JiIIipaI Poohkham

1898 and American

Fxpansionism
A CreaI 1rahs!ormaIioh o! US Foreigh Policy ahd
ldehIiIy
Chiha has beeh risihg ih global poliIical ecohomy, ahd Ihe IwehIy-!irsI
cehIury may have marked Ihe begihhihg o! a 'Chihese CehIury', similar Io
Ihe Americah 1wehIieIh CehIury. 1he hisIory o! ihIerhaIiohal poliIics is
recurrehIly IhaI o! Ihe rise ahd !all o! hegemohic powers. 1o learh Ihe
lessohs o! hisIory, JiIIipaI Poohkham criIically sIudies Ihe rise o! America
ahd a peace!ul IrahsiIioh o! CreaI 8riIaih ahd Ihe UhiIed SIaIes ih Ihe laIe
hiheIeehIh cehIury. He argues IhaI Ihe Spahish-Americah War o! 1898
marked a pivoIal momehI ih a greaI Irahs!ormaIioh o! US !oreigh policy
ahd idehIiIy. Americah expahsiohism was possible hoI ohly due Io Ihe
Irahs!ormaIive roles o! Americah expahsiohisIs (such as 1heodore
RoosevelI, Hehry CaboI Lodge, ahd Johh Hay) buI also because o! Ihe
emergihg ihIersub|ecIive uhdersIahdihgs ahd shared ideas beIweeh 8riIish
ahd Americah hegemohies.
JiIIipaI Poonkham
LecIurer aI Ihe DeparImehI o! lhIerhaIiohal
RelaIiohs, FaculIy o! PoliIical Sciehce, 1hammasaI
UhiversiIy, 1hailahd. He has ah MPhil ih lhIerhaIiohal
RelaIiohs !rom SI. AhIohy's College, UhiversiIy o!
Ox!ord. His research ihIeresIs ihclude lhIerhaIiohal
RelaIiohs (parIicularly Russia ahd Ihe US) ahd Clobal
PoliIical Ecohomy.
978-3-659-24893-1
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JiIIipaI Poonkham
1898 and American Fxpansionism
JiIIipaI Poonkham
1898 and American Fxpansionism
A GreaI 1rans!ormaIion o! U5 Foreign PoIicy and
IdenIiIy
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Contents
1 Introduction: 1898 and American Expansionism 1
1.1 Literature review 3
1.2 Theories and arguments 11
1.3 Methodology and sources 15
1.4 Structure 17
2 An International Construction of American Expansionism 19
2.1 Introduction 19
2.2 International structure from the late 1880s 20
2.3 The Venezuela crisis (1895): Anglo-American rapprochement 29
2.4 Identity formation: The emergence of transatlantic internationalists 35
2.5 Summary 46
3 American Expansionism and the Spanish-American-Cuban War 48
3.1 Historical background 49
3.2 International structure before the Spanish-American-Cuban War 52
3.3 Constructing the Spanish-American-Cuban War 58
3.3.1 Expansionists and the preparations for war 58
3.3.2 Why did McKinley decide to go to war with Spain? 67
3.3.3 American expansionists: Who are we?` 77
3.4 Summary 81
4 Conclusion 82
Bibliography 89
Chapter 1
Introduction: 1898 and American Expansionism
The world exposition was worth while. The buildings make. the most
beautiful architectural exhibit the world has ever seen. If they were only
permanent! That south lagoon, with the peristyle cutting it off from the lake, the
great terraces, the grandeur and beauty of the huge white buildings, the statue,
the fine fountains, the dome of the administration building, the bridges guarded
by the colossal animalswell, there is simply nothing to say about it. And the
landscape eIIects are so wonderIul`.
1
This description is not of the Shanghai
Exposition of 2010, but the Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago, named
in honour of Christopher Columbus. It was not Chinese leaders Hu Jintao or
Wen Jaipao, but American statesman Theodore Roosevelt who asserted it.
Nonetheless, these two phenomena identified the rising powers, particularly
economically, in the international society, one late in the nineteenth century,
and the other early in the twenty-first. While the former anticipated the
American Century`, the latter may have marked the start oI a Chinese
Century`. In international relations (IR) scholarship, the history of international
politics is above all that of the rise and fall of great powers. And that struggle
between rising and declining powers has often produced war: a peaceful
structural change has historically been exceptional.
2
The most notable such
exception occurred when the United States (US) overtook Great Britain in the
late nineteenth century. This was largely because Britain decided to appease the

1
Theodore Roosevelt to James Brander Matthews, 8 June 1893, The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt,
Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 320.
2
See Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981); and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987).
For information on a peaceful transition, see E.H. Carr, The Twenty Years Crisis, 1919-1939
(London: Macmillan, 1939); and Charles Kupchan, et al., Power in Transition (Tokyo: United
Nations University Press, 2001). For information on a peaceful systemic change in US-Chinese
relations, see for example Susan Shirk, China: Fragile Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2007).
2
Americans when faced with the Venezuelan Crisis in 1895 and in particular the
Spanish-American War in 1898. IR scholars, however, have tended to leave this
topic to historians, even though it is central to the debate in IR theory about the
rise and fall of hegemonic powers in world politics.
3
The questions driving this research are as follows: Why and under what
conditions did the US, as an emerging great power, explicitly pursue an
expansionist foreign policy in the Western hemisphere after 1898? And how
was it made possible? In general, scholars have argued that the US, which was
preoccupied with its domestic development during the nineteenth century, had a
narrow conception oI its interests and avoided entangling alliances` in
international politics. Whereas most Europeans accepted the logic of a
continental balance-of-power struggle, many Americans saw their country as an
exceptional power, motivated by liberal and moral concerns, rather than by
realpolitik. However, this dichotomy does not properly explain why and how
America came to pursue an expansionist foreign policy at the end of the
nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Some scholars have
concentrated on the domestic pressures that drove and shaped American
expansionism. This book however asserts a constructivist interpretation of
American expansionism, Iocusing on what is here called the Spanish-
American-Cuban War` oI 1898. The term is used in order to represent all oI the
major participants and to identify where the war was fought and whose interests
were most at stake`.
4
It thus illuminates the war of 1898 with reference to the
Cuban theatre, and takes for granted its Philippine part.
The book argues that 1898 marked a pivotal moment in a great
transformation of US foreign policy and identity. The research does not view
the state as a unitary actor: it recognises social agents within the state, and

3
Exceptions include, for example, Fareed Zakaria, From Wealth to Power: The Unusual Origins of
$PHULFDV:RUOG5ROH(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998).
4
Thomas Paterson, United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898: Interpretations of the Spanish-
American-Cuban-Filipino War`, The History Teacher, Vol. 29: No. 3 (May 1996), p. 341.
3
thereby discusses those expansionists and anti-expansionists in the US, but it
focuses mainly on the expansionists and their identity construction.
5
It argues
that their ideas, identities, and preferences were to a considerable extent socially
and culturally constructed by the international social structure. In other words,
American expansionism was possible not only due to the transformative roles of
American expansionists but also because of the emerging intersubjective
understandings and shared ideas between British and American hegemonies.
However, it intentionally excludes social Darwinism and racial relations,
economic factors and the role of business and the media (particularly the yellow
press), even though these are factors that certainly played a part. The rest of this
chapter outlines the literature review, the theoretical and methodological
frameworks, and the structure of the book, respectively.
1.1 Literature review
Important overviews of late nineteenth-century US foreign policy have
examined such themes as the transIormation` oI American Ioreign policy, the
old` versus the new` diplomacy, America`s outward thrust`, the emergence
oI America as a great power`, the imperialist urge`, and the new empire`.
6
Fundamentally, the debates centre on whether US foreign policy showed
continuity or discontinuity from its previous traditions. Most are generated by
historians, rather than IR scholars. Historians primarily concentrate on domestic
factors, while IR scholars focus on the nature of the international system and the
constraints imposed on its units. All of them, nevertheless, have agreed that the

5
Throughout the book, the terms expansionist` and imperialist` are used interchangeably.
6
Charles Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations (New York: Harper & Row,
1976); Robert L. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, 1965-1900 (New York: Thomas
Crowell, 1975); Ernest May, Imperial Democracy: The Emergence of America as a Great Power
(New York: Harper & Row, 1961); David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the
1890s (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); Walter LaFeber, The New Empire (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1963); Joseph Fry, Phases oI Empire: Late Nineteenth-Century US Foreign
Relations`, in The Gilded Age: Essays on the Origins of Modern America, ed. Charles Calhoun
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1996), pp. 261-88.
4
US was transformed into a great power in the years after 1898.
7
This section
outlines important debates, and reviews the historiography and the theoretical
literature on foreign policy.
First of all, a so-called Pratt School, spearheaded by historians Julius
Pratt and Samuel Flagg Bemis, argues in liberal vein that American
expansionism oI 1898 was a great aberration` or an empire by deIault` in US
foreign relations.
8
It was a temporary, accidental, unplanned and transitory
expansionist moment. For these discontinuity historians, the root causes of
American expansionism lay in the primacy of domestic factors, such as electoral
pressures, expansionist public opinion (such as May`s imperial democracy`),
weak leadership, the large policy` conspirators, psychological strains (such as
HoIstadter`s psychic crisis`), yellow journalism, social Darwinism, and so on.
Pratt asserted that America`s Iavouring oI war and expansionism was
unplanned and accidental, largely manipulated by a few conspirators taking
advantage oI an emotional public`s humanitarian concerns. InIluenced by
Captain AlIred Mahan`s ideas, Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge
were conspiring, Ior months beIorehand, to utilise the impending crisis with
Spain to launch the United States on a career of colonial expansion and world
power`.
9
The discontinuity scholars further argue that the leadership of

7
Edward Crapol, Coming to Terms with Empire: The Historiography oI Late-Nineteenth-Century
American Foreign Relations`, Diplomatic History, Vol. 16: No. 4 (Fall 1992), pp. 573-97.
8
See, Ior example, Julius Pratt, The 'Large Policy oI 1898`, Mississippi Valley Historical Review,
Vol. 19: No. 2 (September 1932), pp. 219-42; Julius Pratt, Expansionists of 1898 (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Press, 1936); Samuel Flagg Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States (New York:
Henry Holt, 1936); Dexter Perkins, The American Approach to Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1962); Richard HoIstadter, ManiIest Destiny and the Philippines`, in America in
Crisis, ed. Daniel Aaron (New York: Knopf, 1952); May, Imperial Democracy; Ernest May,
American Imperialism: A Speculative Essay (New York: Atheneum, 1968); John A. S. Grenville and
George B. Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873-1913
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966); Robert Beisner, Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-
Imperialists, 1898-1900 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968); William Becker, The Dynamics of
Business-Government Relations: Industry and Exports, 1893-1921 (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1982); Robert Dallek, The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign
Affairs (New York: Knopf, 1983); and Ivan Musicant, Empire by Default (New York: Henry Holt,
1998).
9
Pratt, The 'Large Policy oI 1898`, pp. 220-1.
5
President William McKinley was characterised by political expediency and
personal weakness. McKinley`s duty to the Republican Party was much clearer
than his duty to the nation`, and he bowed to public opinion in order to avert the
threat of Democratic victories in the mid-term elections of November 1898.
10

This group of scholars also presents the war of 1898 as a moral crusade to
liberate Cuba from a brutal Spanish empire. It was, in such a conception,
overwhelmingly driven by jingoistic newspapers and national hysteria.
11
As
May puts it, McKinley led his country unwillingly toward a war that he did not
want for a cause in which he did not believe`.
12
According to this interpretation,
the US was a benign regional hegemon, which accidentally pursued a
humanitarian intervention in the Western hemisphere in order to preserve peace
and stability.
In a similar vein, classical realists propound that the war decision was
caused by subjective and emotional reasons`. They put the blame on nave,
overly idealistic moral crusades`, which ignored prudent calculations oI the
national interest. McKinley did not want war`, George Kennan suggests.
When it came to employment of our armed forces, popular moods, political
pressures, and inner-governmental intrigue were decisive`.
13
For Hans
Morgenthau, the president had led the country beyond the conIines oI the
Western Hemisphere, ignorant of this step upon the national interest, and guided
by moral principles completely divorced Irom the national interest`.
14
Simply

10
May, Imperial Democracy.
11
Gerald Linderman, The Mirror of War: American Society and the Spanish-American War (Ann
Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1974); Hofstadter, ManiIest Destiny and the Philippines`; and
John Offner, An Unwanted War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992).
12
May, Imperial Democracy, p. 159. Subsequent historians, such as H. Wayne Morgan (1965), Lewis
Gould (1980), and John Offner (1992), convincingly argue that McKinley was neither manipulated by
large policy expansionists nor overwhelmed by public pressure. Instead, he opted for war and
expansionism based on deliberate assessment oI US interests. Their McKinley` is a much stronger
and more competent leader than is presented by May. See Chapter 3.
13
George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951),
p. 20. See also Robert E. Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in Americas Foreign Relations. The Great
Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); and Norman
A. Graebner, The Year oI Transition`, in An Uncertain Tradition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961).
14
Hans J. Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. 23.
6
put, emotional public opinion dictated the war of 1898. Like the Pratt School,
classical realists emphasise the discontinuity in American foreign relations and
the importance of domestic factors.
On the other hand, revisionist historians represented by the Wisconsin
School of the 1960s, such as William Appleman Williams and Walter LaFeber,
stress continuity of motivation. Drawing on the works of Charles Beard in the
1920s, Williams argued controversially that the US had been an informal
empire, or imperialism oI anti-colonialism`, ever since the Iounding oI the
nation.
15
They focus on the capitalist motivations behind American
expansionism: rather than promoting order or stability, the US sought an
economic opportunity. Williams and LaFeber argue that, due to overproduction
and economic depression, by the 1890s America needed foreign markets to
expand trade and investment abroad and avoid political turmoil at home.
Williams identifies farmers as motivating forces behind the drive for capitalist
expansionism, while LaFeber and McCormick blame industrialists and urban
business leaders.
16

By seeing him as a victim of capitalist pressures, the revisionists redeem
McKinley`s leadership as a modern president. LaFeber denies that McKinley
wanted war: he merely wanted what only a war could provide: the

15
Charles Beard, The Idea of National Interests: An Analytical Study in American Foreign Policy
(New York: Macmillan, 1934); and William A. Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (New
York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1959 [1979]).
16
See, for example, Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy; LaFeber, The New Empire;
Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913 (Cambridge University Press,
1993); Thomas McCormick, China Market. Americas Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901
(Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967); Healy, US Expansionism; Edward Crapol, America for
Americans: Economic Nationalism and Anglophobia in the Late Nineteenth Century (Westport:
Greenwood Press, 1973); David Pletcher, Rhetoric and Results: A Pragmatic View oI American
Economic Expansionism, 1865-98`, Diplomatic History, Vol. 5: No. 2 (1981), pp. 93-106; David
Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere,
1865-1900 (Columbia: University oI Missouri Press, 1998); Joseph Fry, Imperialism, American
Style, 1890-1916`, in American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890-1993, ed. Gordon Martel
(London: Routledge, 1994); Louis Perez Jr., Cuba Between Empire, 1878-1902 (Pittsburg: University
of Pittsburg Press, 1983); Thomas Schoonover, The United States in Central America, 1860-1911
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1991); and Thomas Schoonover, Uncle Sams War of 1898 and the
Origins of Globalization (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2004).
7
disappearance of the terrible uncertainty in American political and economic
life, and a solid basis from which to resume the building of the new American
commercial empire`.
17
Moreover, responding to the new expansionist outlook of
the business community, McKinley could end the instability in the Western
hemisphere, which depressed the economy and destroyed American trade and
investment with Cuba. Instead, it opened the path to the Philippines, which was
itself a gateway to the Chinese market.
18
The political and business elites thus
created what Rosenberg calls the promotional state`, a Iederal government
committed to assisting American capitalists to trade and invest abroad.
19
According to this approach, public opinion was manufactured by economic
pressures: in other words, capitalism dictated war.
In summary then, while conventional historiography argues that
American expansionism after 1898 emerged because of a moral idealistic
motivation and an American search for stability in the Western hemisphere,
revisionists paint it as a longstanding imperial power in which capitalism played
an increased role.
A few IR scholars have recently tackled the war of 1898 and American
expansionism. Defensive realists have done so in support of their claim that
great powers pursue an expansionist foreign policy abroad only when they are
threatened. In this view, the anarchical nature of the international system
created insecurity for a new great power, which consequently compelled
assertiveness and expansionism. The ascent of American power in the
international system at the end of the nineteenth century and intensive imperial
rivalry in the world drove the US to participate in the great-power game`. The
United States feared that it might be left out of the international race for
territory and especially that other imperialists would cut them off from the

17
LaFeber, The New Empire, p. 400.
18
Michael Hunt, Ideology and US Foreign Policy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).
19
Emily Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream (New York: Hill and Wang, 1982).
8
markets necessary to America`s economic health`.
20
Consequently, the US
chose to expand largely due to insecurity and European threats in the Western
hemisphere.
Another IR approach has been oIIensive` or state-centered realism`. A
prominent exemplar is Fareed Zakaria`s From Wealth to Power: The Unusual
2ULJLQVRI$PHULFDV:RUOG5ROH (1998). Like the members of the Pratt School,
Zakaria argues for the discontinuity of US foreign policy. He believes that,
during the 1890s, state power, including economic and naval capabilities, had
grown rapidly and made it possible for the US to seek expansion abroad.
Although since the Civil War of 1865 key American decision-makers, such as
the then Secretary of State William Henry Seward (1861-69), had noticed and
considered clear opportunities to expand American influence and interests
abroad`, they Iailed because they presided over a weak decentralised, diffuse,
and divided` state structure that provided them with little power and inIluence to
expand. This is what Zakaria calls an imperial understretch`.
21
As he argues
compellingly, between 1865 and the 1890s:
The structure of the American state ensured that central decision-makers,
who respond most directly to the pressures of the international system,
were unable to translate national power into national influence because
they presided over a weak federal government that had enormous
difficulty extracting resources, particularly for expenditures that did not
directly benefit congressional constituents. The division between the
legislative and executive branches allowed Congress to thwart the
executive`s plans. Congress was not blindly antiexpansionist, but it was
blindly antiexecutive.
22
By the beginning oI the 1890s, the domestic balance oI power had
shifted in two ways. First, the congressional bid for supremacy had exhausted

20
Paterson, United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898`, p. 344. See Robert Wiebe, The Search for
Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967); and Michael Mandelbaum, The Fate of
Nations: The Search for National Security in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1988).
21
Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 5, p. 11.
22
Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 88.
9
itself and was clearly petering out and, second, the growth of the national
economy was creating the need Ior a national, proIessional bureaucracy`.
23
This
was the process of the modern state-building and an increasing centralisation of
presidential power. For Zakaria, the transformation of the state structure
permitted a more expansionist foreign policy on the part of central decision-
makers, including the president and his closest advisors, whose perception of its
opportunities shiIted suddenly, rather than incrementally`.
24
Offensive realists
believe that increased capabilities, not increased threats, drove American
expansionism.
Democratic peace theory holds that, due to their liberal valuestheir
domestic political institutions and culturedemocracies do not fight each other.
Mark Peceny Iurther suggests a constructivist` variant by explaining the
Spanish-American War through a combination of Wendtian structural idealism
and Gramscian critical theory. War between democracies, such as the war of
1898, could occur because they did not perceive each other as part of the
Kantian liberal paciIic union`. Liberal states are peaceIul towards one another
not because they are individually and independently imbued with liberal values,
but because they are part oI a liberal system bound together by shared norms`.
As Peceny puts it, in the Wendtian way, the liberal peace is what powerIul
liberal states make oI it`.
25
It was, therefore, the intersubjective consensus` that
binds liberal states together in the pacific union. Like many discontinuity
historians, Peceny argues that Americans viewed the war as a moral crusade to
liberate the Cubans Irom an autocratic Spain`. From a Gramscian perspective,
US decision-makers used the idea of the liberal pacific union to legitimate the
war and American expansionism. Democracy promotion was a tool for
achieving ideological hegemony at home and abroad and provided a

23
Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 89.
24
Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 11, p. 184.
25
Mark Peceny, A Constructivist Interpretation oI the Liberal Peace: The Ambiguous Case oI the
Spanish-American War`, Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 34: No. 4 (1997), pp. 416-7.
10
justification for an expansionist foreign policy. He notes that America`s
application of the protectorate in Cuba was popular in the US, whereas its
imposition of colonial rule in the Philippines was not.
26

Most people writing on American expansionism, whether arguing for
continuity or Ior discontinuity, have Iocused on Waltz`s Iirst image` (the
individual) or second image` (the state). Other writers have invoked such
international factors as the influence of European imperialism and an American
aspiration to great-power status.
27
However, systemic or structural explanations
are also possible: a third image` assumes that states respond to external
vulnerabilities and opportunities to achieve their goals.
28
For example, David
Lake`s Power, Protection, and Free Trade (1988) emphasises the international
sources of US foreign economic policy, particularly its commercial strategy.
Given that Britain used its power to promote Iree trade, the US was able to Iree
ride` on a pre-existing liberal international regime, while protecting its
industrialisation and trade relations.
29
This explanation nevertheless assumes the
given, a priori identities and interests of American domestic social agents. This
book takes a different ontological approach to American expansionism. It
assumes that the transformation of US foreign policy at the end of the
nineteenth century was structural. It was a response to the transformation of the
international social structure through a process of interactive constitution
between structure and agents. That is, the identities and interests of agents were
endogenously constituted, rather than exogenously given. American
expansionism was actually contingent, constructed by the interaction between
international social structure and domestic agents. This book therefore offers a
constructivist interpretation of American expansionism as a way towards

26
Peceny, A Constructivist Interpretation oI the Liberal Peace`, p. 418, pp. 424-7.
27
See May, Imperial Democracy; Healy, US Expansionism; and Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to
the New, 1965-1900.
28
See Kenneth Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).
29
David Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of US Commercial Strategy,
1887-1939 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988).
11
systemic understanding of American expansionism. It does not claim to test
such an interpretation against its rivals.
1.2 Theories and arguments
In IR theory, the term structure` is predominantly conceptualised in
Waltzian terms, as a material distribution of capabilities. As Wendt puts it,
When IR scholars today use the word structure they almost always mean
Walt`s materialist deIinition as a distribution oI capabilities`.
30
The international
system represents the interaction among its principal actorsstates as units
within an anarchical structure. Change occurred when the distribution of
capabilities across units altered, and a balance-of-power system attempts to
stabilise the system. Under the anarchical structure, on the other hand, states
rationally persist in their attempt to expand.
31

Recently, constructivists such as Wendt have challenged Waltz`s
ontology, arguing instead that structure is determined less by material factors
than by the distribution of shared ideas and norms. In other words, the structure
of the international system is more social than material. Its anarchy is
constituted by intersubjective understandings and expectations between states.
As Wendt Iamously asserts, anarchy is what states make oI it`, so there are
three dominant cultures of anarchy: Hobbesian, Lockean, and Kantian.
32

Moreover, unlike the neorealism-neoliberalism nexus, these ideational
structures not merely caused but constituted state identities and interests at a
particular time through the interaction process, which Wendt calls micro

30
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999), p. 249.
31
Waltz, Theory of International Politics; and John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power
Politics (New York: W.W. Norton& Company, 2001).
32
Alexander Wendt, Anarchy Is What States Make oI It`, International Organization, Vol. 46
(1992), pp. 391-425; and Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics. See also Nicholas Onuf,
World of Our Making (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989); Friedrich Kratochwil,
Rules, Norms, and Decisions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); John Gerard Ruggie,
Constructing the World Polity (London: Routledge, 1998); and Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., The Culture
of National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).
12
structure`.
33
According to Wendt, structure has two dimensions: the macro
social structure of international politics and the micro structure of interaction.
Significantly, Wendt urges us to rethink the formation of interests and identities.
However, for him, the primary actors remain unitary states.
The Spanish-American-Cuban War case challenges Waltz`s and Wendt`s
assumptions: given the same structure, why did it shape social agents
differently, creating expansionists and anti-expansionists? In this book, this is
explained at the level of the individual unit. My argument is that the
international structure with Great Britain as the global power structure (so-
called Pax Britannica) socially constituted and socialised the identity and
interests of American social agents, a process I call the internationalisation of
agents.
34
These internationalised agents, in turn, made a decision to expand (and
not to expand) because they envisioned the international system differently:
expansionists viewed it in Hobbesian terms, while anti-expansionists saw it in
Kantian terms. Therefore, to speak in Wendtian terms, American expansionism
was what the expansionists made of it. The book focuses mainly on the roles of
expansionists.
In this book, the key assumptions need to be defined, as follows.
(1) International structure is social. The international system consists not
merely of the distribution of material capabilities but also of the social
relations of power, determined primarily by socially and culturally
shared ideas, knowledge, and norms.
(2) The internationalisation of agents is the process of social interaction
and socialisation, or the process whereby agents and their identities
and interests are socially constituted. International structure matters in
the sense that it not merely influences but significantly socially

33
See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics, Chapter 4. For Neoliberal institutionalists like
Keohane, ideas matter only in causal relationships, and are not constitutive. See Judith Goldstein and
Robert Keohane, Ideas and Foreign Policy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993).
34
I adapt the term Irom Robert W. Cox`s concept oI the internationalisation oI the state`. See his
Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
13
constructs the identities and interests of social agents, i.e. the
internationalisation of agents.
(3) Social agents include states and individual actors. Their interests and
identities are not exogenously fixed but can be contingently
changeable and arise out of a socially international context. As
theories of cognitive dissonance suggest, people can change their
ideas and beliefs relatively quickly and easily in response to a changed
external environment.
35
Although identities are constructed by more
than systemic or interstate relations,
36
this book, adopting Wendt`s
idealist structuralism`, emphasises the internationalisation of the state
and agents. It focuses mainly on the emergence of the
internationalised eliteAmerican expansionistsand their ideas,
perceptions, and preferences, thereby assuming the anti-expansionist
movements. Throughout the 1890s, a group of internationally oriented
elites redefined themselves as expansionists. Rather than manifesting a
methodological individualism, expansionists shared intersubjective
beliefs, meanings and collectivity with other European imperialists in
general and the British in particular. They made a deliberate decision
to expand in 1898, which in turn mutually constituted the international
systemthe emergence of the US as a new great power, and as a de
facto hemispheric hegemony in Latin America.
The book is a constructivist interpretation of American expansionism,
which Iocuses on ideas all the way down` Irom the international to the
domestic. First of all, the book argues that the international system was
structurally transformed in the 1890s in three areas: the balance of power and

35
Deborah Welch Larson, Origins of Containment: A Psychological Explanation (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1985).
36
See, Ior example, Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests`, European Journal of
International Relations, Vol. 2: No. 3 (1996), pp. 275-318; Jutta Weldes, Constructing National
Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1999); and Ted Hopf, Social Construction of International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 2002).
14
the imperial competition between European states, the international economy,
and Britain`s world position. Structural transIormations in these areas redeIined
the shared intersubjective understanding of the rules of the game. Changes in
the external environment not only affected emerging powers like the US but
also constituted individuals` interests and identities. They transIormed particular
social actors from Anglophobe protectionists into Anglophile, export-oriented
expansionists through the process of international construction or the
internationalisation of agents. The Venezuelan Crisis of 1895 was a preliminary
watershed in this transformation. In the book, I argue that after 1895 a
transatlantic special relationship between Great Britain and the US developed.
37
This special relationship between a declining and a rising power watered down
the attempted concert of European powers before the outbreak of the Spanish-
American-Cuban War and made American expansionism possible. The special
relationship is not best explained by the democratic peace proposition that
democracies do not go to war against each other: this book makes the
constructivist claim that Anglo-American shared ideas and understandings were
actually more important.
Second, the internationally oriented expansionists proactively
promulgated expansionist discourses and practices, and thereby influenced the
McKinley administration`s decision to go to war with Spain in 1898. I argue
that these groups of people were transatlantic elites who shared intersubjective
understandings and expectations with British elites. To put differently, the
transatlanticisation of American elites was inseparable from the

37
Most of the literature identifies the origin of the special relationship as being after the Second
World War. See, for example, Kees van der Pijl, The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class (London:
Verso, 1984); William Roger Louis and Hedley Bull, The 'Special Relationship`. Anglo-American
Relations since 1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); John Dumbrell, A Special Relationship (New
York: St. Marin`s Press, 2001). Some scholars Iocus on the transatlantic liberal ideas, see Daniel
Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1998); Murney Gerlach, British Liberalism and the United States (New York: Palgrave, 2001);
and William Mountz, Shadowing British Imperialism: Origins of the US Open Door Policy, 1890-
1899`, MA Dissertation, Texas Tech University, August 2007.
15
internationalisation of elites. The Anglo-American rapprochement not only
provided a strategic opportunity for American expansionism but also socially
constructed transatlantic agents. This does not mean that they were ignorant of
their national interests; rather, they perceived them as mutual or overlapping.
The book shows how the McKinley administration laid out its policy options
and decisively chose armed intervention and a naval blockade over other
peaceIul means. It can be argued that McKinley`s decision was part and parcel
oI American expansionists` discourses and practices.
Although the book largely concentrates on the expansionists, it begins by
noting that, given the same international structure, by the end of the 1890s both
expansionists and anti-expansionists ideationally converged in support of free-
trade liberalism and Anglophilism. This was because the expansionists had been
significantly transformed in respect to their identity and interests from
Anglophobe protectionists into Anglophile liberals. However, these two groups
were different, due largely to their different perceptions of the international
structure as Hobbesian expansionists and Kantian anti-expansionists. The
former were affiliated with the European rules of the game at that time
imperialism, balance of power, and great powernesswhile the latter thought of
the liberal pacific union and humanitarianism. To put it differently,
expansionists and anti-expansionists to a certain degree shared a common
identity, but had very divergent worldviews. The constructivist approach, thus,
asserts the two-way interaction between international social structure and
agency: structure socially constitutes actors, and vice versa, and thereby,
American expansionism was fundamentally what expansionists made of it.
1.3 Methodology and sources
The book is based on a qualitative methodology and single-N case
research. My aim is to assert a constructivist interpretation of American
expansionism in the Western hemisphere. I select one major case study: the
16
Spanish-American-Cuban War of 1898. The case illustrates the pivotal moment
when the US emerged as a world power and asserted its hemispheric hegemony
over Central and Latin America. Methodologically, it follows George in
employing process-tracing to establish the ways in which the actor`s belieIs
influenced his receptivity to and assessment of incoming information about the
situation, his definition of the situation, his identification and evaluation of
options, as well as.his choice oI a course oI action`. According to George,
process-tracing is the more direct and potentially more satisIactorily approach
to causal interpretation in single case analysis` because it takes the Iorm oI an
attempt to trace the processthe intervening stepsby which beliefs influence
behavior`.
38
The processes traced are the internationalisation of agents and the
policy process. Here, the actor`s belieIs are not exogenously given, but rather
socially constituted by the international social structure. In the explanatory
framework, the independent variables are international systemic factors and the
internationalisation of agents, whereas the dependent variable is American
hegemonic expansion. The formation of American expansionists` changing
identity and interests are considered the primary causal variable. The research
then draws on a number of sources, including secondary literature, published
collections of primary diplomatic documents (particularly from the State
Department`s Foreign Relations of the United States), and the private
correspondence of, in particular, Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt, and
John Hay.
Second, I roughly apply discourse analysis, following Milliken by
analysing how an elite`s regime oI truth` made possible certain courses oI
action` or state`s behaviour, in this case American expansionism, while
excluding other policies as unintelligible or unworkable or improper`.

38
Alexander George, Causal Nexus between Cognitive BelieIs and Decision-Making Behavior: The
Operational Code` BelieI System`, in Psychological Models in International Politics, ed. Lawrence
Falkowski (Boulder: Westview Press, 1979), p. 113. See also Alexander George and Andrew Bennett,
Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 2005).
17
Discourses, as Milliken asserts, are meaningIul background capabilities that are
used socially, at least by a small group of officials if not more broadly in a
society or among different elites and societies`.
39
In the research, I closely look
at official publications and statements and the private letters of key
policymakers as a set oI texts`, in order to explain the overlapping discourse or
logics of expansionism within American society during the 1890s. These
produce not only policy discourses and practices but also the conventional
wisdom of a society engaged in expansionist diplomacy. The research
concentrates on three important expansionists as representative figures: Henry
Cabot Lodge, Senator for Massachusetts, Theodore Roosevelt, Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, and John Hay, US Ambassador to Great Britain.
1.4 Structure
The remainder of the book is organised as follows. Chapter 2 explores an
international social construction of American expansionism. It elucidates the
structural transformation of the international society during the 1890s, looking
at the intense balance of power and imperial competition, the increasing
tendency towards protectionism in the international economic system, and the
relative decline of Pax Britannica. These external changes socially constituted
American social agents, particularly after the Venezuelan Crisis in 1895, which
raised the possibility of war between Britain and the US. However, Britain
chose to appease the US due to the changing power relations inherent in the
international social structure. Thereafter, expansionists were internationally
socialised as more Anglophile, export-oriented agents. I argue that this was the
origin of the transatlantic Anglo-American relationship and the emergence of
transatlantic elites who intersubjectively perceived common identity and
interests. The chapter also considers the process of the internationalisation of

39
JeniIer Milliken, The Study oI Discourse in International Relations: A Critique oI Research and
Methods`, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 5: No. 2 (1999), p. 233, p. 236.
18
agents in the US and identifies two crucial social agents, which are the
expansionists and anti-expansionists. Despite its focus on the former, the
chapter argues that they partially shared a common heritage of Anglophile
liberalism, but viewed the international society differently, being Hobbesian for
the former and Kantian for the latter. Crucially, it was the expansionists who
dominated American discourses and policy decision-making.
Chapter 3 examines the roles of three apostles of American
expansionismLodge, Roosevelt, and Haywho intersubjectively shared ideas
and understandings with other European imperialists, particularly the British,
which shaped and influenced American public expansionist discourses and
foreign policy formation under the McKinley administration before and after the
war of 1898. The chapter considers the way in which McKinley and his advisors
laid out their policy options and, at the end, chose to pursue military
intervention and a naval blockade rather than other peaceful options. The
chapter also explores the international social relationship among great powers,
in particular the British non-interference that provided the US a strategic
opportunity to gain a comparative momentum over Spain. This structurally
reinforced the identities and interests of the transatlantic elites, which would be
the basis of the Anglo-American special relationship` afterwards.
Chapter 4 concludes by stating the importance and contributions of a
constructivist interpretation of American expansionism. It argues that this is
only one narrative to explain and understand American expansionism. It also
elucidates some developments in Anglo-American special relationships at the
turn of the century, such as the Open Door Policy and the construction of the
Panama Canal. The chapter confirms the argument that international structure
and agents are mutually constituted through the process of the
internationalisation of agents.

19
Chapter 2
An International Construction of American Expansionism
The three decades Irom 1884 to 1914 separate the nineteenth century which
ended with the scramble Ior AIrica. Irom the twentieth, which began with the
First World War. This is the period of Imperialism, with its stagnant quiet of
Europe and breath-taking developments in Asia|, Latin America| and AIrica`
Hannah Arendt
40
Imperialism, the extension oI national authority over alien communities, is a
dominant note in the world-politics oI today`.
Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan
41
2.1 Introduction
IR scholars in general have envisioned the international structure as an
anarchical system or order, comprising Westphalian sovereign states as the
principal actors. However, they underestimate what Keene calls the dualistic
nature oI order in world politics`, in which the Westphalian system operated
only between the European states, with a hierarchical system also in operation,
through which the European states imposed themselves in the colonial world.
42
By the 1890s, Europe was a post-Bismarckian multipolar system where the
balance of power was the rule of the game, while outside Europe it was the
period oI Imperialism` in which Great Britain was structurally a leading
hegemonic power, imposing the so-called Pax Britannica. Therefore, part of the
international society was hierarchically structured. These were the social
relations of power which European states constructed, which in turn socialised

40
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Publishers, 1973), p. 123.
41
Quoted in Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
2002), p. 231.
42
See, for example, Carr, 7KH 7ZHQW\ <HDUV &ULVLV; Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations
(New York: Knopf, 1949); Martin Wight, Systems of States (Leicester: Leicester University Press,
1977); Waltz, Theory of International Politics; Hedley Bull, The Anarchical Society (London:
Macmillan, 1977); and Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics. Edward Keene, Beyond the
Anarchical Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. xi. See also Justin Rosenberg,
The Empire of Civil Society (London: Verso, 1994); and Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity, Part
II.
20
and culturally constructed other actors` identities and interests. The US,
emerging as a new great power, inevitably became part of this game of
international structural relations among great powers.
This chapter argues that American expansionism was the result of an
international construction oI expansionists` identities and interests. These
interacted with the intersubjective and culturally established meanings of the
international social structure and were themselves constituted by these shared
ideas and understandings, rather than commonsensically given. That is,
American expansionism was fundamentally shaped by the transformations of
the international society through the process of the internationalisation of the
state and agents within it. First, the European state-system was leaning towards
more rigid balance-of-power system and imperialism was increasingly intense.
Meanwhile, Europe was also heading towards a more protectionist stance,
although the British remained committed to a free-trade regime upon which the
US Iree rode`. But British hegemonic power was in decline and challenged by
European imperialistic rivals in colonial areas. These changing power relations
helped shape and embody the emerging American power and role in the
Western hemisphere. This is the process of the internationalisation of the state
and agents. The international sources of American expansionism are covered in
order to enhance and advance our understanding of the Spanish-American-
Cuban War of 1898 (covered in detail in Chapter 3).
2.2 International structure from the late 1880s
2.2.1 Europes balance of power and imperial rivalrv
At the end of the nineteenth century, the balance-of-power system in
Europe was breaking down. The complexity but inherent stability of the
Bismarckian system (1870s-1890s) in which all powers, with the exception of
France, were secretly bound one way or another to Berlin, was in decline and
the emergence in the 1900s of two rigid blocsGermany, Austria-Hungary and
21
Italy on the one hand, and Russia, France and Britain on the othercontributed
to the outbreak of the First World War.
43

In between, the international society had been changing during the 1880s
and 1890s, not only in terms of the management of the changing balance of
power within Europe (in particular the rise of German power), but also in terms
of the emergence of new extra-European powers: the US and Japan. Germany,
uniting, industrialising, and arming, was emerging as a new hegemonic power
in Europe that aspired to seek foreign markets and colonies, thereby indirectly
challenging Pax Britannica in world politics. The young Kaiser Wilhelm II had
dismissed Bismarck and his complex alliance system in 1890, thereby ending
the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia and prioritising Germany`s relations with
Austria and Italy. The Kaiser tacitly supported Austrian expansionism in the
Balkans, risking conflict with Russia. Russia and France therefore began to see
the rising Germany as an increasing threat. The Russians turned to France and
subsequently brought about a Franco-German alliance of 1894, which
Bismarck`s diplomacy attempted to avoid.
44
As Graebner puts it nicely, By
isolating France on the Continent, Bismarck eliminated the danger of an open
Franco-German conflict. Franco-Russian diplomacy, however, broke the
restraints oI the Bismarckian system`.
45

Britain, which traditionally pursued a policy of splendid isolation, did not
perform the role of offshore balancer in Europe but was instead increasingly
concerned with its colonies and other powers` competition outside Europe.
There were also other middle powers`, such as Spain, Portugal, Holland, and

43
See Gordon Craig and Alexander George, Force and Statecraft: Diplomatic Problems of Our Time,
2
nd
Ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 28-48; Joseph Nye, Understanding International
Conflict, 7
th
Ed. (New York: Pearson Longman, 2009); Ian Clark, The Hierarchy of States
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great
Powers (London: Fontana, 1988); and Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (London: Simon & Schuster,
1994).
44
A.J.P. Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1971), pp. 325-345.
45
Norman Graebner, Bismarck`s Europe: An American View`, in Foundations of American Foreign
Policy (Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1985), p. 302.
22
Belgium, whose strategic and imperialistic positions slightly affected the
international balance. Spain, which still had overseas empires particularly in the
Western hemisphere, was a weak power and had largely isolated itself from the
development of European system. After the restoration of the Bourbon
monarchy, the Spanish government was weak and unstable.
46
We can envision
this period as a post-Bismarckian international order, which was characterised
by a decreasingly flexible structure.
Above all, systemic changes were largely caused by European overseas
imperialism and expansionism in Africa and Asia. Expansionist diplomacy was
the rule of the game. The power relationships among great powers were
increasingly antagonistic. The British Empire, attempting tirelessly to sustain its
global hegemony, perceived French and Russian expansionism in Africa and
Asia as the main threats. Germany, especially under the Kaiser`s Weltpolitik
(world policy), entered the colonialist race and launched a naval buildup.
Initially, the Germans sought to avoid direct conflict with Britain.
47
By the end
of 1894, however, the British and the Germans came to quarrel over southern
Africa, where the British suspected German support of the Boers. The Kruger
telegram of 1896 confirmed this (see below).
48
Despite the possibility of their
cooperation, the Anglo-German relationship became gradually antagonistic.
Friend-enemy relations were highly contingent and intersubjectively
changeable.
In the Asia-Pacific region, China became an important focus of quasi-
imperial rivalry. Japan had emerged as a regional power, defeating the Chinese
in 1894/5 and later the Russians in 1904/5. Since the mid-1890s, European
powers joining with their Asian newcomer marked out their spheres of

46
James Joll, Europe Since 1870 (London: Penguin, 1973), p. 24. See also Raymond Carr, Spain,
1808-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
47
This culminated in the Anglo-German treaty of July 1890, whereby Britain gained substantial
concessions in East Africa and Zanzibar in exchange for the island of Heligoland. Paul Kennedy, The
Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 205.
48
Paul Kennedy, The Realities Behind Diplomacy (London: Fontana, 1985), p. 104.
23
influence, giving them exclusive concessions over trade, mining, and railroads.
49
Despite the Open Door principle still being in effect in theory, Britain was
moving away from it toward the partition of China.
To sum up, the international social structure at the end of the nineteenth
century consisted of the European balance of power and extra-European
colonialism was highly competitive and less flexible. Since the 1890s, European
powers overwhelmingly paid more attention to overseas expansionism than
internal European balance-of-power considerations. By accident, this
development directly challenged the structure of Pax Britannica. It was an age
of empire.
2.2.2 The international economic system
In mainland Europe, protectionism was the rule of the economic game,
although Great Britain was still committed to free-trade liberalism and,
according to hegemonic stability theorists, constituted the stabiliser`, or
hegemon, of the system.
50
Since the repeal in 1846 of the Corn Laws that had
set high tariffs in order to protect domestic corn producers, the British applied
their laissez faire policies (such as low tariffs) unilaterally, both globally and in
the colonies, whereas other European powers pursued their mercantilism. This
might be envisaged as the first wave of economic globalization. The British
Prime Minister Lord Salisbury remarked in 1892 that the British were living in
an age oI a war oI tariIIs. Every nation is trying .|to| get the greatest possible
for its own industries, and at the same time the greatest possible access to the

49
It was a German move in China that was to precipitate the scramble for concessions in China in
1898. The Germans initiated the process called slicing the Chinese melon`. Using the killing oI two
German missionaries as a pretext, it secured a naval base at Qing Dao along with mining and railroad
concessions on the Shandong peninsula. Germany also sought the acquisition of the Chinese port of
Kiaochow. Within the year, Russia, Britain, and France had secured similar concessions. Russia
acquired bases and railroad concessions on the Liaodong peninsula. Britain secured leases to Hong
Kong and Kowloon while France concessions in southern China. Hew Strachan, The Outbreak of the
First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), p. 13.
50
See Charles Kindleberger, The World in Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986); and Robert Gilpin, US Power and the Multinational Corporation (London: Macmillan, 1976).
24
markets oI its neighbours. In this great battle Great Britain had deliberately
stripped herself of the armour and the weapons by which the battle had to be
Iought.by saying that we will levy no duties on anybody`.
51
Rather than
seeking to reverse this liberalism, however, Britain continued to engage with
economic openness and a non-retaliatory foreign economic policy, as well as
increasingly expanding toward emerging markets in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America.
However, by the 1890s the continental European powers had rapidly
raised their level of protectionism in order to look after their infant industries,
agricultures and exporters. An increase in German agricultural protection, for
instance, had seriously aIIected Russia`s economic relationship with Germany,
while France was stepping in, massively aiding the Russian government`s
industrialisation effort, assisting it in developing its production of petroleum
deposits, and helping Iinance its enormous public debt`.
52
In addition to political
power relations, the Franco-Russian alliance of the 1890s was made possible
due to economic ties. However, the main aim oI Europe`s protectionism was to
discriminate against rising American exports.
Table 1: Volume of steel production (in millions of tons)
1890 1900 1910 1913
Britain 8.0 5.0 6.5 7.7
Germany 4.1 6.3 13.6 17.6
US 9.3 10.3 26.5 31.8
France 1.9 1.5 3.4 4.6
Russia 0.95 2.2 3.5 4.8
Austria-Hungary 0.97 1.1 2.1 2.6
Italy 0.01 0.11 0.73 0.93
Japan 0.02 - 0.16 0.25
Source: Kennedy (1988, p. 257)

51
Quoted in Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, p. 93.
52
Paul Papayoanou, Economic Interdependence and the Balance oI Power `, International Studies
Quarterly, Vol. 41: No. 1 (March 1997), p. 124.
25
On the other hand, despite being the last remaining closest approximation
to a hegemon, Britain, particularly in comparison with Germany and the US,
was relatively in decline within the system. Steel production (Table 1) illustrates
this development well. Domestically, the first challenge was mounted to the
free-trade regime established in 1846. A policy oI one-sided Iree trade` began
to be challenged by protectionists, of whom Joseph Chamberlain was the most
influential. They favoured protective tariffs, trade retaliation, or imperial custom
union (or a British zollverein).
53
Nevertheless, Britain resisted peacetime
protection until 1932. To sum up, the international economic structure was
stabilised according to British hegemonic commitment to liberalism, but the
European rule of the game was high tariffs at home.
The international economic structure under the so-called Pax Britannica
provided the US with an opportunity. Without any trade retaliation from the
British, the US pursued its quasi-protectionist, quasi-liberal trade policy. On the
one hand, the US protected its domestic agriculture and infant industry at home
by applying high tariffs, while, on the other hand, it promoted export expansion
and foreign markets abroad. That is, protectionism at home, the open door
abroad. This American foreign economic policy was possible largely due to the
unilateral openness of Pax Britannica. According to David Lake, the US, like
Germany and France, was Iree riding` on the Iree-trade regime under British
hegemony.
54

By the late 1880s, tariffs had become one of the most contentious
political issues dividing the Democratic and Republican parties. They had
transformed from being merely a domestic issue into a foreign economic
instrument to achieve common goals: both moderate protectionism and export

53
Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, pp. 120-1. See also Aaron Friedberg, The Weary Titan
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988).
54
Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade.
26
expansion.
55
Lake finds a significant causal relationship between foreign
economic policies and the political parties. That is, during the period, the
Democrats campaigned on duty-free raw materials, while the Republicans
called for protectionism, and after the 1890s for trade expansion through
bilateral reciprocity treaties in the Western hemisphere. Democratic President
Grover Cleveland, on the one hand, advocated duty-free raw materials in 1887,
by claiming that it would appear to give [domestic manufacturers] a better
chance in foreign markets with the manufacturers of other countries, who
cheapen their wares by free material. Thus our people might have the
opportunity of extending their sales beyond the limits of home consumption`.
56
In fact, the Democrats only removed the tariff on raw wool, which in theory
meant that Americans would expand their exportsprimarily agricultural
produce, steel, and railroad materialsto wool-producing countries, but de
facto it was limited to the Southern Cone`s economies. Cleveland`s policy
option generated the Great TariII Debate` in the presidential election in 1888,
which he lost electorally despite his popular-vote plurality.
On the other hand, the Republicans, in particular moderate protectionists
led by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, sought to expand exports by
negotiating bilateral reciprocity agreements with Latin American states and
suggesting a regional Inter-American organisation.
57
Reciprocally, the US
would admit sugar, coffee, tea and raw hides free of duty while Latin American
states would grant preferential duties on a specified list of American agricultural
and manufactured items. This Republican strategy of reciprocity culminated in

55
See Tim Terrill, The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy (Westport: Greenwood Press,
1973). The business community was divided over the tariff debate. Import-substituted industries
unquestionably supported high tariffs, whereas the small-to-medium export-oriented industry in
general Iavoured the government`s assistance in export promotion. The large export-oriented industry
that could export unilaterally only got involved in the tariff debate when its interests were directly
challenged. See William Becker, The Dynamics of Business-Government Relations (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1982).
56
Quoted in Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, pp. 98-9.
57
On Blaine and American expansionism see Edward Crapol, James G. Blaine: Architect of Empire
(Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 2000).
27
the McKinley Tariff (1890), which imposed duties on items that could be
produced in the US and admitted free of duty others which the US could not
produce either at all or in sufficient quantities (such as sugar, molasses, coffee,
tea, and raw hides).
58
This was thus a quasi-protectionist, quasi-liberal trade
policy.
However, in Europe, American exports were increasingly faced with a
rise in protectionism. Since the 1890s, European great powers envisioning the
US as the emerging economic power sought to unilaterally and/or multilaterally
increase protection of their home markets from American products. Germany
signed unconditional most-favoured-nation treaties to lower duties on many
products with Austria-Hungary in 1891, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland in
1892, Russia in 1894, Japan in 1896, and Spain in 1899, while France launched
the Meline Tariff in 1892.
59
Despite this aforementioned protectionism,
however, the US was able to sustain its foreign economic policy by largely
depending upon the British liberal structure.
The spread oI protectionism aIter 1887 can be understood, in Lake`s
argument, as a response by foreign policy elites to the opportunities (and
constraints) of the international economic structure. The book goes further to
argue that economic expansionists were socially constituted by the international
economic system, thereby becoming an internationalised elite that promoted
economic expansion. Their identities and interests were formulated within the
context of not only the domestic politics but also the international social
structure.

58
Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, pp. 99-102. See also Quentin Skrabec, Jr., William
McKinley: Apostle of Protectionism (New York: Algora, 2008).
59
After the US imposed a duty on imported, subsidised sugar in the Wilson-Gorman Act in 1894,
Germany strongly warned the US: The Imperial Government is. at present unable to say whether it
will be possible for it, in view of the increasing agitation on account of the proposed measure, to
restrain the interested parties from demanding retaliatory action, which [Germany], owing to the
Iriendliness and Iairness that characterise its intercourse with the United States, desires to avoid`.
Quoted in Lake, Power, Protection, and Free Trade, p. 96.
28
2.2.3 The decline of Pax Britannica
By the 1890s, Britain`s hegemonic leadership had declined rapidly in the
international society. British leaders, in particular Lord Salisbury (Conservative
Prime Minister 1885-6, 1886-92, and 1895-1902), became aware of
unfavourable shifts in the distribution of relative power but could not agree on
the extent to which their industrial, financial, and naval position was being
challenged and on how to respond to this challenge. In The Weary Titan, Aaron
Friedberg argues compellingly that despite their awareness, British statesmen
Iailed to suIIiciently assess and adapt to the experience oI relative decline`,
partly because they tended to overestimate the limitations on their country`s
financial resources, to misconstrue the weakening of their naval position and to
underestimate the difficulties which would confront them in a large-scale land
war`.
60
At the end of the century, Pax Britannica was in a state of indecision,
inconclusiveness, and confusion.
By 1895, Lord Salisbury celebrated the Victorian tradition oI entering
into no alliance in time of peace, of avoiding any commitments to go to war,
and oI retaining a 'Iree hand Ior British diplomacy`. He thus Iavoured splendid
isolation from the European balance of power and accepted the political
necessity of the liberal free-trade regime. Above all, his main goal was to
preserve the preeminence of the British Empire.
61
However, the international
environment had changed dramatically, which in turn challenged the status and
position of Britain. There were many factors, including the rise of German
economic and military power and its Weltpolitik, Russian territorial
expansionism in Asia, the growth of non-European regional powers of the US in
the Western hemisphere and Japan in Asia, French assertiveness in Africa and
Asia, and so on. Importantly, the Franco-Russian alliance of 1894 profoundly
alarmed the British.

60
Aaron Friedberg, Britain and the Experience oI Relative Decline, 1895-1905`, The Journal of
Strategic Studies, Vol. 10: No. 3 (1987), p. 352. See also Friedberg, The Weary Titan.
61
John Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy (London: Athlone Press, 1964), p. 3.
29
This new international environment significantly destabilised the policy
of free-trade unilateralism that Britain had held since 1846. Domestically, the
movements of protectionists or fair traders, which promoted high tariffs,
retaliation, or imperial economic union, emerged (as mentioned above). Lord
Salisbury prudently kept this mercantile agenda at bay, while some members of
the cabinet such as a strong willed and impetuous` Colonial Secretary Joseph
Chamberlain tended to promote the idea of protectionism.
62
At the end of the
century, it was clear that the British century really was coming to an end, while
the new American century` was emerging. The peaceful transition was made
possible due to the appeasement policy of Britain and its co-constitution of their
mutual interests and identities.
2.3 The Venezuela crisis (1895): Anglo-American rapprochement
The Monroe Doctrine is the 'most comprehensive, unilateral
proclamation oI a sphere oI inIluence in modern times.
Hans J. Morgenthau
63
The Venezuelan Crisis of 1895 indicated that the US had perceived the
relative decline of Pax Britannica, thereby directly challenging its influence in
the Western hemisphere, and Great Britain chose to appease Americans and
implicitly acknowledged the emerging great power and hemispheric hegemon in
the international hierarchy. Yuen Foong Khong puts it nicely: The old
hegemon was ceding its place to the upcoming hegemon.`
64
There are other
explanations in IR and history. Liberals, on the one hand, argue that the two
states did not go to war because both states were liberal democracies, and

62
Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy, pp. 10-1.
63
Hans J. Morgenthau, in The Origins of the Cold War, eds. Lloyd Gardner, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.,
and Hans J. Morgenthau (Waltham: Ginn and Co., 1970), p. 86.
64
Yuen Foong Khong, Negotiating 'Order during Power Transitions`, in Power in Transition
(Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2001), p. 45.
30
sizable populations in each state considered the other liberal`.
65
British public
opinion favoured compromise with the US.
66
Democratic characteristics
persuaded the British to appease the US. Another factor in favour of conclusion
was economic interdependence. After Cleveland`s congressional speech, the
war scare generated financial panic on Wall Street partly because the British
sold American securities. The US business community pressured the
government to resolve the conflict amicably.
67

In contrast, realists explain Anglo-American rapprochement in
geopolitical terms; that is, aIter perceiving Germany`s ambitions in AIrica and
elsewhere as a more important threat, Lord Salisbury`s government decided to
appease the US. Layne claims that the US was willing to fight Britain if
necessary in order to establish its geopolitical primacy` in the region.
68
Revisionist historians (like LaFeber) claim that American assertiveness was part
of overseas commercial expansion, which could counter the economic
depression and divert public attention from domestic concerns.
69
However, the argument here is that the intersubjective understanding
between the US and Britain helps explain why and how they cooperated and
thereby made the rise of American power in the Western hemisphere possible.
Despite their initial disagreements, they gradually came to share a perceptual
worldview and attitude in which the end of the Venezuelan Crisis marked the
beginning of the special transatlantic relationship.
The Venezuelan Crisis concerned an unmapped frontier between British
Guiana and Venezuela, but it emerged as an international issue in late 1895

65
John Owen, How Liberalism Produces Democratic Peace`, in Debating the Democratic Peace, eds.
Michael Brown, Sean Lynn-Jones, and Steven Miller (Cambridge: the MIT Press, 1996), p. 143; See
also John Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 158-70.
66
Bradford Perkins, The Great Rapprochement (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 17.
67
Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, pp. 211-2.
68
Christopher Layne, Kant or Cant: The Myth oI the Democratic Peace`, in Debating the Democratic
Peace, pp. 174-80; and Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, pp. 148-52.
69
Walter LaFeber, The Background oI Cleveland`s Venezuelan Policy: A Reinterpretation` The
American Historical Review, Vol. 66: No. 4 (July 1961), pp. 947-67; and LaFeber, The New Empire,
Chapter 6.
31
partly due to the discovery of gold in the Orinoco River and partly due to the
British takeover of the Nicaraguan port of Corinto early that year. British
Aggressions in Venezuela or the Monroe Doctrine on Trial by William Lindsay
Scruggs, former US minister to Caracas and then a lobbyist for the Venezuelan
government, made the claim that British intervention in Latin American also
brought Anglophobia onto the political surface. The US jumped into this
conflict, invoking the Monroe Doctrine. The Democratic administration of
Grover Cleveland enunciated the Olney Corollary` to that doctrine, espousing
principles of non-intervention and anti-European imperialism and implicitly
proclaiming its hemispheric hegemony. Shortly after the sudden death of Walter
Gresham, Attorney General-cum-Secretary of State Richard Olney sent a note
to Lord Salisbury, delivered on 20 July 1895.
Given the declining position of Britain, Olney not only reinforced the
Monroe Doctrine against any European powers` imperialistic intervention but
also deIined the US`s regional hegemony and the rules oI the game as it
perceived them. With regard to the Monroe Doctrine, Olney treated it as a rule`
and accepted public law` that no European power or combination oI European
powers shall forcibly deprive an American state of the right and power of self-
government and oI shaping Ior itselI its own political Iortunes and destinies`.
He assertively proclaimed, Today the United States is practically sovereign on
this continent and its fiat is law upon the subjects to which it confines its
interposition`. American rights and inIluence should prevail 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`.
70
Olney called for the arbitration of the Anglo-
Venezuelan dispute by the US.

70
See Richard Olney to Thomas F. Bayard, 20 July 1895, Foreign Relations of the United States
(FRUS) (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office), Vol. 1, pp. 545-62.
32
From the outset, Lord Salisbury paid little attention to Olney`s note and
made no effort to appease the US. After deferring for several months, Lord
Salisbury sent a reply to his Ambassador Sir Julian Pauncefote. In his first
letter, he directly challenged Olney`s reinterpretation of the Monroe Doctrine;
Despite America`s vital interests in the region, there was no nation.powerIul,
competent to insert into the code of international law a novel principle which
was never recognised before, and which has not since been accepted by the
government oI any country`. In the other, he bluntly reIused to submit to
arbitration that could lead to the transIer oI large number oI British subjects,
who have Ior many years enjoyed the settled rule oI a British colony`.
71
Despite being a cautious, paciIic man` never conceived as an
expansionist, Cleveland well understood not merely America`s new status in
world politics but also the decline of Pax Britannica since the 1890s.
72
In his
message to Congress, Cleveland aptly defended the status of the Monroe
Doctrine in international law and stated that it was the duty oI the United States
to resist 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 oI right belongs to Venezuela`. By asserting that he was Iully alive
to the responsibility incurred, and keenly realise all the consequences that may
Iollow`, it seemed to be an implicit declaration of war against Britain.
73

Many expansionists patriotically endorsed Cleveland`s decision. Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge, Ior example, wrote an article in June 1895 warning that, II
Great Britain is to be permitted to. take the territory oI Venezuela. France
and Germany will do it also`. The Americans should not, he continued,
abandon the Monroe Doctrine, or give up their rightIul supremacy in the

71
See Lord Salisbury to Sir Julian Pauncefote, 26 November 1895, FRUS, 1985, pp. 563-76.
72
Beisner goes so Iar as to say that in Cleveland`s second term diplomacy became progressively
more deliberate, aggressive, and expansionist`. Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the New, p. 107.
73
See Message of the President, 17 December 1895, FRUS, 1985, pp. 542-5.
33
Western Hemisphere` which must be established and at oncepeaceably if we
can, forciblv if we must.
74
In December 1895, Lodge made a sensational speech
on the Iloor oI the Senate arguing that the Monroe Doctrine was the guiding
principle` oI US Ioreign policy, rather than law, and that no Ioreign power
must establish a new government, acquire new territory by purchase or force or
by any method whatever, or seek to control existing governments in the
Americas`.
75
If the balance of power is the ordering principle in Europe, then,
just as Lodge claimed, that doctrine was the one in the Western hemisphere.
America could not allow Great Britain or other powers to interfere in the region.
As Lodge put it, II England can seize territory under a claim which has grown
larger with each succeeding year, there is nothing to prevent her taking
indefinite regions in South America. If England can do it, and is allowed to do
it, by the United States, every other European power can do the same, and they
will not be slow to Iollow England`s example. We have seen them parcel out
Africa, and if we do not interpose now in this case the fate of large portions of
South America will be the same`.
76
Theodore Roosevelt wrote to Lodge in similar terms: II we allow
England to invade Venezuela nominally for reparation, as at Corinto, really for
territory our supremacy in the Americas is over. I am worried and angry beyond
words at what I see. England is simply playing the Administration for what she
can get.`
77
In his letter to the editors of the Harvard Crimson, Roosevelt
strongly supported Cleveland`s and Olney`s vigorous Ioreign policy and the
strictest interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine:
The Monroe Doctrine forbids us to acquiesce in any territorial
aggrandizement by a European power on American soil at the expense of

74
Henry Cabot Lodge, England, Venezuela, and the Monroe Doctrine`, The North American Review,
Vol. CLX (June 1895), pp. 651-58. My emphasis.
75
Henry Cabot Lodge, The Monroe Doctrine`, 30 December 1895, Speeches and Address, 1884-
1909 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909), p. 235, p. 237.
76
Lodge, The Monroe Doctrine`, p. 234.
77
Roosevelt to Lodge, 23 October 1895, Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt
and Henry Cabot Lodge 1884-1918 (New York: Charles Scribner`s Sons, 1925), Vol. 1, p. 193.
34
an American state. If people wish to reject the Monroe Doctrine in its
entirety, their attitude, though discreditable to their farsighted patriotism,
is illogical. II we permit a European nation in each case itselI to decide
whether or not the territory which it wishes to seize is its own, then the
Monroe Doctrine has no real existence; and if the European power
refuses to submit the question to proper arbitration, then all we can do is
to find out the facts for ourselves and act accordingly.
78

As he wrote to his Iriend, Roosevelt`s ultimate aim was the removal oI all
European powers Irom the colonies they hold in the western hemisphere`.
79

However, the alteration in the international social structure helped
prevent the escalation of the Anglo-American dispute into war and socially
constructed a more favourable British attitude toward America. The British
scepticism regarding the rising German power was strongly confirmed when
Kaiser Wilhelm II sent a telegram congratulating Transvaal President Paul
Kruger Ior repelling the attacks Irom without`, which implied the British
Empire, in early 1896. The so-called Kruger telegram indicated the Kaiser`s
(miscalculated) attempt to mobilize European opposition to British policy in
South Africa, so as to urge the British to sign a treaty with Germany. Since then,
the English attitude toward America became less hostile than that toward
Germany.
80
Encountering many challenging imperialistic powers globally,
coupled with its declining position, the British government sought to pursue an
appeasement policy with the US. Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, who actively
supported a pacific adjustment of Anglo-American rapprochement, played a
signiIicant role in the cabinet and ruled out Lord Salisbury`s reluctant decision.
As Arthur Balfour, Leader of the House oI Commons and Salisbury`s nephew,
stated at Manchester (in January 1896), Some statesmen oI authority, more
fortunate even than President Monroe, will lay down the doctrine that between
English-speaking peoples war is impossible`. An Anglo-American treaty of

78
Roosevelt to the Editors of the Harvard Crimson, 2 January 1896, Letters, Vol. 1, pp. 505-6.
79
Roosevelt to William Cowles, 5 April 1896, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 524.
80
Friedberg, The Weary Titan, p. 156; and May, Imperial Democracy, p. 47.
35
arbitration was signed on 12 November 1896.
81
As May puts it nicely, the US,
whilst beginning by experimenting with an anti-British foreign policy, ended
up promoting Anglo-American Iriendship`.
82
At the same time, Britain as an international gold standard promoter
decided to covertly support William McKinley`s presidential bid in 1896.
Bradford Perkins argues that, frightened by William Jennings Bryan and the
Silverite populist movement, the British government turned its support toward
the Republicans rather than the Democrats.
83
The campaign of 1896 can be
envisioned as an economic contest between the Silverites and those who
supported the gold standard, which the latter won by a landslide.
Since the Venezuelan Crisis, the mutual understanding between two
English-speaking great powers was gradually developing, in particular the
British acceptance of the rising American power in the Western hemisphere and
in the international society. This co-constitution would shape the identities and
interests of those expansionists more obviously, allowing American
expansionism to become possible in the years to come.
2.4 Identity formation: The emergence of transatlantic internationalists
Realists might argue that the international system has almost always
constrained and provided an opportunity Ior states` expansionism. However, in
this book, American expansionism was structurally constituted by the
international social structure, while at the same time, to put in Wendtian terms,
American expansionism was what expansionists made of it. The following
sections provide an outline of the important structural transformations in
American body politics in particular the identity formation of transatlantic
internationalists via the process called the internationalisation of agents. The

81
The Tribunal of Arbitration consisted of two Britons, two Americans, and one with the two acting
together, but none from Venezuela. Quoted in Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign
Relations, p. 212.
82
May, Imperial Democracy, p. 61.
83
Perkins, The Great Rapprochement, p. 20.
36
pioneer expansionist ideas of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Henry Cabot Lodge are
considered in this section.
2.4.1 Mahan, sea power and Anglo-American relations
During the 1890s, the historian captain, later rear admiral, Alfred Thayer
Mahan was internationally renowned for his treatise on sea power in The
Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), much more so than at home.
84
Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, for example, wrote to a Iriend in 1894, I am
just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan`s book and am trying to
learn it by heart`.
85
Mahan`s ideas provided an intellectual Ioundation Ior
American expansionism. Although at the outset he was an anti-imperialist, after
drawing from the lessons of the history (and in particular the great sea powers),
he became one oI a triumvirate`, along with Roosevelt and Lodge, that spurred
American expansionism. As Zimmermann puts it nicely, The success oI the
British Navy and his admiration for the British Empire had helped turn [Mahan]
into an imperialist`.
86
In his writings, he almost always favoured the primacy of
the British Navy in world politics and its decisive achievement: England`s
naval bases have been in all parts of the world; and her fleets have at once
protected them, kept open the communications between them, and relied upon
them Ior shelter`.
87
The contemporary international context helped constitute
him as an Anglophile expansionist who strongly supported a large navy.
Moreover, Mahan, envisioning the sea as a great highway`, urged the US
to develop the isthmian canal in the Caribbean by using the analogy of the Suez
Canal: The British needed a large navy to protect their passage to India through

84
Alfred Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1890).
On Mahan, see Harold and Margaret Sprout, The Rise of American Naval Power (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1939), pp. 202-22; William Puleston, Mahan (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939); and
Robert Seager II, Alfred Thayer Mahan (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1977).
85
Quoted in Evan Thomas, The War Lovers (New York: Little, Brown, 2010), p. 71.
86
Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 113.
87
Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, p. 83. See also Alfred Mahan, The Influence of
Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1892).
37
Suez. The US would need a similar navy to protect its Atlantic and Pacific
coasts, exposed by the opening oI the isthmus`.
88
After examining geography,
he had suggested the establishment of the Panama Canal, instead of Nicaragua.
As he wrote, the implication of the canal may bring |American| interests and
those of foreign nations in collisionand in that casewhich it is for statesmen
to forecastwe must without any delay begin to build a navy which will be at
least equal to that oI England`.
89
The naval strategy thereby had to change from
defensive to offensive. It was necessary for the new sea power to have bases,
stations, or colonies along its trade routes` to re-fuel, rest, and repair. To put it
diIIerently, the motivation behind the US`s navy buildup was probably now
quickening in the isthmus`. Mahan was culturally constructed by the
international lessons in general, and he reasoned analogically in particular so as
to make an argument for American expansionism.
90
With regard to the Venezuelan Crisis, Mahan thought the incident
indicates, as I believe and hope, the awakening oI my countrymen to the Iact
that we must come out of isolation, which a hundred years ago was wise and
imperative, and take our share oI the turmoil oI the world`.
91
In short then, the
US should abandon isolationism and look outward`. Mahan said himselI that he
was an expansionist and imperialist because he was not an isolationist: I am
frankly imperialist, in the sense that I believe that no nation, certainly no great
nation, should henceforth maintain the policy of isolation which fitted our early
history; above all, should not on that outlived plea refuse to intervene in events

88
Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 93
89
Alfred Mahan, Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, eds. Robert Seager II and Doris
Mahuire, Vol. 1, 1847-1889 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975), p. 482. Quoted in Raymond
O`Connor, The Imperialism oI Sea Power`, Reviews in American History, Vol. 4: No. 3 (September
1976), p. 410.
90
Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, pp. 30-2, 61, 83. For the cognitive-psychological
approach in IR, see Larson, Origins of Containment; and Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
91
Mahan, Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Vol. 2, 1890-1901, p. 441. Quoted in
O`Connor, The Imperialism oI Sea Power`, p. 413.
38
obviously thrust upon its conscience`.
92
As an advocate of the Monroe Doctrine,
Mahan asserted that the US required its hemispheric hegemony, thereby
excluding European powers from the region. However, as an Anglophile, he
was highly sympathetic with Britain. Later on, he wrote to Roosevelt that,
circumstances almost irresistible are Iorcing |the US| and Great Britain, not
into alliance, but into a silent cooperation, dependent upon conditions probably
irreversible in the next two generations`.
93

2.4.2 Henrv Cabot Lodge and the large policv
Lodge, along with his close friend Theodore Roosevelt, was an arch-
expansionist who strongly supported a large navy and an assertive foreign
policy. He insisted that the US take up an appropriately high position in the
hierarchy of great powers. His attention to foreign policy, however, came later
in his political career and until 1985 he did not consider overseas annexation as
a prerequisite of sea power, as well as not believing in the necessity of foreign
markets. Lodge, as Grenville and Young suggest, became an expansionist
because of his rabid nationalism.
94
However, domestic politics alone cannot
fully explain his development. This work argues that, like Mahan, Lodge`s ideas
of American expansionism developed significantly through the
internationalisation of agents at the end of the 1880s. Since 1895 in particular,
his ideas and preferences were obviously formed in terms of more Anglophile
and export-oriented expansion. As Widenor puts it, Lodge`s expansionism was
a gloss on his conception oI the nature oI international relations and of how

92
Quoted in Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, pp. 120-1.
93
Mahan, Letters and Papers of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Vol. 3, 1902-1914, p. 113. Quoted in
O`Connor, The Imperialism oI Sea Power`, p. 413.
94
John Grenville and George Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1966), p. 224.
39
Ioreign policy ought to be conducted`.
95
Since the international social structure
was changing, Lodge`s ideas were constitutively shiIting along them as well.
In March 1895, as a Junior Senator from Massachusetts, Lodge actively
delivered a series of foreign policy speeches on the floor of the Senate against
the Cleveland administration`s reversed decision oI the annexation oI Hawaii,
which he claimed was blundering Ioreign policy`.
96
In Congress, presenting a
large map illustrating the British bases around the world, Lodge put the
Hawaiian Islands in a larger strategic context. He said, That they have a great
commerce and Iertile soil merely adds to the desirability oI our taking them.
Even if they were populated by a low race of savages, even if they were desert
rocks`, Hawaii should be annexed, otherwise it would Iall into the hands oI
other great powers like Britain or Japan. Put simply, this was because they lie
there in the heart oI the PaciIic`.
97
With regard to Britain, the US was the rival
and competitor oI England Ior the trade and commerce oI the world`. Britain, he
continued, has always opposed, thwarted, and sought to injure` the US and
desires to keep her control oI the great pathways oI commerce`.
98
At that time,
Lodge was sceptical of the British hegemonan Anglophobe.
Annexation of Hawaii was part and parcel of the so-called large policy`,
which fundamentally stressed the strategic importance of sea power, bases and

95
William Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1980), p. 67. In fact, in domestic politics, Lodge also had gradually
transIormed Irom high-minded idealist` to practical politician, in particular Iollowing his switch to
support the obnoxious` James Blaine as the Republican presidential candidate in 1884, for which he
and Roosevelt were strongly criticised by their old allies, the Mugwumps reformers, later the anti-
expansionists. Harvard President Eliot, Ior example, called them degenerated sons oI Harvard`. See
Richard Immerman, Empire for Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), p. 133.
96
Henry Cabot Lodge, Our Blundering Foreign Policy`, Forum, Vol. XIX (March 1895), pp. 8-17.
Hawaii had been a de Iacto American sphere oI inIluence` Ior many years. In 1893, an uprising
occurred before American political and economic elites overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and
annexed Hawaii. Republican President Harrison decided to annex it shortly before the new Democrat
President Cleveland recalled the treaty. However, when McKinley came to power, he signed a second
treaty for the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands.
97
Henry Cabot Lodge, Naval Policy oI the United States`, 2 March 1985, Speeches and Address,
1884-1909 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1909), pp. 181-2.
98
Lodge, Naval Policy oI the United States`, pp. 184-5.
40
canals.
99
Greatly influenced by the writings of Mahan, Lodge asserted that it
was vital for the US to develop its navy and build an isthmian canal across
Central America. Learning Irom the history oI sea powers, he declared that, sea
power has been one of the controlling forces in history. Without the sea power
no nation had been really great. Sea power consists, in the first place, of a
proper navy and a proper fleet; but in order to sustain a navy we must have
suitable posts for naval stations, strong places where a navy can be protected
and reIurnished`.
100
According to Lodge, the large policy aimed at:
(1) Maintaining influence and control in the Caribbean and parts of the
Pacific;
(2) Annexing strategic islands like Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines;
(3) Strengthening the Navy;
(4) Building an Isthmian canal across Central America;
(5) Obtaining at least one strong naval station` in the West Indies; and
(6) Incorporating Canada (if possible).
These strategic interests were vital to the citadel of American power. The
Venezuelan Crisis oI 1895 reinIorced Lodge`s large policy. However, aIter the
end of the crisis, he came to the conclusion that Anglo-American
rapprochement was important for American expansionism. His identity was re-
shaped as an Anglophile and export-oriented expansionist, by the changing
international context. AIter BalIour`s speech at Manchester, Lodge sent him a
letter showing the better understanding between the two great English speaking
peoples`. He said, I readily accept your statement that you do not desire to
extend your possessions in the Americas, but other nations are less scrupulous.`
As Lodge summed up nicely, There is no nation on earth which England could

99
See Lodge to Roosevelt, 24 May 1898, Selections, Vol. 1, pp. 299-300; and Pratt, The 'Large
Policy oI 1898`, pp. 219-42.
100
Lodge, Naval Policy oI the United States`, pp. 182.
41
so easily make her Iast Iriend as the United States`.
101
At times, after the British
appeasement, the supremacy of the Monroe Doctrine was generally accepted
both at home and abroad, and American social agents were internationally
structurally transformed.

2.4.3 Expansionists and anti-expansionists: Structured agents?
There were at least two social agents in American body politics during
the late 1890s: expansionists and anti-expansionists. In general, historians
examine who the expansionists as well as anti-expansionists were, their
backgrounds, preferences and roles in the process of American expansionism.
Pratt asserts that, inIluenced by Mahan`s brilliant, iI dangerous, interpretation
oI history`, Roosevelt and Lodge planned to utilise the Iull opportunities` oI
war with Spain in 1898 in order to achieve the large policy. They performed this
through the hesitant instrumentality oI William McKinley`, who had been
genuinely surprised by the new responsibilities` aIter the end oI the Spanish-
American-Cuban War.
102
Recently, scholars have added Brooks Adams, John
Hay, Elihu Root, and William Randolph Hearst to the list of the so-called
jingos`. Portrayed as the movers and shakers oI American expansion` and its
great power ascendancy, they had conspired` to convince President McKinley
to declare war.
103
Many of them were a group of like-minded friends who met
Irequently at Harvard historian Henry Adams`s house on LaIayette Square in
Washington DC. They included his neighbour and Abraham Lincoln`s secretary
Hay, his Iormer graduate student Lodge, Lodge`s closest Iriend Roosevelt, his

101
Quoted in John Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knoff, 1953), p.
164.
102
Pratt, The 'Large Policy oI 1898`, p. 242. See also Pratt, Expansionists of 1898.
103
The term jingo` came Irom a London music hall ballad oI 1878, when the Disraeli government
was deciding whether to defend Turkey against Russia. Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 38. See
also LaFeber, The New Empire; Thomas, The War Lovers; William Leuchtenburg, Progressivism and
Imperialism`, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 39: No. 3 (1952), pp. 483-504; and
Joseph Fry, The Architectures oI the 'Large Policy Plus Two`, Diplomatic History, Vol. 29: No. 1
(January 2005), pp. 185-188.
42
younger brother and Lodge`s brother-in-law Brooks Adams, and an influential
British friend Cecil Spring-Rice, the secretary of the British legation in
Washington and later ambassador to the US (1912-8).
On the other hand, the anti-expansionists, anti-imperialists, or goo-
goos`,
104
were those who strongly opposed American expansionism in general
and the annexation of the Philippines in particular. Some anti-expansionists
tolerated American intervention in Cuban affairs on humanitarian grounds.
Beisner identiIies twelve against empire`, who Iormed the Anti-Imperialist
League after the war in Boston, such as Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, Charles
Eliot, Carl Schurz, William James, Edwin Godkin, and Thomas Reed. Some of
them were dissident Republicans, while the others were the Mugwump
reformers, who turned away from the Republican candidate Blaine in 1884
because of his corruption, thereby helping the victory of Democrat Cleveland
105
(see Table 2).

Table 2: Expansionists and anti-expansionists (Selected)
Expansionists
-William McKinley (1843-1901) Republican President (1897-1901)
-Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) Senator for Massachusetts (1893-1924)
-Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919) Assistant Secretary of the Navy (1897-8); Vice President
(1901); Republican President (1901-09)
-John Hay (1838-1905) Secretary of State (1898-1905)
-Elihu Root (1845-1937) Secretary of War (1899-1904); Secretary of State (1905-09)
-Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan
(1840-1914)
President of the Naval War College (1886-1889, 1892-1893);
author of The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-
1783 (1890)
-Brooks Adams (1848-1927) Historian; author of The Law of Civilisation and Decay (1895)
and $PHULFDV(FRnomic Supremacy (1990)
-Henry Adams (1838-1918) Harvard Professor of History
-William Randolph Hearst (1863-
1951)
Newspaper publisher (The New York Journal)
-Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) Newspaper publisher (New York World)

104
Roosevelt`s term reIerring to the selI-proclaimed advocates oI good government`. Zimmermann,
First Great Triumph, p. 328.
105
Beisner, Twelve Against Empire; Fred Harrington, The Anti-Imperialist Movement in the United
States, 1898-1900`, The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 22: No. 2 (September 1935), pp.
211-30; and I. Dementyev, USA: Imperialists and Anti-Imperialists (Moscow: Progress Publishers,
1979).
43
-Whitelaw Reid (1837-1912) Newspaper publisher (New York Tribune)
-Albert J. Beveridge (1862-1927) Senator for Indiana (1899-1911)
-Charles A. Conant (1861-1915) Economist and an advisor to the McKinley and Roosevelt
administrations
Anti-Expansionists
-Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) Democratic President (1885-89, 1893-97)
-Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) Republican President (1889-93)
-Thomas Brackett Reed (1839-1902) Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives (1889-
91, 1895-99)
-William Jennings Bryan (1860-
1925)
Populist politician; Democratic Candidate for President (1896,
1900 and 1908)
-Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) Industrialist
-Samuel Gompers (1850-1924) Trade union leader
-Carl Schurz (1829-1906) The German-American reformer and politician
-Mark Twain (1835-1910) Writer
-Edwin L. Godkin (1831-1902) Journalist and writer
-Charles W. Eliot (1834-1926) President of Harvard University
-Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (1835-
1915)
A member of the Harvard Board of Overseers and Boston
businessman
-William James (1892-1910) Harvard Professor of Philosophy
-Charles Eliot Norton (1827-1908) Harvard Professor
-Edward Atkinson (1827-1905) Boston businessman
-George F. Hoar (1826-1904) Senator for Massachusetts (1877-1904)
Sources: Pratt (1936); Beisner (1968); Zimmermann (2002); and Thomas (2010)
Most of the literature takes these social actors as exogenously given or
domestically driven agents. In this research, social agents are also influenced
and socially constructed by the international structure through the process of the
internationalisation of agents. It can be hypothesised that the changes in the
international society that had occurred since the late 1880s and more especially
after the Venezuelan Crisis brought about the transIormation oI social agents`
identities and interests. Expansionists were largely transformed from anti-
British and pro-protectionists into pro-British and pro-free-trade liberals, as
shown through the aforementioned examples of Mahan and Lodge. The next
chapter will examine in detail the changing identities and interests of three
expansionists: Lodge, Roosevelt and Hay.
Though the book fundamentally studies expansionists, it may be
speculated that anti-expansionists too were more or less internationally oriented.
And, just as with the former, most of the latter were likely to be Anglophile and
44
supportive of international free trade, with the exception of Andrew Carnegie
and George Hoar who favoured protectionism. Despite his support for import-
substitution, Carnegie unquestionably favoured Anglo-American friendship. In
his article Does America Hate England?`, he 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 oI resentment and indignation at her conduct`. According to Carnegie,
the educated class oI Americans` or the transatlantic elites, who were and are
Britain`s Iriends. 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`. He concluded: There is. no reason in the world why the two
nations should not now again draw closer and closer together`.
106
Similarly,
free-trade anti-expansionists like journalist Edwin Godkin argued that
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
recognised, at last that America is her best and only natural ally and
friend. We believe that the most enlightened Englishmen have long felt
this and tried to show it. Is it a good thing Ior us? Is it a good thing for
liberty and civilisation? No one who sees how things are going in the
great Continental states can well help answering these questions in the
affirmative.
107
Carl Schurz, the German-American anti-expansionist politician, argued in
the same way that the Anglo-American friendship will signalise 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 civilisation
than anything that can be eIIected by armies and navies`.
108
Both expansionists

106
Quoted in William Mountz, Shadowing British Imperialism: Origins oI the US Open Door Policy,
1890-1899`, MA Dissertation, Texas Tech University, August 2007, pp. 128-30.
107
Quoted in Mountz, Shadowing British Imperialism`, p. 130.
108
Quoted in Mountz, Shadowing British Imperialism`, p. 114.
45
and anti-expansionists shared an Anglo-American common identity and
understanding. As one British author neatly puts it, Great Britain and the US
have common ties, common interests, common memories, common kinship,
which they do not and cannot possess with the world outside their own
Iamilies`.
109

Some might question why, given the same structure, actors acted
differently, with expansionists pursuing an assertive foreign policy an anti-
expansionists against it. As HoIIman`s critique oI Mearsheimer asserts in a
diIIerent context, Structural Iactors do not cause or explain outcomes
themselves. In anarchy, any structure can lead either to peace or to war; it
depends on the domestic characteristics of the main actors, on their preferences
and goals, as well as on the relations and links among them`.
110
That is to say,
then, that the structural explanation was insufficient. It is partly true, and partly
false. It is impossible that structure, similar to domestic factors, can be
universally explicable. But to a certain degree, it is influential in determining
the outcome and in constructing the agents. As the work attempts to suggest,
expansionists did not act out of context, whether domestic or international; they
were structurally constituted.
The way in which agents performed differently can be partly explained
by the fact that there are many types of international social structure as actors
conceived of it. For expansionists, it was the Hobbesian-Machiavellian
international system with which they were affiliated. By contrast, for anti-
expansionists, structure was conceived in Kantian terms.
111
If the democratic
peace theory, for instance, was counted into the explanation,
112
my argument is
that it provides a good explanatory power for the anti-expansionists` behaviour,

109
Quoted in Mountz, Shadowing British Imperialism`, p. 130.
110
Stanley HoIIman, Robert Keohane, and John Mearsheimer, Back to the Future, Part II:
International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe`, International Security, Vol. 15: No. 2
(Autumn 1990), p. 192.
111
See Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics.
112
For a constructivist reading oI the democratic peace theory see Peceny, A Constructivist
Interpretation oI the Liberal Peace`, pp. 415-30.
46
rather than expansionists`. This is because anti-expansionists mostly perceived
world politics in terms of democratic and commercial pacifism, thereby arguing
against war, intervention, and imperialism. However, expansionists never have
that kind of worldview. If democratic peace theory was right, American
expansionism would have been an accident, rather than the result of democratic
peace, according to which democracies never go to war against each other. But
the facts are to the contrary. To put it bluntly, democratic peace theory explains
anti-expansionism better than expansionism, not vice versa.
Actors were constituted by structure but also themselves constructed
structure: they were thus structured agents. Despite the importance of domestic
political structure, the identities and interests of agents are intersubjectively
formulated and socially constituted significantly by the international structure.
Expansionists like Mahan, Lodge, Roosevelt and Hay were internationally
socialised as members of internationalized and transatlantic elites, whose
identities and interests were largely like those of European imperial elites and
Britain`s in particular. It is worth saying again: American expansionism was
what American expansionists made of it. Thus, it was not motivated merely by a
domestic or international factors but, rather, by a co-constitution between them
that made American expansionism plausible at the end of the 1890s.
2.5 Summary
International structural change in the end of the nineteenth century
brought about the great transformation of US foreign policy and identity in
world politics. The development after 1895, first, transformed the perceptions
and preferences of crucial decision-makers and political circles. They were
intersubjectively constructed as the internationalised elite, which pursued
Anglophile, export-oriented policies. In addition, it constructed a transatlantic
special relationship between a declining and a rising power, which watered
down the attempted concert of European powers before the outbreak of the
47
Spanish-Amercian-Cuban War and rendered possible American expansionism.
The next chapter will examine these expansionists and their roles in setting the
discourses and policies that led the US to expand regionally and globally after
the war of 1898.

48
Chapter 3
American Expansionism and the Spanish-American-Cuban War
|American| history has been one oI expansion . This expansion is not a
matter oI regret, but oI pride`.
Theodore Roosevelt
113
The |McKinley| administration is now Iully committed to
the large policy that we [Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt] both desire`.
Henry Cabot Lodge
114
AIter 1895, America`s internationally oriented expansionists had begun
to think and act like other great powers` imperialists in general and the British
ones in particular. They thus strongly promoted the ideas of buying and leasing
ports, acquiring protectorates, making commercial treaties, and annexing
strategic islands. The Cuban crisis that erupted during that year further inflamed
the expansionists. In 1898, the explosion of the USS Maine in Havana harbour
provided a pretext for a war against Spain, as a result of which Cuba, Puerto
Rico and the Philippines became US protectorates. Thereafter, the US both
achieved regional hegemony in the Western hemisphere and began to emerge as
a world power. The year 1898 is thus a milestone on the road toward US global
hegemony in the twentieth century.
This chapter argues, firstly, that the international structure, in particular
European internal divisions and Britain`s appeasement oI the US, provided an
opportunity for American expansionism. That European powers did not
intervene to support Spain created American competitive advantages in the war.
Second, expansionists, who were socially constructed by the international
structure, proactively laid out the expansionist discourses and practices and
influentially convinced the McKinley administration to go to war. This chapter

113
Quoted in David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press, 1970), pp. 34-5.
114
Lodge to Roosevelt, 24 May 1898, Selections, Vol. 1, pp. 299-300.
49
principally concentrates on Cuba and has three main sections. The first provides
a brief history of the Spanish-American-Cuban War. The second section then
explores the international structure and its strategic encouragement of American
expansionism before that war. The last section examines the social construction
by American expansionists oI the Spanish-American-Cuban War` through the
discourses of such important expansionists as Lodge, Roosevelt, and Hay. It
also considers the policy options of the government and the way in which
McKinley chose armed intervention and a naval blockade over other peaceful
means. This chapter ends by examining the changing identities and interests of
American expansionists. Indeed this is an American narrative of the war of
1898.
3.1 Historical background
115
The Spanish-American-Cuban War had its origins in the Cuban crisis. In
1895, Cuban rebels, led by Jose Marti, launched a new war of independence
against Spain.
116
Spain responded by sending more troops under General
Valeriano Weyler, known as the butcher`, whose reconcentrado
(reconcentration) policy was damagingly brutal. Many Americans, though not
the Cleveland administration, sympathised with Cuba Libre!` Besides, the
rebellion threatened American economic relations and private property. In 1897,
the new Republican President William McKinley pressured Spain to end the
revolt by granting Cuba more autonomy and modiIying Weyler`s policies in the
name of humanitarianism. After the anarchist assassination of a conservative
Spanish prime minister, a new liberal government under Praxedes Mateo

115
See, for example, Offner, An Unwanted War; May, Imperial Democracy; Trask, The War with
Spain in 1898; Linderman, The Mirror of War; James C. Bradford, ed., Crucible of Empire: The
Spanish-American War and Its Aftermath (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993); and Joseph Smith,
The Spanish-American War (London: Longman, 1994).
116
This was partly because of the 1894 Wilson-Gorman Tariff on sugar imports that meant many
plantations closed, creating unemployment and chaos in Cuba in 1895. Between 1894 and 1896,
Cuba`s exports to the US Iell by 50 percent. Walter LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity,
1865-1913 (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 129.
50
Sagasta was formed in late 1897, which duly recalled General Weyler,
promoted reforms and announced Cuban autonomy, albeit under continuing
Spanish sovereignty. However, these attempted reforms could not water down
the Cuban nationalist movement. At home, America`s yellow press, such as
William Hearst`s New York Journal and Joseph Pulitzer`s New York World, had
aroused anti-Spanish public opinion and continually called for American
expansionism and war since 1895.
From late 1897 until February 1898, American-Spanish relations had
seemed to improve. However, after McKinley dispatched the battleship USS
Maine on a Iriendly` visit to Havana harbour in January to protect US citizens
and property interests, the relationship between two countries rapidly
deteriorated. Initially, this was because of a leaked letter in which Enrique
Dupoy de Lome, the Spanish minister to Washington, dismissed McKinley as a
weakling. Dupoy was immediately recalled to Spain, but on 15 February, the
Maine exploded in Havana harbour, with the loss of 266 American lives. The
US and Spain ordered their own investigations of the sinking. While the
Spanish inquiry argued that the explosion had been internal, the American
commission held that it had occurred outside the ship, implying Spanish
responsibility. Shortly before that, Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont, who
had previously opposed expansionism, returned from a visit to Cuba to tell the
Senate that American intervention was the only solution.
117
Together with the
hysterically jingoist mantra oI Remember the Maine!`, Proctor`s speech
palpably intensified the clamour for expansionism in the US. The Maine
incident was widely interpreted as justifying war.
118
McKinley tried to find alternatives to war, ranging from the purchase of
Cuba to an armistice and arbitration. From the outset, the Spanish government,
fearing that such a concession would damage national honour and dignity as

117
Owen, Liberal Peace, Liberal War, p. 178.
118
See Louis Perez, Jr., The Meaning oI the Maine: Causation and the Historiography of the Spanish-
American War`, Pacific Historical Review, Vol. LVIII (August 1989), pp. 293-322.
51
well as the fragile monarchy, rejected these proposals and sought diplomatic
help from European powers. Late in the day, however, it decided to settle
disputes peacefully, agreeing to arbitration and proclaiming an unconditional
armistice and a liberal constitution for Cuba. Nonetheless, on 11 April,
McKinley asked Congress to authorise the use oI Iorce in the name oI
humanity, in the name of civilisation`.
119
Congress hotly debated not a
declaration of war per se, but Cuban independence and recognition of the
revolutionary government. On 21 April, Congress passed the Teller Resolution,
asserting that the US would not attempt to exercise hegemony over Cuba: The
United States hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise
sovereignty, jurisdiction, or control` over Cuba, except Ior the paciIication
thereoI`.
120
McKinley ordered a naval blockade of Cuba. By August, the US
triumphantly ended the nearly four-month-long war: Commodore George
Dewey attacked the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay, and Theodore Roosevelt and
his Rough Riders, the first US voluntary cavalry, won the battle of San Juan
Heights.
The Treaty of Paris signed on 10 December 1898 provided Ior Spain`s
concession of Puerto Rico, Guam, and Wake Island, its selling of the
Philippines, and its granting of Cuban independence. Despite this last deal, the
Platt Amendment (1902) subsequently gave the US the right to intervene in the
case of unrest and to maintain naval bases on the island, thereby making it in
effect a protectorate, which stoked Cuban resentment. 1898 was a definitive and
decisive watershed in US foreign policy; it made America not only an emerging
hegemon in the Western hemisphere but a great power in relation to its
ownership of the Philippines.

119
For McKinley`s speech, see FRUS, 1898, pp. 750-60.
120
Offner, An Unwanted War, p. 189.
52
3.2 International structure before the Spanish-American-Cuban War
Structure has here been defined as a social power relationship between
states; states, albeit in varying degrees, thus interacted and engaged with this
American-Spanish confrontation. Though some of themGermany, Russia, and
Austria-Hungaryshared the common identities and interests of monarchical
rules with Spain, such solidarity was not enough to drive them to intervention or
war. They had their own interests in this conflict. Their main aim was to
question the rise oI America`s hemispheric hegemony, which would possibly
challenge other powers` spheres oI inIluence. To use Wendt`s term, states were
not autistic`, but selI-interested, and therefore strategically maximised
advantages and minimised risks. Shortly before the outbreak of the Spanish-
American-Cuban War, European powers attempted to settle the crisis by
forming a concert of the powers.
121
None of them, however, wanted to lead a
coalition against the US without the strong support and commitment of others,
in particular Great Britain. British appeasement of the US thus made the
attempted concert unattainable.
122
By late 1897, European chancelleries began to seriously discuss the
Spanish-American dispute. Germany and Austria-Hungary were diplomatically
the most enthusiastic. Kaiser Wilhelm II, coupled with his foreign minister and
then the chancellor Count Bernhard von Bulow, sought to mobilise the
European powers to help the Spanish monarchy, on the assumption that France,
Britain and Russia agreed with such a policy.
123
Cautiously, Germany had done
so indirectly, persuading Austria, closely bound to Spain by dynastic ties, to

121
J. Fred Rippy, The European Powers and the Spanish-American War`, James Sprunt Historical
Studies, Vol. XIX: No. 2 (1927), pp. 22-52.
122
See Charles Campbell, Jr., Anglo-American Understanding (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press,
1957); A.E. Campbell, Great Britain and the United States, 1895-1903 (London: Longman, 1960);
Lionel Gelber, The Rise of Anglo-American Friendship, 1898-1906 (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1938); and R. G. Neale, Britain and American Imperialism, 1898-1900 (Brisbane: University of
Queensland Press, 1965).
123
Lester Burrell Shippee, Germany and the Spanish-American War`, The American Historical
Review, Vol. 30: No. 4 (July 1925), pp. 754-5.
53
take the Iirst step. Germany`s goal, as Grenville puts it, was not to save Spain
but to collect some more colonies Ior Germany`, and there was no desire Ior
conflict with the US, which was Germany`s second largest import and export
market after Britain.
124
As Bulow wrote to Count Eulenburg, the Kaiser`s close
Iriend and Ambassador to Vienna, II England and France abstain. not only
would the success of the action become doubtful, but this very fact could, from
a political as well as an economic standpoint, bring us important disadvantages`.
Moreover, he later gave an instruction to the German embassy in Vienna that,
Germany cannot Ior practical reasons anticipate the western powers in taking a
positive stand on the Cuban question, though she will be ready to give the most
earnest consideration to any appropriate proposals which come to us from
London or Paris`. Similarly, despite its concern with dynastic ties, Austrian
foreign minister Count Agenor Goluchowski admitted that, without British
support, European intervention in the American-Spanish affairs was useless.
125
After the Maine incident, Spain called on Europe`s monarchical powers
to settle the conflict. Germany felt sympathetic towards the Spanish monarchy,
but would act only if France, whose large economic stake in Spain prevailed,
took the initiative and other great powers helped to restrain American power.
Bulow inIormed the German ambassador in Madrid that Germans must always
be ready to support the monarchical principle wherever it can be done with
success, but that a suggestion. by Germany would not be a suitable method.
|T|he only attitude possible Ior Germany. |is| to hold alooI. There is no need
to explain in justification that it is Germany`s duty to avoid engaging herselI
further or earlier than France in a question which has aroused the passions of the
American people more and more`.
126
France, on the other hand, considered that

124
Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy, p. 201; Shippee, Germany and the Spanish-
American War`, p. 755.
125
Quoted in May, Imperial Democracy, pp. 198-200; Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy,
p. 201.
126
Shippee, Germany and the Spanish-American War`, p. 756; and Quoted in May, Imperial
Democracy, p. 200.
54
a united European demonstration was necessary, but doubted whether Britain or
Russia could be counted on. At that time, therefore, all the great powers were
unwilling to take the first initiative against the US.
127
For Britain, the Anglo-American rapprochement was still intact. Lord
Salisbury insisted that, with regard to the Cuban question, it`s no aIIair oI 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`. During the course oI Lord
Salisbury`s illness, his nephew Arthur BalIour took charge oI the Foreign OIIice
and ensured its neutrality. He assured John Hay, American Ambassador in
London, that neither |in London| nor in Washington did the British
Government propose to take any steps which would not be acceptable to the
Government oI the United States`.
128
Balfour declined to support Spain or to
join a protest by the European powers. He frankly gave Sir Julian Pauncefote,
British Ambassador to the US, the authority to consult with the President on
the subject, and thereafter take any steps in consultation with your colleagues,
or separately, which you might think desirable`.
129
A professionally and
gentlemanly pro-American diplomat Pauncefote, however, controversially
asserted the attempted concert before the outbreak of the Spanish-American-
Cuban War, which risked the European powers` intervention against the US, but
in the end the British government reversed his initiative.
After contact with McKinley and Acting Secretary of State William R.
Day, Pauncefote came to the conclusion that the American administration

127
However, the Vatican moved to help Spain. The pope sent words to McKinley that the granting of
an armistice would avert danger oI war` but McKinley paid no attention to it. OIIner, Unwanted War,
pp. 156-9. For France and the Spanish-American War, see John OIIner, The United States and
France: Ending the Spanish-American War`, Diplomatic History, Vol. 7: No. 1 (1983), pp. 1-21; and
Louis Martin Sears, French Opinion oI the Spanish-American War`, The Hispanic American
Historical Review, Vol. 7: No. 1 (1927), pp. 25-44.
128
Quoted in Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy, pp. 202-3.
129
Quoted in Lewis Einstein, British Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, Proceedings of the
Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. 76 (1964), p. 36.
55
seriously attempted to avoid war with Spain, at least until 11 April. Austria had
initially directed its ambassador, acting in common with the representatives of
the other powers, to approach the US in the interests of peace. Having consulted
Day, PaunceIote asserted that the collective maniIestation oI the Great Powers
in the interests of peace would be of use in calming to some extent the popular
excitement at this particular juncture`.
130
On 6 April 1898, the ambassadors of
six such countriesGreat Britain, Germany, France, Austria, Russia, and
Italydelivered the joint note to the President, hoping for the maintenance of
peace and the reestablishment of order in Cuba through further negotiations.
131
Though infuriating American public opinion, the note was written in neutral,
diplomatic language.
However, the second, but confidential, identical note of 14 April was
controversial and far more hostile toward the US.
132
AIter McKinley`s War
Message to Congress on 11 April, Pauncefote was deeply shocked; furthermore,
as doyen` oI the diplomatic corps in Washington, he initiated and led the
meeting oI the powers` ambassadors and draIted a proposed communiqu:
133

The attitude of Congress and the Resolution of the House of
Representatives passed yesterday by a large majority leaves but little
hope for peace and it is popularly believed that the warlike measures
advocated have the approval of the Great Powers. The Memorandum of
the Spanish Minister delivered on Sunday appeared to me and my

130
Shippee, Germany and the Spanish-American War`, p. 759; and Quoted in Einstein, British
Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, p. 37.
131
R.B. Mowat, The Life of Lord Pauncefote: First Ambassador to the United States (London:
Constable, 1929), pp. 213-4. See Joint note oI the Powers` and The President`s reply` FRUS, 1989,
pp. 740-1.
132
In 1902, late in the ongoing Boer War, this note became publicly controversial. George Smalley,
The Times New York correspondent, tried to revive the spirit of British-American rapprochement
amongst the American public in 1898, in the midst oI the European powers` intervention. However,
Germany published the telegram dispatched by Holleben, the then German Ambassador in
Washington, indicating that British Ambassador Pauncefote had initiated and led the conference of
ambassadors in an attempt to collectively intervene in the conflict. Shortly afterwards, Pauncefote
died suddenly. See Mowat, The Life of Lord Pauncefote, pp. 217-22; R.G. Neale, British-American
Relations during the Spanish-American War: Some Problems`, Australian Historical Studies, Vol. 6:
No. 21 (1953), pp. 72-89; and Einstein, British Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, pp. 30-54.
133
The French representative reported PaunceIote as having said that One cannot, without protesting
in the name of conscience, allow to be committed the act of brigandage which the United States are
preparing at this moment`. Quoted in May, Imperial Democracy, p. 216. My Emphasis.
56
colleagues to remove all legitimate cause of war. If that view should be
shared by the Great Powers the time has arrived to remove to erroneous
impression which prevails that the armed intervention of the United
States in Cuba commands, in the words oI the President`s Message, 'the
support and approval of the civilised world. It is suggested by the
foreign Representatives that this might be done by a collective expression
from the Great Powers of the hope that the United States Government
will give a favourable consideration to the Memorandum of the Spanish
Minister.as oIIering a reasonable basis oI amicable settlement and
removing any grounds for hostile intervention which may have
previously existed.
134
After the meeting, this note was altered to contain more offensive
language by French Ambassador Jules Cambon, before being telegraphed by the
ambassadors to their respective governments. Cambon`s demarche stated that
the great powers disapproved oI an American intervention in Cuba intended to
create an independent state` and denied McKinley`s claim to have the support
and approval of the civilised world`.
135
Counterfactually, if the concert of Europe, spearheaded by a moral man
such as Pauncefote, was successfully formed, the US might have been defeated
in the Spanish-American-Cuban War and there would have been other regional
hegemonic powers. However, Balfour, together with Joseph Chamberlain,
refused to follow the advice of the British Ambassador. Since at least 1895,
Balfour, Chamberlain and other British leaders were more overtly sympathetic
and friendly to the US than to the continental powers. After receiving
PaunceIote`s second note, BalIour peremptorily replied that,
. we are quite ready to join in any representation agreed on by the other
Powers in favour of peace. We are also ready to make it quite clear that
we have formed no judgment adverse to Spain, as is assumed apparently
by Congress and to express the hope that the declaration of an armistice
by Spain may afford an opportunity for a peaceful settlement. But it
seems very doubtful whether we ought to commit ourselves to a judgment

134
Quoted in Einstein, British Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, p. 40.
135
Einstein, British Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, p. 40.
57
adverse to the United States, and whether in the interests of peace
anything will be gained by doing so.
136

With strong support from Chamberlain, Balfour sent another telegram to
PaunceIote Iorbidding any Iurther action without London`s instruction:
I gather that President is most anxious to avoid if possible a rupture with
Spain. In these circumstances advice to USA by other Powers can only be
useful if it strengthens his hands and of this he must be the best judge.
Considering our present ignorance as to his views, the extreme
improbability that unsought advice will do any good, and the
inexpediency of adopting any course which may suggest that we take
sides in the controversy we shall, at least for the moment, do nothing.
137
The German Ambassador in Washington Theodor von Holleben wrote
that Britain first showed an inclination toward the United States`, and
maniIested a lukewarm attitude` toward concerted European action.
138
After
realising that the British would not go along, other great powers, particularly
Germany, also backed down. At the onset of the Spanish-American-Cuban War,
despite their bitter mood, the European powers failed to balance against the US.
Structurally, this was due to the Anglo-American rapprochement and
intersubjective understandings. As US Ambassador Hay wrote to Senator
Lodge, Britain was the only European power whose sympathies were not openly
against the US and that, iI we wanted itwhich of course we do notwe
could have the practical assistance oI the British Navy`. Chamberlain later made
a speech at Birmingham in favour of an Anglo-American alliance: I even go so
far as to say that, terrible as a war may be, even war itself would be cheaply

136
Quoted in Grenville, Lord Salisbury and Foreign Policy, pp. 202-3.
137
Quoted in Einstein, British Diplomacy in the Spanish-American War`, pp. 47-8. My Emphasis.
138
The Kaiser Iurther commented that England wants to play the same game she did years ago when
avowedly she provoked the outbreak of the Greco-Turkish war. She stirs up action of all the powers
and apparently participates until they have compromised themselves with the belligerents; then she
draws back, pharisaically, beats her breast, declares she never had a part in it, secretly joins with one
of the combatantsnaturally always the strongerand incites it against the Continental powers.
England won`t belong to Europe, it won`t throw in its lot with the Continental Powers. but wants to
establish an independent continent for herself between this continent and Asia or America`. Quoted in
Shippee, Germany and the Spanish-American War`, pp. 762-3.
58
purchased if, in a great and noble cause, the Stars and Stripes and the Union
Jack should wave together over an Anglo-Saxon alliance`.
139
Structure,
thereIore, consisted oI the hierarchy oI states, a hierarchy that had the Union
Jack` and the Stars and Stripes` Ilying at its summit.
3.3 Constructing the Spanish-American-Cuban War
3.3.1 Expansionists and the preparations for war
Many historians have claimed that a like-minded group of
expansionistsRoosevelt, Lodge, and Mahanintentionally conspired` to
persuade McKinley to go to war with Spain in 1898. Pratt, for example,
suggests that McKinley had been clay in the hands oI the little group of men
who knew all too well what use to make oI the war`.
140
Although they were the
movers and shakers oI American expansion`,
141
these expansionists, from this
perspective, were unsocially constructed by the international context. In Chapter
2, I asserted that expansionists had been socially constituted by the international
structure dominant since 1895. They shared the intersubjective understandings
and perceptions of other imperialist powers, especially Pax Britannica. Their
identities and interests were gradually and incrementally formulated. By the end
of the 1890s, most of expansionists (and in particular Lodge, Roosevelt, Mahan
and Hay) leaned toward the more Anglophile, more internationally export-
oriented elite. Looking across the Atlantic, they desired that the US, as
Roosevelt put it, uphold its interests in the teeth oI the Iormidable Old World
powers`.
142
Underwriting this stance was the Anglo-American rapprochement.
This section explores the way in which expansionists argued for war with Spain.

139
William Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay, Vol. II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company,
1915), pp. 165, 169.
140
Pratt, Expansionists of 1898, p. 327. See also Pratt, The 'Large Policy oI 1898`, pp. 219-42;
Charles Beard and Mary Beard, The Rise of American Civilization (New York: Macmillan, 1972),
Vol. II; Millis, The Martial Spirit; and Zimmermann, First Great Triumph.
141
Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 38.
142
Quoted in John Judis, The Folly of Empire (New York: Scribner, 2004), p. 36.
59
It represents a constructivist understanding of the Spanish-American-Cuban
War.
By early 1896, many expansionists, who previously knew little about
Cuba, became rabid interventionists. While the Cleveland administration had
strictly avoided entanglement with Cuban affairs and the business community
had opposed war, these expansionists needed the government to officially
recognise the Cuban rebels, thereby legitimising them. As Roosevelt put it to his
sister Anna, the President ought now to recognise Cuba`s independence and
interIere; sending our Ileet promptly to Havana`.
143
Lodge, with the help of his
mentor Henry Adams, secretly met with two Cuban lobbyists at the house of
Senator J. Donald Cameron of Pennsylvania, a member of the Foreign Relations
Committee at LaIayette Square, Adams` and Hay`s neighbour. At that time,
Lodge was appointed to a special subcommittee on Cuban affairs under the
chairmanship oI Senator John Sherman oI Ohio, who later became McKinley`s
Secretary of State.
144
As Henry Adams wrote to his brother Brooks, while
business interests would inevitably dismiss the Cuban issue, the only solution
was to persuade them that Cuba was a great Iield Ior their greed`new
markets with abundant resources and cheap labour.
145
Later, Lodge argued in the Senate that a Free Cuba would mean a great
market for the United States; it would mean an opportunity for American capital
invited there by special exemptions; it would mean an opportunity for the
development of that splendid island`. He also made a strategic argument Ior
American global supremacy, saying that Cuba lies athwart the line which leads

143
Roosevelt to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, 2 January 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 574.
144
On their visit to Spain in 1895, Lodge and Joseph Chamberlain called on Antonio Canovas del
Castillo, the Spanish prime minister, who was preoccupied with the Cuban situation. Mentioning that
violence had hurt American business interests, Lodge urged him to put down the disputes quickly in
order to avoid American intervention. John Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Knopf, 1953), p.
180.
145
Quoted in Patricia O`Toole, The Five of Hearts: An Intimate Portrait of Henry Adams and His
Friends, 1880-1918 (New York: Clarkson Potter Publishers, 1990), p. 283.
60
to the |unbuilt| Nicaraguan Canal`.
146
For Lodge, the Cuban uprising was an
opportunity for the US to drive the European powers out of the Western
hemisphere. The Cameron Resolution non-bindingly recognising the Cuban
insurgents as legitimate belligerents was passed in both houses of Congress. It
was a symbolic victory, transcending the executive power of President
Cleveland.
After McKinley defeated Bryan, Lodge prevailed upon the new president
to make Roosevelt, then police commissioner in New York City, Assistant
Secretary of the Navy, which was a second-ranking position in the department
associated with US foreign and defense affairs in state structure. McKinley
chose Senator John Sherman of Ohio as Secretary of State, Russell Alger as
Secretary of War, and John Davis Long as Secretary of the Navy. He also
appointed John Hay, his financial contributor and Anglophile foreign policy
advisor, the US Ambassador to the Court oI St. James`s in 1897. In his
inaugural address, McKinley stated neutrally that, We want no wars oI
conquest. We must avoid the temptation of territorial aggression. War should
never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed; peace is preferable
to war in almost every contingency`. As he spoke privately with Carl Schurz, a
leading Mugwump anti-expansionist, |T|here will be no jingo nonsense under
my administration`.
147
However, in fact, even McKinley himself was becoming
a jingo at the end.
At the Department of the Navy, Roosevelt promoted American
expansionism which, he believed, would make the US a great power. Shortly
aIter taking the position, Roosevelt told Mahan: II I had my way we would
annex [the Hawaiian] islands tomorrow. If that is impossible I would establish a
protectorate over them. I believe we should build the Nicaraguan Canal at once,
and in the meantime that we should build a dozen new battleships, half of them

146
Quoted in Evans, The War Lovers, p. 132.
147
Quoted in Evans, The War Lovers, p. 152. My Emphasis.
61
on the Pacific Coast; and these battleships should have large coal capacity and a
consequent increased radius oI action`. He also noted that the US would turn
Spain out oI Cuba tomorrow` and that no strong European power, and
especially nor Germany, should be allowed to gain a foothold by supplanting
some weak European power`.
148
Constrained by economic stagnation, however,
some politicians, such as Speaker of the House Thomas Reed, opposed building
up the navy. In his letter to the President, Roosevelt suggested that the US
should keep the battleships on our own coast, and in readiness for action should
any complications arise in Cuba`.
149
He obviously kept Lodge`s large policy in
mind: the US needed a naval buildup, the annexation of strategic islands in the
Caribbean, and the construction of an isthmian canal. With regard to Cuba, like
Roosevelt, Mahan argued that, in the cluster oI island Iortresses oI the
Caribbean is one of the greatest of the nerve centres of the whole body of
European civilisation; and it is to be regretted that so serious a portion of them
now is in hands which not only never have given, but to all appearances never
can give, the development which is required by the general interest`.
150
He told
Mahan that, although Secretary Long was only lukewarm about building up our
Navy, at any rate as regards battleships`, Roosevelt was seriously moving
toward pressing our ideas into eIIect`.
151
Roosevelt publicly elaborated his policy during a speech at the Naval
War College in New Port on 2 June 1897:
All the great master races have been fighting races, and the minute that a
race loses the hard fighting virtues, then, no matter what else it may
retain, no matter how skilled in commerce and finance, in science or art,
it has lost its proud right to stand as the equal of the best. Cowardice in a
race, as in an individual, is the unpardonable sin, and a willful failure to
prepare for danger may in its effects be as bad as cowardice. The timid
man who cannot fight, and the selfish, short-sighted, or foolish man who

148
Roosevelt to Mahan, 3 May 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 607.
149
Roosevelt to McKinley, 26 April 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 602.
150
Quoted in Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 235.
151
Roosevelt to Mahan, 17 May 1897, and Roosevelt to Mahan, 9 June 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 611,
p. 622.
62
will not take the steps that will enable him to fight, stand on almost the
same plane.
152

There were, he continued emotionally, higher things in this liIe than the soIt
and easy enjoyment of material comfort. It is through strife, or the readiness for
strife, that a nation must win greatness. We ask for a great navy, partly because
we feel that no national life is worth having if the nation is not willing, when the
need shall arise, to stake everything on the supreme arbitrament of war, and to
pour out its blood, its treasure, and its tears like water, rather than submit to the
loss of honour and renown`.
153
To achieve these goals, the US needed to build
up its navy. His published speech, which repeated the word war` sixty-two
times, strengthened American support for expansionism.
In Secretary Long`s absence, Roosevelt was in charge and ran the Navy
independently, a state oI aIIairs he evidently enjoyed: The Secretary is away,
and I am having immense Iun running the Navy`.
154
He busily lobbied both the
White House and Congress for a large navy and prepared war plans. Although
Roosevelt was aIraid that, as he wrote to Lodge, it would be diIIicult Ior us to
get them to go on with the building up of the Navy, and if they stop I fear they
will never begin again`, he remained optimistic about the McKinley
administration, which was opening, unlike every other administration oI the
last twenty years, with the prospects steadily brightening for its continuance
during a second term`.
155

Roosevelt personally convinced McKinley about his plan by showing
exactly where all our ships are` and sketching in outline what. ought to be
done if things looked menacing about Spain, urging the necessity of taking an
immediate and prompt initiative if we wished to avoid the chance of some

152
Theodore Roosevelt addressed the Naval War College in Newport, Rhodes Island, on 2 June 1897.
Quoted in his An American Mind: A Selection from His Writings, ed. Mario Di Nunzio (London:
Penguin Books, 1994), pp. 173-9.
153
Quoted in Roosevelt, An American Mind, pp. 173-9.
154
Roosevelt to Bellamy Storer, 19 August 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 655.
155
Roosevelt to Lodge, 3 August 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, pp. 637-8.
63
serious trouble`. He proposed dispatching the main Ileet to Cuba within Iorty-
eight hours oI the declaration oI war, harassing the coast oI Spain with Iour
big, Iast, heavily armed cruisers`, sending an expeditionary force into Cuba, and
also blockading, and if possible taking Manila. However, he went on, if the US
hesitated and let the Spanish take the initiative, they could give us great
temporary annoyance by sending a squadron oII our coast` and there would be
plenty of German and English, and possible French, officers instructing them
how to lay mines and use torpedoes Ior the deIense oI the Cuban ports`.
156
In
addition to his war plans, Roosevelt also installed Commodore George Dewey
as a commander of the Asiatic Squadron, who would later play a significant role
in the battle Ior Manila. He strongly admitted that, war will have to, or at least
ought to, come sooner or later; and I think we should prepare for it well in
advance. I should have the Asiatic squadron in shape to move on Manila at
once`.
157

Roosevelt gradually won Secretary Long`s commitment Ior the extension
of the navy. As he wrote to Cecil Spring-Rice, Long was a perIect dear` whose
views oI Ioreign policy would entirely meet your approval`. Roosevelt wrote to
Long arguing Ior a deIensive naval capability, stating that a great navy does not
make for war, but for peace. It is the cheapest kind of insurance. No coast
fortifications can really protect our coasts; they can only be protected by a
formidable Iighting navy`. Otherwise, the US might encounter a disaster which
would wrap and stunt our whole national life, for the moral effect would be
inIinitely worse than the material`. He suggested that the Navy should ask
Congress for six new battleships in the Pacific and the Atlantic, six large
cruisers, and seventy-Iive torpedo boats. He ended the letter saying that, iI the
work is interrupted, and new vessels are not begun, we shall soon find it

156
Roosevelt to Lodge, 21 September 1897, Selections, pp. 278-9.
157
Roosevelt to William Wirt Kimball, 19 November 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 717. Lieutenant
William Kimball had developed plans in the Navy Department calling for an assault on the
Philippines as early as 1896. See John Grenville, American Naval Preparations Ior War with Spain,
1896-1898`, Journal of American Studies, Vol. 2 (April 1968), pp. 33-47.
64
necessary to start all over again`. Long, Iinally, approved it and recommended
an additional battleship and additional torpedo boats.
158
The US had begun to
ready itself before the war of 1898.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Ambassador Hay, strongly persuaded of
the need Ior America`s emergence as a great power, attempted to improve
Anglo-American relations. As General Steward Woodford, new US minister to
Spain, who stopped by London to discuss with Hay, informed McKinley, Hay
believed the Cuban situation provided an opportunity to increase Anglo-
American solidarity, as well as to increase American prestige: The British
people do not yet take any active interest in Cuban affairs. They are only
concerned in seeing that their commercial and business relations are not
disturbed or injured. They probably expect that Cuba will eventually come
under the control of the United States either by a virtual protectorate or by
actual annexation. I do not believe that recognition of Cuban belligerency by the
United States would be followed by any protest or unfriendly action on the part
of England. The British Government probably would do only what it might
deem necessary to protect the commercial and financial interests of British
subjects in Cuba`.
159
Subsequently, Hay`s inIormal conversation with Lord
Salisbury confirmed his understanding of Anglo-American rapprochement. As
he said aIter that discussion, it deepened the impression I already had, that we
need apprehend no interference from England, if it becomes necessary for us to
adopt energetic measures for putting an end to the destruction and slaughter
now going on`.
160
During the Maine incident of 15 February 1898, Hay, together with
Henry Adams, was away on vacation in Egypt, and thus well placed to

158
Roosevelt to Cecil Spring-Rice, 28 April 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 604; Roosevelt to John Long, 30
September 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, pp. 695-6; and Roosevelt to Lodge, 5 November 1987, Selections, p.
294.
159
Quoted in Kenton Clymer, John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat (Ann Arbor: The University of
Michigan Press, 1975), p. 117.
160
Quoted in Clymer, John Hay, p. 118.
65
appreciate the British sympathy for the US. He assured the President that the
British generally Iavoured an American war with Spain: The commonest
phrase (Irom Liberals, Conservatives, and Radicals) is 'We wish you would
take Cuba and Iinish up the work.`
161
He forwarded some journals to the State
Department showing their pro-American support. The Chronicle, for example,
asserted that whatever may have been our diIIerences with the United States,
the heart of our people will go out to the great attempt to be made to liberate an
American colony Irom a cruel yoke`. Spain, it concluded, will Iight alone`.
162
In his famous letter to Lodge, Hay insisted on the special Anglo-American
relations in the Cuban crisis:
I do not know whether you especially value the friendship and sympathy
of this country in the present state of thingsas it is the only European
country whose sympathies are not openly against us. We will not waste
time discussing whether the origin of this feeling is wholly selfish or not.
Its existence is beyond question. I find it wherever I gonot only in the
press, but in private conversation. For the first time in my life I find the
'drawing room sentiment altogether with us. II we wanted itwhich, of
course, we do notwe could have the practical assistance of the British
Navy. The commonest phrase is here:'I wish you would take Cuba at
once. We wouldn`t have stood it this long.
163
Hay later stated emphatically that, the only power cordially Iriendly to us
on this side of the water is England and England is the one power which has
most to dread from our growing power and prosperity. We are her most
formidable rival and the trade balances show a portentous leaning in our favor.
But notwithstanding all this the feeling here is more sympathetic and cordial
than it has ever been`.
164
However, what most concerned Hay was neither
sympathetic Britain nor weak Spain, but Germany. His close friend and then

161
Quoted in O`Toole, The Five of Hearts, p. 295. However, Roosevelt misunderstood Hay`s Iar-
sightedness: I don`t understand how John Hay was willing to be away Irom England at this time`.
Roosevelt to Brooks Adams, 21 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 797.
162
Quoted in Clymer, John Hay, p. 119.
163
Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay, pp. 165-6.
164
Quoted in O`Toole, The Five of Hearts, p. 299.
66
British ambassador to Germany, Cecil Spring-Rice, warned that the jealousy
and animosity felt toward us in Germany is something which can hardly be
exaggerated`. In Spring-Rice`s view, Germany wanted the Philippines, the
Carolines, and Samoathey want to get into our markets and keep us out of
theirs. They have been flirting and intriguing with Spain ever since the war
began and now they are trying to put the Devil into the head of [the Filipino
leader Emilio] Aguinaldo`. This made Hay advise the State Department that,
authority in German matters suggests prompt annexation oI Hawaii beIore war
closes as otherwise Germany might seek to complicate the question with Samoa
or Philippine Islands`.
165
Similarly, Roosevelt was conIident that the English
have genuinely sympathised with` the Americans, whereas Germany is the
Power with which we may very possible have ultimately to come into hostile
contact`.
166
In his letter to Spring-Rice, he noted that, if Germany expanded into
the English-speaking world:
As an Englishman, I should seize the first opportunity to crush the
German Navy and the German commercial marine out of existence, and
take possession of both the German . possessions in South AIrica,
leaving the Boers absolutely isolated. As an American I should advocate
. keeping our Navy at a pitch that will enable us to interIere promptly iI
Germany ventured to touch a Ioot oI American soil. |W|e did not intend
to have the Germans on this continent. and iI Germany intended to
extend her empire here she would have to whip us first.
167
To put it another way, Britain and the US began to intersubjectively
perceive Germany as their common threat. Coupled with Lodge and Roosevelt,
Ambassador Hay, who was one of the internationally and transatlantically
oriented elite, constitutively reinforced the transatlantic Anglo-American

165
Quoted in Clymer, John Hay, p. 124, pp. 126-7.
166
Roosevelt to Henry White, 9 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 791; and Roosevelt to Bowman
Hendry McCalla, 3 August 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 636. For more information on the change in
American perceptions toward Germany, see Clara Schieber, The TransIormation oI American
Sentiment towards Germany, 1870-1914`, Journal of International Relations, Vol. 12: No. 1 (July
1921), pp. 50-74; and Ido Oren, The Subjectivity oI the Democratic Peace`: Changing US
Perceptions oI Imperial Germany`, International Security, Vol. 20: No. 2 (Fall 1995), pp. 147-84.
167
Roosevelt to Cecil Spring-Rice, 13 August 1897, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 645.
67
relationship at the turn of the century before he returned to the US in late
September to serve as Secretary of State.
In Washington, although the prospects for war over Cuba were fading,
after the Maine incident, expansionists were actively in favour of intervention
and war with Spain. On the one hand, Lodge declared in the Senate, I have no
more doubt than that I am now standing in the Senate of the United States that
that ship was blown up by a government mine, fired by, or with connivance of,
Spanish oIIicials`. He warned McKinley in March, II the war in Cuba drags on
through the summer with nothing done, we shall go down in the greatest defeat
ever known`.
168
On the other hand, Roosevelt noted that, this Cuban business
ought to stop. The Maine was sunk by an act of dirty treachery on the part of the
Spaniards I believe; though we shall never find out definitely, and officially it
will go down as an accident`.
169
Roosevelt, again acting Secretary of the Navy,
seized an opportunity when Long was away to do everything in |his| power to
put |the US| in readiness`. Importantly, on 25 February 1898, Lodge called on
Roosevelt at the Navy Department when he was preparing to cable Dewey, a
commander of the Asiatic Squadron who Roosevelt himself chose. The
telegraphic instruction read as Iollows: Order the squadron. Keep Iull oI coal.
In the event of declaration of war with Spain, your duty will be to see that the
Spanish squadron does not leave the Asiatic coast, and then offensive operations
in Philippine Islands.`
170
At the time, Roosevelt took all possible precautions in
case the war was decided.
3.3.2 Why did McKinley decide to go to war with Spain?
In the historiographical literature, there are broadly two different
interpretations of the leadership of McKinley: the anti-McKinley and the pro-

168
Quoted in Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, p. 190.
169
Roosevelt to Benjamin Harrison Diblee, 16 February 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 775.
170
Roosevelt to George Dewey, 25 February 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, pp. 784-5; and Roosevelt, An
American Mind, p. 196.
68
McKinley.
171
The anti-McKinley interpretation has been dominant in American
politics: McKinley, closely tied with antiwar businessmen via his political
advisor and Ohio Senator Mark Hanna, was portrayed as a weak, reluctant,
politically expedient, cowardly and incompetent leader who was driven to war
by emotional public pressure, party political expediency, jingoist press, and
expansionist manipulation.
172
In Linderman`s interpretation, McKinley did not
choose war. he simply slipped over the line between peace and war in moving
as slowly as possible to accommodate demands he could no longer resist`. The
President, in Roosevelt`s Iamous phrase, had no more backbone than a
chocolate clair`.
173
Given McKinley`s weakness, his government was also
strikingly weak. The State Department was criticised as including, a secretary
who knew nothing, a first assistant who said nothing, and a second assistant
who heard nothing`.
174
In this sense, public opinion overwhelmingly dictated
McKinley`s unnecessary war.
On the other hand, the more recent pro-McKinley interpretation has
challenged the former thesis: McKinley has in this view been revitalised as a
strong, adept, purposeful, courageous, and cautious leader, who made the
decisive decision-making instead of party manipulators, expansionist
conspirators, or hostile public opinion.
175
As Morgan puts it, McKinley did not

171
The best review oI McKinley`s leadership is Joseph Fry, William McKinley and the Coming oI
the Spanish-American War: A Study oI the Besmirching and Redemption oI an Historical Image`,
Diplomatic History, Vol. 3: No. 1 (January 1979), pp. 77-97.
172
See, for example, Pratt, Expansionists of 1898; Bemis, A Diplomatic History of the United States;
Millis, The Martial Spirit; Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest; Kennan, American
Diplomacy; Osgood, Ideals and Self-Interest in Americas Foreign Relations; Foster Rhea Dulles,
Americas Rise to World Power, 1898-1954 (New York: Harper& Brothers, 1954); Graebner, The
Year oI Transition`; May, Imperial Democracy; Richard W. Van Alstyne, The Rising American
Empire (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965); Linderman, The Mirror of War.
173
Linderman, The Mirror of War, p. 34; Millis, The Martial Spirit, p. 413.
174
Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 253.
175
See, for example, Offner, An Wanted War; Margaret Leech, In The Days of McKinley (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1959); H. Wayne Morgan, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse:
Syracuse University Press, 1963); LaFeber, The New Empire; Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the
New; Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy; Lewis Gould, The Spanish-
American War and President McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1982); Lewis Gould,
69
surrender to public opinion. He only accepted in the end the implicit aim of his
policy; intervention when peaceIul pressure Iailed`. Beisner similarly extolled
McKinley`s ability, arguing that he decided to go to war because he wanted
what only war could bringan end to the Cuban rebellion, which outraged his
humanitarian impulses, prolonged instability in the economy, destroyed
American investments and trade with Cuba, created a dangerous picture of an
America unable to master the affairs of the Caribbean, threatened to arouse
uncontrollable outburst of jingoism, and diverted the attention of US
policymakers Irom historic happenings in China. Neither spineless nor
bellicose, McKinley demanded what seemed to him morally unavoidable and
essential to American interests`.
176
In contrast with the anti-McKinley
interpretation, recent research suggests that letters from private citizens to
McKinley since the Maine incident praised McKinley`s peaceIul diplomacy,
thereby expressing no tense public feelings urging immediate war.
177
McKinley`s decision to declare war in 1898 was a moment oI unprecedented
presidential power` rather than his weak leadership and naivete.
178
Similarly,
many historians have argued that what drove McKinley`s decision was
humanitarianism. According to OIIner, McKinley Irequently reIerred to US
economic interests adversely affected by the Spanish-Cuban war, but he never
saw them as justification for military intervention. It was the terrible human
suffering in Cuba that convinced him that war was justified, and he consistently

The Modern American Presidency (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002); Richard Hamilton,
President McKinley, War and Empire (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2006).
176
Morgan, William McKinley and His America, pp. 373-4; Beisner, From the Old Diplomacy to the
New, p. 114.
177
See Bettye Grable, American Elitist Attitudes and Private Letters InIluence President McKinley`s
Decision to Declare War in 1898`, Proceedings of the First Annual University Research Summit,
Building Research Capacitv Through Collaborations, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical
University, 25-27 March 2009, pp. 51-76.
178
Nick Kapur, William McKinley`s Values and the Origins oI the Spanish-American War: A
Reinterpretation`, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 41: No. 1 (March 2011), pp. 18-38. See also
Lyman Johnson, Presidential Leadership in Foreign AIIairs: McKinley`s Role in the Spanish-
American War`, Boletin Americanista, Vol. 28 (1986), pp. 55-74.
70
attempted to place this issue at the forefront of his policy`.
179
In other words,
the war was a humanitarian intervention.
Undoubtedly, McKinley was structurally constrained by not only
domestic politics but also the international social structure. I argue that his
decision was influenced less by public opinion than by his own judgment and
the ideas of internationally oriented expansionists. As John Hay observed,
McKinley had a strong will, as you know, and. likes to have things his own
way`.
180
This section examines McKinley`s actions prior to declaring war and
his policy options between March and April 1898. Within the cabinet, there
were two fundamental factions: interventionist and diplomatic. Among the
former, Roosevelt represented a minority advocate of immediate action against
Spain and armed intervention. He consistently acknowledged what anti-
expansionists called jingo doctrines`, which steadily preached a vigorous
foreign policy in general and a war with Spain in particular.
181
He argued that,
a year ago |the US| could have ended a war with Spain with very little
difficulty. The delay has steadily been to our disadvantage, but we can still end
it without much difficulty if we act with promptness [and] decision. Of course
the real time to strike was a year and a half ago, when we had most excuse and
could have struck to most advantage`.
182
He later wrote to Lodge saying that the
McKinley administration was very anxious Ior the House resolution`, because
they regard that resolution as requiring immediate intervention, by which they
understand diplomacy to be included, but as not requiring them to use the Army
and Navy at once`.
183
Thus, for Roosevelt the sooner war came, the better.

179
John OIIner, McKinley and the Spanish-American War`, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 34:
No. 1 (March 2004), p. 61.
180
Quoted in Richard Hamilton, McKinley`s Backbone`, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Vol. 36:
No. 3 (September 2006), p. 491.
181
See Roosevelt to William Bigelow, 29 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 803; and Roosevelt to
Alexander Lambert, 1 April 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 808.
182
Roosevelt to Henry White, 9 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 791.
183
Roosevelt to Lodge, 14 April 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 815.
71
In the diplomatic faction, McKinley, Secretary of the Navy Long,
Secretary of State Sherman, and Assistant Secretary of State William Day
continued to seek alternative peaceful means, with war as a last and unwanted
resort. As Roosevelt accurately predicted, the President will not make war, and
will keep out oI it iI he possibly can. iI |the report| says the explosion was due
to outside work, it will be very hard to hold the country; but the President will
undoubtedly try peaceIul means even then, at least at Iirst`. He held that,
coupled with the House Speaker Thomas Reed, McKinley was resolute to have
peace at any price`.
184
Indeed, the president acted conscientiously in order to
make peace before his War Message of 11 April and when there were no longer
any viable alternatives, he picked up intervention as his last resort, which was
enormously influenced by expansionists. In other words, at the end, the policy
option expansionists suggested was decidedly chosen. Before elaborating
Iurther, it is worth recalling Elihu Root`s long letter to Secretary oI the Interior
Cornelius Bliss on 2 April 1898, which summarises McKinley`s diplomatic
strategy. Roosevelt endorsed it and said that it had a profound effect in
heartening the healthy-minded Americans here`
185
:
If we are to have war with Spain, and I assume that we are, the President
should lead and not be pushed. He has deserved and won endless praise at
home and abroad for his judicious and courageous restraint both upon
himself and upon his people. The exhibition of calm and deliberate
judgment and sincere desire for peace in lieu of passion and recklessness
has been worth hundreds of millions to the country in its effect upon the
opinion of the Civilised World. But when it is once certain that
diplomacy has Iailed and that the Government. is about to engage in
war with Spain, the duty of restraint is ended and the duty of leadership
begins. Fruitless attempts to hold back or retard the enormous momentum
of the people bent upon war would result in the destruction of the
President`s power and inIluence, in depriving the country oI its natural

184
Roosevelt to Douglas Robinson, 6 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 789; Roosevelt to Douglas
Robinson, 30 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 805.
185
Roosevelt to Elihu Root, 5 April 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 812.
72
leader, in the destruction of the President`s party, in the elevation oI the
Silver Democracy to power.
186

I deplore war`, Root went on. I agree with the President that it is not his duty
to sacrifice his own people for the benefit of others, but I cannot doubt that if
the American people wish to make war upon Spain because of her acts in Cuba,
if they are willing to make the sacrifices required, they have a moral right to do
so. When we take up their just quarrel we are doing no wrong to Spain and
violating no law divine or international`. Although he preIerred that we should
not do it; I don`t think we are bound to do it; I would prevent it iI I could; I
think the President has been right in trying to prevent it`, iI it is to be done,
then every American ought to be for the war heart and soul, and first and
foremost and without the slightest uncertainty or question should be the
President oI the United States`.
187
For McKinley, war with Spain was not inevitable. Under pressure from
within and without, McKinley, consulting with his advisors, was working
deliberately to find alternatives to war. Between March and April 1898, his
policy options for Cuba included:
(a) The purchase of Cuba;
(b) An armistice;
(c) Immediate revocation of reconcentrado policy;
(d) Arbitration;
(e) Blockade; and
(f) Armed intervention/war.
During March 1898, McKinley introduced purchasing Cuba from Spain
with a fixed sum as his first policy option (option a). The agreement with Spain
would be made through a secret memorandum to satisfy Spanish pride and

186
Quoted in Philip Jessup, Elihu Root, Vol. I (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1938), pp. 196-
7.
187
Quoted in Jessup, Elihu Root, Vol. I, p. 196-7.
73
honour. Moreover, the Maine explosion may be peacefully settled if full
reparation were promptly made. The American minister to Madrid Stewart
WoodIord wrote that the American people would preIer to but rather than
suffer the pains of war, since purchase or war must result in the same thingthe
occupation and ownership oI the island`.
188
Roosevelt was against this option.
As he said cynically, personally, I should hate to see us pay a dollar to Spain as
a reward for having during the past three years revived the policy of Alva and
Torquemada at the expense of the Cubans, and it seems to me that the time has
come Ior us to Iight`.
189
However, after considering any possible cession of
Cuba, the Spanish Queen preferred to abdicate her regency, rather than ceding
any of her colonies. Woodford also feared that the Spanish might regard the
purchase oI Cuba as America`s business deal.
190
This first option was therefore
dropped.
By the end of March, recognising that the Maine report would be held in
Congress very soon, Day, a de facto Secretary of State, confidentially told
Woodford that the investigation report would unanimously conclude that the
Maine was blown up by a submarine mine or an outside explosion. This
definitely affected American-Spanish relations.
191
Day asserted, The
President`s desire is Ior peace. He wants an honourable peace . |which| is
the desired end. |I|I Spain will revoke the reconcentration order and maintain
the people until they can support themselves and offer to the Cubans full self-
government, with reasonable indemnity, the President will gladly assist in its
consummation. If Spain should invite the United States to mediate for peace and
the insurgents would make like request, the President might undertake such
oIIice oI Iriendship`. By the words Iull selI-government, with reasonable
indemnity`, Day later answered WoodIord`s question regarding what the

188
Woodford to the President, 18 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 691.
189
Roosevelt to William Frye, 31 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 806.
190
Woodford to the President, 19 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 693.
191
Day to Woodford, 20 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 692.
74
McKinley administration meant by Cuban independence.
192
McKinley
suggested three importantly diplomatic policy options: (b) an immediate
armistice or truce; (c) an end to reconcentration; and (d) arbitration to be
enIorced by Spain and the Cuban belligerents so as to restore honourable
peace` in Cuba. As Day instructed the American ambassador:
First. Armistice until October 1. Negotiations meantime looking for peace
between Spain and insurgents through friendly offices of President
United States.
Second. Immediate revocation of reconcentrado order so as to permit
people to return to their farms, and the needy to be relieved with
provisions and supplies from United States cooperating with authorities
so as to aIIord Iull relieI.
Third. If terms of peace not satisfactorily settled by October 1, President
of the United States to be final arbiter between Spain and insurgents.
If Spain agrees, President will use friendly offices to get insurgents to
accept plan.
193
In other words, the McKinley administration deliberately proposed an
immediate ceasefire between Spain and the Cuban belligerents while, at the
same time, ending the brutal reconcentrado policy. If there were no peace or
satisIactory agreements by 1 October, the US would act as a Iinal arbiter` in the
dispute. McKinley gave Spain an ultimatum of 48 hours to respond
satisfactorily to his proposals. If Spain rejected his offer, he would then turn the
Cuban issue over to Congress.
In response, the Spanish government said that it was ready to arbitrate the
Maine incident and close the concentration camps and furnished employment in
Cuba, thereby accepting American economic assistance. On armistice, Spain
would at once grant and enforce an immediate armistice on the condition that,
iI it were asked by the insurgents`, and mentioned nothing about the American

192
Day to Woodford, 26 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 704; and Day to Woodford, 28 March 1898,
FRUS, 1898, p. 713.
193
Day to Woodford, 27 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, pp. 711-2.
75
role as arbitrator.
194
Diplomatically speaking, Spain would refuse to offer an
immediate armistice. Spain`s paciIication oI Cuba` amounted to a degree oI
Cuban autonomy under continuing Spanish sovereignty. Therefore, as
WoodIord asserted, the 'paciIication oI Cuba does not mean immediate or
assured peace. It means. continuation oI this destruction, cruel, and now
needless war`.
195
He reported that, although Spanish public opinion was moving
steadily toward peace, the war spirit prevailed among the aristocrats and
military officials, who remained the controlling factor in Spanish politics.
196
In short, Spain hesitantly accepted America`s option c, but rejected
options b and d. Diplomatic means to peace seemed to have vanished and war
seemed unavoidable. On 3 April, Woodford informed Washington that Spain
proposed to invite the pope to mediate an armistice in Cuba. If such an armistice
had been proclaimed, the Spanish would have asked the US to withdraw its
battleships from Key West as a quid pro quo. Optimistically, the Ambassador
believed that when armistice is once proclaimed hostilities will never be
resumed and that permanent peace will be secured` and asked McKinley Ior
additional time for diplomacy and negotiation.
197
However, at the time,
Woodford, on the one hand, and McKinley and Day, on the other hand, defined
peace` diIIerently. For the latter, the Spanish maniIesto oI the Cuban autonomy
was neither the independence of Cuba nor armistice. Day replied provocatively
that WoodIord was instructed to make an armistice to be oIIered by Spain to
negotiate a permanent peace between Spain and insurgents`, which Spain had
already rejected. An armistice involves an agreement between Spain and
insurgents which must be voluntary on the part of each, and if accepted by them
would make Ior peace. An armistice, to be effective, must be immediately
proIIered and accepted by insurgents`. It proved to be an appeal, he continued,

194
Woodford to the President, 29 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, pp. 718-20.
195
Woodford to Day, 31 March 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 727.
196
Woodford to the President, 1 April 1898, FRUS, 1898, pp. 727-8.
197
Woodford to the President, 3 April 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 732.
76
by the Spanish colonial government in Cuba, which urged the insurgents to lay
down their arms and to join with the autonomy party in building up the new
scheme of home rule. It is simply an invitation to the insurgents to submit, in
which event the autonomy government, likewise suspending hostilities, is
prepared to consider what expansion if any of the decree home-rule scheme is
needed or practicable. |T|his is a very diIIerent thing Irom an oIIered
armistice`.
198

We can conclude that, having attempted but failed to find peaceful
solutions to war (options a-d), President McKinley was left with only the last
resort of armed intervention and war, such as was favoured by the
expansionists. Without any other options, McKinley and his administration
chose a naval blockade and armed intervention (options e and f), even though
Spain at last offered an unconditional armistice.
199
If McKinley wanted peace
at any price`, he could have decided not to go to war, but in Iact he deliberately
decided to deliver a war speech on 11 April. In addition, he strongly believed
that Cuba was not ready for independence. Secretary Long, who shared
McKinley`s views, explained: We can`t recognise independence on the part of
a people who have no government; no capitol; no civil organization; no place to
which a representative oI a Ioreign government could be sent`.
200
I argue that
McKinley`s decision was neither reluctant nor easily manipulated by public
opinion; rather, the international and domestic environments structurally shaped
him, and Ior that reason opted positively Ior war. Although McKinley never
thought oI himselI as an imperialist`, the war with Spain was pulling him
inexorably into the imperialist camp`.
201
Until the war ended, he asserted, we
must keep all we get; when the war is over we must keep what we want`. The

198
Day to Woodford, 3 April 1898, and Day to Woodford, 4 April 1898, FRUS, 1898, pp. 732-3.
199
See Woodford to Day, 9 April 1898, FRUS, 1898, p. 746.
200
Quoted in Thomas, The War Lovers, p. 227.
201
Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 313.
77
McKinley administration, as Lodge wrote Roosevelt, was now Iully committed
to the large policy that we both desire`.
202
3.3.3 American expansionists. Who are we?
203
Roosevelt might have been right to say that, II we can attain our object
peacefully, of course we should try to do so; but we should attain it one way or
the other anyhow`.
204
The US intentionally decided to attain its objective in an
expansionist way. For the US, the Spanish-American-Cuban War was a
splendid little war`, as Hay Iamously propounded, beginning with the highest
motives, carried on with magnificent intelligence and spirit, favoured by that
Iortune which loves the brave`.
205
The war structurally transformed the US into
a great power in the international society and an emerging hegemonic power in
the Western hemisphere. With the acquiescence of Britain and the
disappearance of Spain, the Monroe Doctrine was both de jure and de facto a
rule oI the game in the region: We have risen to be one oI the world`s great
powers`, Lodge proclaimed delightedly.
206
The US had achieved its objectives,
but the acquisition and maintenance of expansionism, in particular the
Philippines, were different stories. Existing literature has abundantly covered
these topics. I argue that 1898 was a pivotal momentan expansionist
momentin American foreign relations not only because it marked the
emergence of American power in the Caribbean and the Pacific, but also
because of a change in American identities and interests in world politics. That
is, American expansionists had intersubjectively shared imperialist and Anglo-
Saxon understandings and thinking with European, especially British, elites.

202
Lewis Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1980), p.
101; and Lodge to Roosevelt, 24 May 1898, Selections, p. 300.
203
I borrow the title from Samuel Huntington, Who Are We? (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).
204
Roosevelt to Henry White, 9 March 1898, Letters, Vol. 1, p. 791.
205
Frank Friedel, The Splendid Little War (New York: Dell, 1958), p. 9.
206
Quoted in Thomas, The War Lovers, p. 369.
78
This section explores the embodiment of transatlantic identities and interests
among American expansionists, which crystallised after the war of 1898.
Soon after the end of the Venezuelan Crisis in December 1895, Britain
and the US gradually developed an alliance of what Lodge and Roosevelt called
the English speaking peoples`, evoking a common interest and identity. This
development socially constituted the Anglophile expansionists in the US, who
had a tendency to sympathise with Britain. From the outset, this alliance aimed
at counterbalancing the growing German power.
207
They cognitively shared the
understanding that Britain and the US would cooperate in the new imperialist
system and perceive Germany as the emerging threat. The dialogues between
Hay, Roosevelt, and Spring-Rice mentioned above represent well the moves
towards it. During and after the Spanish-American-Cuban War, transatlantic
relations rapidly developed with the British support for the American drive for
expansionism.
Lodge and Roosevelt, who had been consistently Anglophobe until 1895,
were reconstituted as Anglophiles. Lodge began to imagine an Anglo-American
hegemony in world politics. He wrote to Hay in early April 1898 in the
following terms:
Now behold[Britain] has expressed her sympathy with us in this
Spanish business & down go the dykes & what I have always predicted
has come to pass. The heart of America goes out to England at this
moment. Race, blood, language, identitv of beliefs & aspirations all
assert themselves. To me the drawing together oI the English speaking
peoples all over the world & of the two great nations seems far more
momentous, more fraught with meaning to the future of mankind than the
freeing of Cuba or the expulsion of Spain from this hemisphere.
208

In his Story of the Revolution, Lodge argued that, The millions who
speak the English tongue in all parts of the earth must surely see now that, once
united in friendship, it can be said, even as Shakespeare said three hundred

207
Thomas, The War Lovers, p. 366.
208
Quoted in Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, p. 198. My Emphasis.
79
years ago: 'Come the three corners oI the world in arms, and we shall shock
them.`
209
After the war, he initially urged the McKinley government to divide
the Philippines between Britain and the US. Lodge presented his plan to Acting
Secretary of State Day:
I see very plainly the enormous difficulties of dealing with the
Philippines. and am by no means anxious to assume the burden oI
possession outside of Luzonif we go as far as thatfor I assume that as
a matter oI course we shall retain Manila. The only practical solution
that occurs to me is that we should take the whole group as an indemnity
for the war, and then cede all the islands except Luzon to England in
exchange for the Bahamas and Jamaica and the Danish Islands, which I
think we should be entitled to ask her to buy and turn over to us. This
would relieve us of the burden of administering that great group in the
East. and would leave us in the Philippines associated with a Iriendly
power with whom we should be in entire accord.
210
Being cautious about German interIerence, Lodge asserted later that, We
want no German neighbours there`. Although Lodge`s plan proved Iruitless and
he changed his argument for the acquisition of the whole Philippines, it can be
seen that Lodge`s identity had signiIicantly transIormed once and Ior all.
Moreover, so had Roosevelt`s. AIter returning to the US a national hero,
Roosevelt told a British Iriend that, I Ieel very strongly that the English-
speaking peoples are now closer together than for a century and a quarter, and
that every effort should be made to keep them close together; 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. I think we are both of us the stronger for what has
happened in the last eight months`.
211
According to Roosevelt and Lodge then,
Anglo-American relations were largely based on a commonality of identity and
interests.

209
Henry Cabot Lodge, Story of the Revolution (New York: Charles Scribner`s Sons, 1898), pp. 568-
71. Quoted in Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy, p. 112.
210
Quoted in Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy, p. 115.
211
Roosevelt to Arthur Hamilton Lee, 25 November 1898, Letters, Vol. 2, p. 890.
80
Like Lodge and Roosevelt, Ambassador-cum-Secretary of State Hay was
a strong Anglophile, consistently invoking the idea of the English-speaking
peoples and admiring imperialism in the British model. Hay was not only a
gentlemanly diplomat but a transatlantic coordinator of what became known as
the special relationship. He personally developed friendships with the British,
including Chamberlain, Balfour, and Spring-Rice, and talked oI a partnership
in beneIicence`, in which the US and Britain are bound by a tie which we did
not Iorge and which we cannot break`.
212
Although Hay had sympathy with the
Cubans, he, like McKinley, had taken a cautious attitude toward war and
expansionism before 1898. As Kenton Clymer has shrewdly observed: II Hay
had been a reluctant imperialist as late as early 1898, he was soon converted to
the expansionist gospel`.
213
After the war, Hay as the new Secretary of State favoured the annexation
of the Philippines, though he prudently did not pronounce this until McKinley
had finally decided on the matter. Greatly influenced by Spring-Rice, Hay
believed that the Filipinos were incapable of self-government, and feared that
Germany would scramble to take them over. Indeed, he had negatively
portrayed the Filipino leader Aguinaldo as a German puppet`. Similarly,
McKinley told a group of clergymen in October 1898 that returning the
Philippines to Spain would be cowardly and dishonourable`; giving them to
France or Germany would be bad business and discreditable`; and granting
them independence would generate anarchy and misrule` because the Filipinos
were unIit Ior selI-government`. In such a prognosis then, there were no
alternatives except to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift
them and civilise and Christianise them`.
214
Hay suggested further that the
Philippines were a key stepping stone to the China market. The acquisition of
the islands was, in Hay`s words, due to its abilities to send our troops and ships

212
Quoted in Campbell, Anglo-American Understanding, p. 125.
213
Clymer, John Hay, p. 141.
214
Quoted in May, Imperial Democracy, pp. 252-3.
81
in defense of our ministers, our missionaries, our consuls, and our merchants in
China, instead of being compelled to leave our citizens to the casual protection
oI other powers`. The US conclusively chose to acquire the Philippines in 1899.
As Lodge claimed earlier, the administration is grasping the whole [large]
policy at last`.
215

3.4 Summary
From the American perspective, that the Spanish-American-Cuban War
in 1898 was a splendid little war was made possible largely due to the non-
interference of the European powers in consequence of British refusal to help
Spain. The international structure of the time provided a strategic opportunity
for the rise of American power in the Western hemisphere and in world politics
at the turn oI the century, which was subsequently called the American
Century`. This chapter has Iocused on the internationally oriented expansionists,
with particular reference to three apostles of American expansionismLodge,
Roosevelt, and Haywho shared the intersubjective understandings and
expectations with the British imperialists. Fundamentally, these were
transatlantic elites, which gradually fostered a special relationship between the
two English-speaking states. The next, and concluding, chapter examines the
major developments and trends of these relationships after 1898. These
expansionists significantly influenced the policy decision-making of the
McKinley administration. Although the President had laid out his policy
options, the final outcome was in the hands of these American expansionists.
McKinley implicitly became part of their discourses and agendas. In short,
during the late 1890s, the global structure socially constituted the agents while
the agents made a final decision, which in turn shaped the international society
and the emergence of the new world power.

215
Clymer, John Hay, pp. 133-4, 142; Lodge to Roosevelt, 24 May 1898, Selections, p. 299.
82
Chapter 4
Conclusion
No war ever transIormed us quite as the war with Spain transIormed us. The
nation has stepped Iorth into the open arena oI the world`.
Woodrow Wilson, the then president of Princeton University
216
It was expansion which made us |the US| a great power`.
Theodore Roosevelt
217
The interests oI civilisation are bound up in the direction the relations of
England and America are to take in the next Iew months |and years|`.
John Hay
218

Americans remembered 1898 as something done Ior Cubans; Cubans
remembered 1898 as something done to them`, writes historian Louis Perez. In
January 1959, when he led a rebel army into Santiago, Fidel Castro proclaimed
that, This time the revolution will not be thwarted! This time, Iortunately Ior
Cuba, the revolution will be consummated. It will not be like the war of 1895
[1898?], when the Americans arrived and made themselves masters of the
country; then intervened at the last minute and later did not even allow Calixto
Garcia, who had been Iighting Ior thirty years, to enter Santiago`.
219
The
memory of 1898 remains alive in Cuba. For the Cubans, the Spanish-American-
Cuban War can be narrated differently. This book, on the other hand, focuses
only on the narrative of American expansionists. It does not tell other possible

216
Quoted in George Herring, From Colony to Superpower (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
p. 335.
217
Quoted in Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, p. 223.
218
Quoted in A.L.P. Dennis, John Hay`, in The American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy,
ed. Samuel Flagg Bemis (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929), p. 122.
219
Louis Perez, Jr., War of 1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998), pp. 125-7.
Quoted in Thomas, The War Lovers, p. 395.
83
stories, such as those of anti-expansionists, of Cubans, of Philippines, of Puerto
Ricans, and so on.
220
The book has argued that the international social structure matters. And it
matters in the sense that structure, being defined as the social relationships of
power, not merely affects and restrains but socially and culturally constructs the
identities and interests of agentsthat is, what is here meant by the
internationalisation of the state and agents. It mainly illuminates the emergence
of the internationalised and transatlantic elitesin particular, the American
expansionistsand their discursive ideas, perceptions, and preferences. As
internationally oriented agents, expansionists decisively spoke and acted in
favour of American hegemonic expansionism.
The co-constitution of structure and agency, in particular the process of
internationalisation, helps us to explain and understand the structural
transformation of US foreign policy at the end of the nineteenth century. As a
pivotal moment, the year 1898 was a rupture in US foreign policy: The US
emerged as a new world power, one that pursued a more assertive foreign policy
abroad in general and in the Western hemisphere in particular. Despite a
splendid little war` with Spain, the US peaceIully arose without any power
balancing Irom European states. This was largely because oI Britain`s declining
power and decisive appeasement of the US after the end of the Venezuelan
Crisis of 1895. The emergence of an Anglo-American special relationship was
fundamentally based on shared intersubjective understandings, particularly the
common identity and interests of the transatlantic elites of the two English-
speaking states. This is what McKinley recognised when he commented on the
remarkable enthusiasm all over the country at any reference to the Union Jack
and the Stars and Stripes Ilying together` in world politics.
221
This

220
For this kind oI interpretation, see Paterson, United States Intervention in Cuba, 1898:
Interpretations of the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War`, pp. 341-61. In this approach, I am
inIluenced by Weldes, Constructing National Interests`, pp. 275-318.
221
Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, p. 322.
84
rapprochement significantly led to many positive concessions to the US over the
isthmian canal, the Alaska boundary dispute between Canada and the US, seal
fishing, and so on. This also took the British out of a strategically untenable
position in the Western hemisphere, which incrementally turned into America`s
backyard.
Above all, this book attempts to contribute to the literature on IR theories
and foreign policy analysis in general and US foreign policy in particular. First,
it is indirectly written with the aim of addressing the structure-agent
problematique, analysing whether scholars tend to privilege either structure or
agency over the other or the co-constitution between them. Currently,
diplomatic history literature seems to have a particular focus on American
expansionism during the period; however, they are supposedly all agency and
no structure`.
222
By adapting Wendt`s structural idealism, the book is a
structural explanation, intrinsically weighted toward structure. Unlike Wendt, it
has emphatically studied the international society as a social structure and
power relationship, the internationalisation of agents as a structural process of
intersubjective interaction, and the social agents as socially constituted by the
international structure. Despite focusing on the co-constitution mostly from
structure to agency and internationalisation, the book tries to achieve a balance
between the primacy of structure and agency without privileging one over the
other. It is a narrative of American expansionists, who were not a given, but
rather a select group of internationally socially constructed agents. They had
transformative potential and capacity to change social reality. American
expansionism was what expansionists made of it. As stated at the outset, the
book is intended to be a constructivist assertion of the American expansionism
of 1898.

222
See David Patrick Houghton, Reinvigorating the Study oI Foreign Policy Decision Making:
Toward a Constructivist Approach`, Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 3 (2007), pp. 24-45.
85
Second, the research seeks to contribute to the broader debate in IR about
the rise and fall of the great powers in the international society in general and
the peaceful power transition in particular. Despite its historical importance,
America`s hegemonic rise in world politics and its expansionist Ioreign policy
seem to be comparatively little studied. The year 1898 and after was the
expansionist moment in contemporary international history. The book has
argued that the transformations of the international society at the end of the
nineteenth century and in particular the decline of the Pax Britannica made the
transformation of US foreign policy and the concomitant expansionism
possible. It also argues that the peaceful change can occur when the declining
and rising powers are able to agree and share a mutual understanding and
expectation of the new hierarchy of the international order.
223
In this case,
transatlantic tiescommon identities and interests among transatlantic elites
were decisive factors that brought about the absence of a major war, the
emergence oI America`s new world power, and the Anglo-American special
relationship that has been a feature of geopolitics since then.
To conclude, some remarks will be made about how the Anglo-American
special relationship manifested itself after the war of 1898. The new Secretary
oI State John Hay, whom Queen Victoria saluted as the most interesting of all
the Ambassadors I have known`,
224
was undoubtedly an important conductor
who orchestrated transatlantic relations at the turn of the century. Two scenarios
illustrated this development, the first being the Open Door Policy. As early as
March 1898, the British government had confidentially encouraged the US to
adopt the Open Door doctrinethe principle of equal commercial rights for all
great powersin China, by asking whether they could count on the
cooperation of the United States in opposing any such action by Foreign Powers
and whether the United States would be prepared to join with Great Britain in

223
See Kupchan, et al., Power in Transition.
224
Quoted in William Thayer, The Life and Letters of John Hay, Vol. II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1915), p. 181.
86
opposing such measures should the contingency arise`.
225
Preoccupied with the
Cuban crisis, Washington did nothing at that time. After the war of 1898, the
British and American identities and interests increasingly converged. As
Chamberlain put it, with regard to the Iate oI China, the interest oI the United
States in the decision is the same as that oI Great Britain`. The two English-
speaking countries viewed the Chinese market as enormously important Ior
their exports, and they both feared Russian, German, and French encroachments
on it`.
226
In 1899, Hay issued the Open Door Note urging the great powers
involved in China not to discriminate against the commerce of other nations
within their spheres of influence. The following year, the US joined the
European powers and Japan in an eight-nation multilateral military intervention
in China after the Boxer rebellion broke out. In 1900, Hay launched the second
Open Door Note, stating that the US intended to protect the lives and property
of its citizens in China, to commit to lift the siege of Beijing, and to determine
to protect all legitimate interests`. The policy oI the US was to promote
permanent safety and peace to China, preserve Chinese territorial and
administrative entity. and saIeguard Ior the world the principle oI equal and
impartial trade with all parts oI Chinese empire`.
227
Although Kennan dismissed
Hay`s policy as the navete oI idealism and legalism,
228
Hay himself admitted its
inherent weakness: we do not want to rob China ourselves, and our public
opinion will not permit us to interfere, with an army, to prevent others from
robbing her. Besides, we have no army. The talk in the papers about 'our
preeminent moral position giving us the authority to dictate to the world is
mere flap-doodle` He believed that concerted action` with Britain was out oI

225
Kennan, American Diplomacy, pp. 25-6.
226
Quoted in Campbell, The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, pp. 327-8.
227
Quoted in Herring, From Colony to Superpower, p. 333.
228
See Kennan, American Diplomacy, Chapter 2.
87
question`.
229
The common interests in the Pacific helped draw the two
transatlantic states closer together.
The second was the construction of the Panama Canal, which was the
American expansionists` dream.
230
The Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, signed in 1850
and keeping either Britain or the US from acquiring exclusive use of the canal
or asserting dominion over any part of Central America, constrained any
unilateral American canal buildup. Although Secretary of State James Blaine
had formerly failed in his attempt to revise the treaty in 1881, Hay nevertheless
IulIilled Blaine`s dream. This was largely because of the transatlantic special
relationship in effect after the Spanish-American-Cuban War. Hay pushed the
British government to abrogate the treaty. Preoccupied with the Boer War (from
late 1899 to early 1902) and eager for a special relationship with the US, Lord
Salisbury chose to accommodate a rising power by authorising Pauncefote to
amicably negotiate with Hay and only requesting that the new arrangement levy
tolls on the ships of all nations. The first Hay-Pauncefote Treaty was concluded
in early 1900, giving the US the authority to build and operate but not to fortify
a canal, thereby allowing passage to all, in war as well as in peace. The Senate
and even Lodge and Roosevelt vehemently opposed Hay`s treaty.
231
Hay
subsequently renegotiated with the British, who, in a second Hay-Pauncefote

229
Quoted in Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 163; and Campbell, The Transformation of American
Foreign Relations, p. 329. See also Thomas McCormick, China Market: Americas Quest for
Informal Empire, 1893-1901 (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1967); and Michael Hunt, The Making of
a Special Relationship: The United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press,
1983).
230
See, for example, John Grenville, Great Britain and the Isthmian Canal, 1898-1901`, The
American Historical Review, Vol. 61: No. 1 (October 1955), pp. 48-69; Grenville, Lord Salisbury and
Foreign Policy, pp. 370-89; and Clymer, John Hay, pp. 173-89.
231
Lodge wrote to Hay saying that the American people can never be made to understand that iI they
build a canal at their own expense and at vast cost, which they are afterwards to guard and maintain at
their own cost, and keep open and secure for the commerce of the world at equal rates, they can never
be made to understand, I repeat, that the control of such a canal should not be absolutely within their
own power`. Likewise, Roosevelt complained that Hay`s proposal was Iraught with very great
mischieI. II that canal is open to the warships of an enemy, it is menace to us in time of war; it is an
added burden, an additional strategic point to be guarded by our fleet. If fortified by us, it becomes
one of the most potent sources of our possible sea strength. Unless so fortified it strengthens against
us every nation whose Ileet is larger than ours`. Quoted in O`Toole, The Five of Hearts, pp. 314-5.
88
Treaty of November 1901, conceded to the Americans an exclusive right to
build, operate, and IortiIy a canal. As one historian notes, This treaty granted to
the United States everything James G. Blaine had unsuccessfully sought from
Great Britain. Britain`s Iriendly acquiescence in 1901 illustrates how much
the United States` international stature had changed in two decades`.
232
These
examples show the unmistakable emergence of US preeminence in the Western
hemisphere and tell an exceptional story of the peaceful transition between the
declining and rising powers at the turn of the twentieth century, in line with
their shared commonality and understandings. In conclusion, this development
is the result of the international construction of American expansionism that
occurred in 1898.

232
John Dobson, Americas Ascent (De Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1978), p. 154.
Quoted in Zakaria, From Wealth to Power, p. 167.
89
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