godkin would
have understood.
Because Godkin lacked insight into the imperialists’ tactics to obtain China, the
Philippines seemed worthless to him. Free trade advocates believed spheres of influence
made the need for territorial acquisitions and colonies non-existent. Furthermore, like
other free trade advocates, Godkin could not understand imperialists’ obsession with
obtaining the “barbaric” Philippines. Referring to the Philippines, Godkin argued that,
Nobody said or dreamed that we had any responsibility whatever for
the happiness or good government of any other country than Cuba. For
the prosperity and happiness of all distant continents and islands we
denied all accountability, no matter how badly off we acknowledged
them to be—for Ireland, for Spain herself, for Italy, for New Guinea,
for China, for Africa, for Turkey, for the Caroline Islands, or even for
the Spanish-American republics on this continent, although they, too,
are very near us and annoy us much by their goings on.460
Like Carnegie, obtaining any territory (but especially the Philippines), to Godkin meant
jeopardizing American values. Godkin wrote that even if the United States became a
colonial power, rather than annexing the territories, the “Constitution will have to be
458
Ibid.
459
Ibid.
460
Ibid.
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seriously altered, or, still worse, to be disregarded…” and that “…a civil service of the
highest order…” would have to be created.461 Godkin’s comments refer to free trade
advocates’ belief that government was corrupt. To American free trade advocates,
increasing a civil service that was already corrupt to handle a colonial system was a bad
idea. Godkin revealed his feelings about empire more clearly towards the end of the war:
“…I, for my own part, believe, whatever it might do for the national vanity or the
material prosperity of the United States, would be fatal to the ‘great experiment.’”462
Carnegie gave an example about how American free trade advocates believed
imperialism would hurt the moral fabric of the United States. Carnegie examined the
United States’ actions towards Filipino “problem.” Early in 1899 Carnegie addressed
U.S. treatment of the Filipinos.
The religious school of Imperialists intend doing for the Filipinos what
is best for them, no doubt; but, when we crush in any people its longing
for independence, we take away with one hand a more powerful means
of civilization than all which it is possible for us to bestow with the
other.463
Carnegie believed that the Spanish-American War had placed imperialism over
“Americanism.” He articulated this with an attack on McKinley.
Are these broad, liberty-loving and noble liberty-giving principles of
Americanism…to be discarded for the narrow liberty-denying, racesubjecting, Imperialism of President McKinley when the next appeal is
made to the American people? We have never for one moment doubted
the answer; for they have never yet failed to decide great issues wisely
nor to uphold American ideals.464
461
E.L. Godkin, “Revolutionary Imperialism,” The Nation, 28 July 1898, 69.
462
Ibid., 70.
463
Andrew Carnegie, “Americanism versus Imperialism,” The North American Review, January
1899, 370.
464
Ibid., 372.
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As usual, Schurz added his own take on events. Schurz often appeared to be a
more conservative and balanced critic than his fellow free trade advocates. Schurz even
hinted at maintaining Washington’s Farewell Address if it prevented the United States
from becoming an empire. Schurz wrote,
We are told that as we have grown very rich and very powerful the
principles of policy embodied in Washington’s Farewell Address have
become obsolete; that we have ‘new responsibilities,’ ‘new duties,’ and
a peculiar ‘mission.’ When we ask what these ‘new responsibilities’
and duties require this republic to do, the answer is that it should
meddle more than heretofore with the concerns of the outside world for
the purpose of ‘furthering the progress of civilization’; that it must
adopt an ‘imperial policy,’ and make a beginning by keeping as
American possessions the island colonies conquered from Spain. This
last proposition has at least the merit of definiteness, and it behooves
the American people carefully to examine it in the light of
‘responsibility,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘mission.’465
According to Schurz, there was nothing greater than the republic of the United States. To
him, even if it meant turning to the past, American values should never be sacrificed.466
Schurz feared that the Spanish-American War only began U.S. imperialists’ actions.467
Schurz saw any further imperial action, like acquiring “the Spanish West Indies…Mexico
and the other republics down to the inter-oceanic canal that is to be built…” as ending the
republic.468 In his “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” Schurz expressed some of the
worst fears of American free trade advocates.
Rather than point out what accepting imperialists’ policies would do to the United
States, American free trade advocates also highlighted what imperialists’ actions had
465
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” 781.
466
Ibid., 782.
467
Ibid., 784.
468
Ibid..
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lacked solving in the United States. American free trade advocates highlighted the fact
that the war lacked solving the United States’ financial crisis. Godkin argued that,
Nobody in America thinks or cares about public finance now, but
foreign statesmen and financiers keep thinking and talking about it, and
this is what they say: The United States have gone on for thirty-five
years with disordered finances….that with an empire this cannot go on,
that we must change our system altogether…[and] they go farther than
this. They say we must alter out Constitution so as to establish some
sort of financial responsibility. Of course, we have successfully turned
away popular attention from our financial difficulties at home by our
Cuban war.469
Godkin proved more right than he realized. In fact, he landed on the answer as to why
U.S. imperialists would eventually abandon formal empire tactics and accept aspects of
free trade ideology. U.S. imperialists also believed the former failed to solve the financial
crisis, and the latter would deliver China.
Despite this coincidental truth, American free trade advocates felt hopelessly
ignored. During the Spanish-American War their rhetoric took on tones of hopelessness
and anger. American free trade advocates believed everything they fought for occurred
oppositely. This hopelessness and anger lead free trade advocates to attack the idea of
“empire.” American free trade advocates originally explained the reasons the United
States went to war. In Godkin’s words, “We started on our present war with Spain in
order to liberate Cuba…it lay so close to us, that we had so much commerce with it, and
that our ears were so constantly pained with its tales of sorrow, wrong, and truth.”470
Schurz believed the same as Godkin. According to Schurz, “It was to be simply a war of
liberation, of humanity, undertaken without any selfish motive.”471 Dewey’s victorious
469
Godkin, “Revolutionary Imperialism,” 69-70.
470
Godkin, “Imperial Policy,” 396.
471
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” 783.
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battle in the Philippines followed by the islands’ immediate occupation put into question
the United States’ motives for war. Justifying the United States’ “disinterested
benevolence” became difficult for American free trade advocates.472
American free trade advocates immediately began seeing the truth. Their
delusion faded. American free trade advocates asked questions like Schurz’s.
…if this war of humanity and disinterested benevolence be turned into
a war of conquest?...if Cuba or any other of the conquered islands be
kept by the United States as a permanent possession? What then?...
would this not be a mean piece of pettifogging to cover up a breach of
faith? Can a gentleman do such things? Can a gentleman quibble about
his moral obligations and his word?473
The war’s victories and the nation’s patriotism squelched out questions like Schurz’s.
Godkin and other free trade advocates felt like, “In time of war, deliberation seems
impossible.”474 Godkin naturally expanded on his phrase.
It was a Roman who said that the laws were silent in the midst of arms.
What he meant was, however, that when hostilities were raging the
civil law could not be executed or obeyed as usual. He did not mean—
that deliberation over questions of public policy should cease, or had to
cease; that the national destinies should no longer cause any concern;
and that everybody, instead of deliberating, should take to shouting and
reading ‘yellow journals.’475
Godkin believed U.S. imperialists pushed American free trade advocates out of the
discussion about empire. Godkin also believed that the few who opposed U.S.
472
Ibid.
473
Ibid.
474
Godkin, “Imperial Policy,” 396.
475
Ibid.
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imperialism gave, “three or four hearty yells and then go to bed with the stars and stripes
wrapped round their bodies.”476
Godkin constantly served as a watch dog for first amendment rights. He even tried
looking out for the troops’ rights. He argued that the government blocked the debates
about empire from the troops. In an article titled “Imperium et Libertas,” published in
May 1899, Godkin went on an extended tirade about informing the troops. He argued
that,
The power of voting means liberty to hear what is said on both sides to
the voter...But already…this liberty has been abolished. The soldiers in
the Philippines who will vote at the Presidential election next ear are
not to be allowed to hear anything against the fitness of William
McKinley for a second term, though probably some millions doubt his
fitness and are able to give reasons for doubting it. All these voters are,
therefore, excluded from hearing all discussions…477
Godkin criticized McKinley, claiming, “the Executive is permitted to go to war for any
purpose, the purpose cannot be strictly defined. It is always, in practice, whatever it may
be in theory, a license to carry on war against anybody or for any purpose that seems
good to him.”478 Godkin felt the government and “those clergymen and others who
favored the Cuban war as a ‘war of humanity’ and thought it would end with the
liberation of Cuba” blocked his and other American free trade advocates opinions.479
After discussing the censorship abroad, Godkin honed in on the censorship at
home. Godkin examined comments similar to those made later during the Vietnam War.
Godkin wrote,
476
Ibid.
477
E.L. Godkin, “Imperium et Libertas,” The Nation, 18 May 1899, 368.
478
Ibid., 369.
479
Ibid., 368.
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There are now strong symptoms of a disposition not to permit the
discussion of any important branch of public affairs, even at home,
provided it has any relation to war. The Imperialists are unwilling to
have voters allowed to discuss the conduct of the war, or its cost, or the
policy of its continuance, or the terms of peace. All these are to be
handed over to a one-man power. The theory that any one who
criticizes the war is responsible for the death of the men who die in it,
and not the persons who started it, has already made its
appearance….You see you are a traitor and a murderer if you speak
against the war; not so William McKinley, who set it on foot…If you
say anything that can possibly cheer the enemy, you make yourselves
liable to the penalties of treason, in spite of the constitutional definition
of treason.480
Godkin’s comments above were in response to a speech made by U.S. General John
McNulta in Chicago. He said,
If, by the acts of men living among us is peace and under the protection
of our government, this war is prolonged so that my boy, fighting in the
front rank there with Lawton, is killed, they have murdered him. Men
like those who spoke at the anti-imperialist meeting at Central Music
Hall should be held responsible for the death of every soldier who falls
there by reason of their encouragement, and every man who thus
encourages an enemy in time of war is a traitor.481
Godkin believed the nation had betrayed him and the other American free trade
advocates. In frustration Godkin compared the United States to Great Britain. He wrote,
“…England, although a monarchial country with a restricted suffrage. She waged two
important wars…without any attempt to restrict or punish discussion.”482 This
comparison proved to be a drastic step for Godkin. Up until this article, he had spent
nearly a decade persuading Americans that Great Britain was admirable. In this particular
quote, Godkin described Great Britain in a negative light, and argued that the United
States was worse.
480
Ibid., 369.
481
Ibid.
482
Ibid.
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Schurz summed up the feeling of most American free trade advocates about the
Spanish-American War, empire, and the roots behind the hopelessness they felt.
...it can hardly be questioned that whenever such efforts are made in a
manner apt to undermine democratic government at home, such efforts
must, as to the true responsibility and mission of the American people,
be regarded as dangerous; for they may not only injure the American
people themselves, but also weaken the faith of mankind in the worth
of democratic institutions, and thus impair their moral influence among
men.483
American free trade advocates believed the United States had been in a position to adopt
an ideology that would allow it to become a world power. Instead, American free trade
advocates believed the United States erred in coming back to the conclusion that more
territorial acquisitions were needed.
The Spanish-American War made American free trade advocates weary about
comparing the United States to Great Britain. American free trade advocates opposed
imperialists’ ideas which suggested acquiring territory or colonies. Essentially, during the
Spanish-American War, the American free trade advocates attacked the idea of a U.S.
empire. American free trade advocates felt betrayed by their nation, but the nation they
believed in never really existed.
Summation
Between 1897 and 1899 free trade advocates presented dichotomous themes. Free
trade advocates established connections between Great Britain and the United States in
order to persuade Americans that free trade would work in the United States. At the same
time, American free trade advocates placed boundaries on the comparisons between the
483
Schurz, “Thoughts on American Imperialism,” 781.
147
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
two nations. Thus, the dichotomous themes helped produce the nationalized uniqueness
found in the U.S. Open Door Policy.
The United States did not immediately accept free trade ideology. By mid-1898
however, the United States had created an empire abroad. Creating this new empire
proved to be the United States’ first step towards accepting free trade. In the article, “The
New American Imperialism,” Edward Dicey explained how the United States had come
to their new conclusion about imperialism.484
Stern experience has convinced the Americans of the fallacy of their
old belief. They see that the doctrine of all men being equal and entitled
to equal rights does not provide food for the poor, employment for the
unemployed, or wealth for the masses who have no capital except their
hands and arms. Feeling as they do that democratic institutions are no
longer a panacea for the cure of social discontents , the Americans
resort most naturally to the remedies which under like circumstances
have commended themselves to their English forefathers—that is, to
foreign trade, to emigration, and to the establishment of a colonial
empire.485
Dicey concluded that economic conditions drove the creation of United States’ empire.
Empire, according to Dicey, supposedly would solve the United States economic
problems.
Even making allowance for the exaggeration inseparable from TransAtlantic journalism, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that for the
first time in its records the Western Republic numbers a pauper class
amidst her citizens…Far too great importance may easily be attached to
the question of American pauperism, but it is easy to understand that
the mere existence of such a question should dispose Americans to look
favourbly on any measures which might provide means of escape from
the novel ‘unemployment’ difficulty, or from the agrarian and operative
discontent of which the outcome was Bryanism.486
Dicey revealed how American imperialists justified empire.
484
Dicey, “The New American Imperialism,” 487-501.
485
Ibid., 495.
486
Ibid.
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Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
But the new empire lacked solving the United States’ economic problems, and
China remained undelivered to U.S. corporations. Furthermore, Schurz argued that Great
Britain might not always maintain the open door for the United States’ use.
if Great Britain were for some reason attacked in any of the vast and
complicated territorial possessions in which some of those open ports
are situated, or if she should consider it proper to extend the policy of
the ‘open door’ by further conquests, the United States would find it in
their interest to join her with their own armed forces.487
Criticisms about empire continued. An article titled, “Shadows of English
Imperialism,” published in The Nation on 9 March 1899, showed the dark side, “the
shadows,” of Great Britain’s empire. The author wrote,
…a higher morality and justice and charity have gone with [Great
Britain’s]…trade. Still, the picture is not without its shadows. Current
discussions in the English press and in Parliament have clearly brought
out facts which show what appear to be the inevitable incidental evils
of government forcibly imposed by a superior race upon an inferior
one.488
The author examined some specific incidents of Great Britain’s wrongs, comparing them
to the United States. For example, the author compared Great Britain’s actions in Sudan
to the United States’ actions in the Philippines. “The operations of the English army in
the Sudan have, in a way, brought as much shame and compunction to philanthropic
people in England as the exploits of our soldiers in the Philippines have caused
Americans.”489
Overall, the author strongly criticized imperialism. “English imperialism has also
a way, like our own, or proving costly beyond all estimates.”490 This attitude eventually
487
Schurz, “Anglo-American Friendship,” 438.
488
R. Ogden, “Shadows of English Imperialism,” The Nation, 9 March 1899, 176.
489
Ibid.
490
Ibid., 177.
149
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swept across the United States. Realizing that it was still stuck with economic problems
and that it had sacrificed its “liberal tradition,” by oppressing native populations, the
United States soon adopted the U.S. Open Door Policy. Empire proved too costly for the
United States. American free trade advocates, even as late as 1899, probably never
believed the United States would adopt their ideology. But on 6 September 1899,
Secretary of State Hay sent out the first of two open door notes. Hay delivered the second
open door note on 3 July 1900, in response to the Boxer Rebellion which began on the 20
June 1900. The first note, sent to Germany, Russia, England, Japan, Italy, and France,
made three requests.
First. Will in no way interfere with any treaty port or any vested
interest within any so-called "sphere of interest" or leased territory it
may have in China.
Second. That the Chinese treaty tariff of the time being shall apply to
all merchandise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said
"sphere of interest" (unless they be "free ports"), no matter to what
nationality it may belong, and that duties so leviable shall be collected
by the Chinese Government.
Third. That it will levy no higher harbor dues on vessels of another
nationality frequenting any port in such "sphere" than shall be levied on
vessels of its own nationality, and no higher railroad charges over lines
built, controlled, or operated within its "sphere" on merchandise
belonging to citizens or subjects of other nationalities transported
through such "sphere" than shall be levied on similar merchandise
belonging to its own nationals transported over equal distances.491
The second note essentially requested that the European Powers in China promised to
keep China sovereign.492
491
The First Open Door Note, <http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/1914m/opendoor.html> (14 June
2007) World War I Document Archive—Brigham Young University Library.
492
LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad, 1750 to the Present,
222.
150
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
After the Open Door Policy was accepted, McKinley won the election of 1900
against Democrat William Jennings Bryan.493 His second term would be short. On 6
September 1901 the Anarchist Leon Czolgosz shot President McKinley. On September
14 Theodore Roosevelt entered office and embraced an imperialism which incorporated
free trade ideology. Roosevelt used new methods to obtain markets with little military
action. Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet never once saw combat action under his
presidency.494 From that point forward U.S. Presidents would embrace and critique the
U.S. Open Door Policy. The historian William Appleman Williams outlined this in his
book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.495 Williams’ students, as well as many other
historians mainly publishing in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, argue the same, and explore other
caveats of the Open Door Policy’s origins and affects on U.S. foreign policy. Those are
other stories with different research. This thesis’s story ends here.
493
Schlesinger, Jr., 390.
494
For more information about the Great White Fleet, see: James R. Reckner, Teddy Roosevelt’s
Great White Fleet (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988).; For a quicker overview, see: The Great White
Fleet, < http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq42-1.htm> (16 June 2007), Department of the Navy—Naval
Historical Center.
495
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1972).
151
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
CHAPTER V
THE CONCLUSION
Free trade ideology found in the U.S. Open Door Policy originated from free trade
advocates championing British Liberalism. Examining free trade advocates’ rhetoric in
U.S. periodicals between 1890 and 1899 revealed that free trade ideology traveled from
Great Britain to the United States. Each chapter provided evidence that ideas from Great
Britain influenced the free trade debates. Additionally, each period displayed different
themes. Between 1890 and 1894 free trade advocates introduced British Liberal ideology
to the United States. Between 1895 and 1896 the Venezuelan Crisis reinforced that free
trade advocates in Great Britain and the United States worked together. The Venezuelan
Crisis also established divisions between free trade advocates, and affected how free
trade advocates would champion free trade in the future. Between 1897 and 1899 the free
trade debates presented dichotomous themes. Free trade advocates established
connections between Great Britain and the United States in order to persuade Americans
that free trade would work in the United States. At the same time, American free trade
advocates placed boundaries on the comparisons between the two nations. Thus, the
dichotomous themes produced the nationalized uniqueness found in the U.S. Open Door
Policy.
U.S. imperialists by late 1899 adopted aspects of free trade advocates’ ideas. This
was the greatest consequence of the free trade debates. Specifically, the free trade debates
helped American imperialists to conceive obtaining markets through new tactics.
American imperialists, frustrated with their colonial bouts, adopted aspects of free trade
advocates’ ideology. American imperialists incorporated free trade advocates ideas into a
152
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
policy that would supposedly obtain markets without territorial acquisitions or colonies.
American imperialists were able to adopt free trade advocates’ ideas, because
fundamentally, both groups held similar views about race, capitalism, and the desire for
U.S. global domination. Thus, the free trade advocates lent to the creation of the U.S.
Open Door Policy, a shadow of British imperialism.
Forgetting my established use of the words “imperialists” and “imperialism,” this
thesis has revealed that free trade advocates were “imperialists” as defined by Lenin. Free
trade advocates’ ideas were synthesized into the U.S. Open Door Policy.496 William
Appleman Williams highlighted the three main aspects of the U.S. Open Door Policy. All
three aspects have been displayed as intellectually connected to British Liberalism in this
thesis. First, that the Open Door Policy “was neither a military strategy nor a traditional
balance-of-power policy. It was conceived to win the victories without the wars,”
highlights free trade advocates’ anti-militarism. Second, that “…it was derived from the
proposition that America’s overwhelming economic power could cost the economy and
the politics of the poorer, weaker, underdeveloped countries in a pro-American model,”
highlights free trade advocates’ belief that a sphere of influence could induce a transfer of
liberal ideology. Third, “…the policy was neither legalistic nor moralistic in the sense
that those criticisms are usually offered,” revealed free trade advocates’ pragmatism and
496
Furthermore, free trade advocates were part of the “consensus” approval in the United States
for the Open Door Policy. For more about the “consensus” approval of the U.S. Open Door Policy, see:
William Appleman Williams, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, World Publishing, Co.,
1961).
153
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
superiority attitude.497 In short, “Shadowing British Imperialism” argues that the U.S.
Open Door Policy’s principles were based on British Liberalism in the 1890s.
From the U.S. Open Door Policy a new imperialism would ensue. An imperialism
that still championed liberal ideologies, strived to solve capitalism’s problems, and
emphasized race, but that also encouraged nationalism, militarism, and brought workingclass men and women from all nations to fight against each other in warfare through the
twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. The new imperialism overshadowed the world.498
497
William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New York: W.W. Norton
& Company, 1972), 57.
498
V.I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (New York: International Publishers,
1972).
154
Texas Tech University, William T. Mountz, August 2007
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