Imperial Cruise

I committed to someone that I usually disagree with to give this book a fair shake, and I have. I will edit and complete my review when I've finished several other books that cover specific topics addressed by Bradley in The Imperial Cruise. I'm working on it, Ed.A significant problem with the Imperial Cruise is that Bradley interprets all events he describes as driven by Aryian racism. This walks the same narrow intellectual corridor as Marx's describing all human conflict as class struggle. And is equally as specious.*** Starting on page 23, The Imperial Cruise assumes an homogeneous Aryian race has existed since pre-history and has genetically driven it's people 'Westward' in conquest. This theme is omnipresent in Mr. Bradley's book. To accept Bradley's argument, is to believe that ALL 'Aryians' (read Whites) coming to the New World were driven by bloodthirsty racism. While true in some cases, this is a very grand historical inaccuracy. Did a biological imperative cause the Pilgrims to 'Go West' and 'slaughter and rape' the aboriginal native Americans? Of course not, but Mister Bradley thinks so. Most 'Aryians' who immigrated to North America in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries were fleeing something, not pursuing racial cleansing and global dominance.*** Mister Bradley's definition of Aryian(ism) in The Imperial Cruise is malleable. Initially, Bradley defines Aryian as exclusively Teutonic, he then slips the definition to mean all Whites, and then applies the title to specific individuals, and then back to all Caucasians, and then back again. Repeatedly. Mister Bradley labels Mckinley, T. Roosevelt, Dewey, etc., as Aryians and then applies a broad, racist brush to their intentions and actions. At the same time, Bradley occasionally notes that the actions of those named Aryians were opposed by other people of the same ethnicity thereby changing the definition of Aryian from racial to ideological. And back again throughout the entire book!James Bradley makes no distinction (beyond 16th century England) between any of the European cultures. English, French, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish,etc.,. To Bradley, these very different nationalities and ethnicities are all the same, and all 'Aryian.' Except when Bradley specifies 'Aryian Americans' in his chronicle of perpetual 'White' atrocity. The only consistency in Mr. Bradley's use of the label 'Aryian' is as an inflammatory pejorative.********************** 16 August 2012 **************Ed,After reading several scholarly books addressing many of the subjects mauled by The Imperial Cruise, I can only conclude that James Bradley is an agenda-driven charlatan. Previous reviewers have already exposed enough factual, contextual, and logical errors to discredit The Imperial Cruise as history. A complete critical analysis of The Imperial Cruise would be near book length itself, and I haven't the will for such an endeavor. Bradley does make some interesting points in his book, but his bias makes it hard to appreciate these rare gems amid the deluge of distortion. All that being said, here's my complete review.Nearly all of Bradley's historical analysis' within 'The Cruise' have no reference of any kind. In fact, some of Bradley's few supporting quotes for his personal ideology don't actually support his invective. For example: On page 29, Bradley wrote (unsourced or referenced) "Even when the United States was a young country...many envisioned the day the American Aryian would arrive on the Pacific coast. From there he would leap across the Pacific and fight his way through Asia..."Then, on page 30, Mr. Bradley supports this (unreferenced) assertion of American Ayrian intent with a quote from Senator Thomas Benten that does not agree with his analysis. Senator Benten (from page 30): "...the children of Adam will have COMPLETED the circumambulation of the globe by marching to the West until they ARRIVE AT the Pacific Ocean IN SIGHT OF ...Asia..." Emphasis is mine. Bradley described an American Aryian imperative to conquer North America, and then to cross the Pacific and conquer Asia. Thomas Benten, however, wrote that the American's journey would be completed when the Aryians REACHED the Pacific coast of America, NOT after they had conquered Asia. And Bradley is respected by some as an historian?It gets worse...On page three of The Imperial Cruise, Bradley quotes Theodore Roosevelt: "Our future will be more determined by our position on the Pacific FACING China than by our position on the Atlantic FACING Europe." Again, emphasis is mine. Bradley then interprets this to mean; "Teddy was confident that American power would spread across Asia just as it had on the North American continent." Through murder and subjugation-the same way that Bradley described Aryians as spreading across America!On page 240 of The Imperial Cruise, this same Roosevelt quote reappears but with a different analysis from Bradley. James Bradley-"To make sure that future Americans walk through a wide Open Door in North Asia, Roosevelt would balance the powers just so: 'It is best that [Russia] be left to face Japan so that each may have a moderative action on the other.'"-T. Roosevelt. Roosevelt's Open Door policy was a warning to European powers against colonizing and fragmenting China, and a demand of those powers to not inhibit Chinese trade. Bradley uses the same quote from T. Roosevelt twice in The Imperial Cruise, but applies two completely different interpretations of TR's words! Did Bradley self-edit The Imperial Cruise?The Imperial Cruise is so rife with historical inaccuracies and omissions, and distortions that is difficult to finish, and impossible to trust as honest history. As I said before, other reviewers have pointed up many of Bradley's falsehoods, so I'll cover just a few that may have been missed by my predecessors:*** Page 93- Bradley tells us that the Spanish garrison of Manila surrendered to Thomas Dewey instead of Aguinaldo's besieging 'army' after a perfunctory battle because Dewey was 'white and the Filipinos were not.' Not true. The Spanish commander of Manila feared a slaughter if Aguinaldo's besiegers breached the city. Emilio Aguinaldo didn't command an actual army. Aguinaldo's forces were a mix of Tagalog Ilustrados, Katipunan guerrillas, and bandits whose discipline was at best uneven, and the frustration of a siege had made them even more unpredictable. Ayrian Racism had nothing to do with the Spanish surrender to Dewey's forces. Concern for the safety of everyone within besieged Manila was paramount to the Spanish commander in 1898, not racism.***Page 236- Bradley termed the 1905 battle of Tsushima "...the largest sea battle in world history." This is one of the many absolutely false historical claims in The Imperial Cruise. Perhaps Bradley wasn't familiar with; Salamis (480 BC), Lepanto (1571), Spanish Armada (1588), Trafalgar (1805), or Jutland (1916), but he certainly should have known Leyte Gulf (1944).***Page 259-"Taft made no mention of the American concentration camps as breeding grounds for cholera..." Taft's speech to which Bradley referred was delivered in May of 1905, and the last Philippine concentration camps had been closed since January of 1902. Sanitation and hygiene systems were among the first programs instituted by the American occupiers of the Philippines-precisely to combat the recurring cholera (and other) plagues on Luzon. A rinderpest epidemic in 1900 killed most of the cattle in some provinces, spread desease through the waterways, and drove many Filipinos and some US Army units to the brink of starvation. Again, Bradley paints all evils as springing from the vile American Aryans. Note: Contrary to Bradley's characterization, concentration camps were restricted to a few provinces and had a brief span in the Phillipine War.Atrocities against civilians were committed by BOTH sides in the Phillipine War. The Filipino Insurectos routinely tortured and murdered; prisoners, elected officials and suspected collaborators. In all provinces, Filipino guerillas terrorized entire villages that instituted local self-government. Further, Bradley conflates the Philippine counter-insurgency on Luzon with the US and Filipino suppression of the Moro pirates and lawless fiefdoms on the southern islands. The US Philippine counter-insurgency was multi-faceted and uniquely adapted to the provinces in which the guerrillas operated. The Philippine war is a very complex subject and Bradley's ignorance, and obvious bias invalidates this entire subject in The Imperial Cruise.As a single example of Bradley's faulty interpretation of history:Alfred Thayer Mahan's The Influence of Seapower Upon History was mentioned only once in The Imperial Cruise. Captain Mahan's 1890 book had a far more direct causal connection to late 19th century US imperialism than simple racism. Since before the Civil War, and through the early 20th century, defense of the continental US was paramount to both the US Army and Navy. Per Mahan's theories, forward basing the US Navy throughout the world was seen as a defensive imperative . Projecting the US Navy so far from America required secure supply bases overseas. McKinley's and T. Roosevelt's imperial motivations were far more geopolitical, than racial.Copies of The Influence Of Seapower were on every Japanese vessel that defeated the Russian fleet at Tsushima in 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm was a committed apostle of Mahan's theories and accordingly, constructed the (Europe-destabilizing) German High Seas Fleet. Tsar Nicholas seized all-season Port Arthur in accordance with Mahan's doctrine. The German navy was poised to seize the Philippine archipelago following Commodore Dewey's 1898 victory in Manila Bay. Had the US withdrawn after crushing Spanish resistance in the Philippines, the islands would have become yet another German imperial holding.Ultimately, racism was a factor in US and European/Russian imperialism, but was certainly not (as Bradley contends) the prime motivator. Additionally, author Bradley never distinguished between European Mercantilist imperialism and US non-colonizing imperialism. Note: it was illegal for any US company or citizen to purchase property in the Philippine Islands. Context: when contrasted with European occupation and exploitation of foreign lands, US imperialism was quite benign, and more driven by international politics and trade than simple 'Aryan' racism.

I downloaded the Kindle edition of this book and right away read Chapter 8 on Theodore Roosevelt's flattering and self-interested secret proposal to the Japanese Government of a 'Japanese Monroe Doctrine' for Asia, in essence a private invitation to play the imperialist game which, as Baron Kaneko later lamented in a paper written in 1932, Roosevelt never admitted making or endorsed and took to his grave in 1919, despite promising to Kaneko in a farewell lunch at Sagamore Hill on September 10, 1905 that he would publicly announce it after he left office.Other reviewers have pointed out that there is not much about the cruise undertaken by W.H. Taft and Alice Roosevelt in this book, and I feel it is mainly a convenient device to tell a tale which is really expressed in the sub-title 'A Secret History of Empire and War.' There are in fact two main narrative threads here: a rather gruesome and to many readers upsetting one about American imperialist ambitions and 'westering' colonization of the Pacific (Hawaii) and East Asia (the Philippines), and another to me more interesting one about U.S.-Japan relations. This review will focus on the latter.James Bradley has done an excellent and well-researched job of presenting the history in detail of the exchanges between Kaneko and Roosevelt, though he seems unaware, or at least does not mention, that Kentaro Kaneko (1853-1942) had already met Theodore Roosevelt before 1904 through an introduction arranged by Harvard-educated William Sturgis Bigelow (1850-1926), the Bostonian collector of Japanese art. They first met in 1890 when Roosevelt was Head of the Civil Service Commission and Kaneko was returning to Japan via the U.S. after studying Western parliamentary systems in Europe, and the two Harvard men maintained an occasional correspondence - letters and Christmas greetings - thereafter. (See my translation published recently of Masayoshi Matsumura's  Baron Kaneko and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05): A Study in the Public Diplomacy of Japan  for further details.)The idea of a 'Japanese Monroe Doctrine' influenced the Japanese Government leaders and encouraged them to follow America's example as their 'sensei' (teacher), yet it was surely not proposed for Japan's benefit, but for that of the United States. It made perfect sense at the time for Roosevelt to persuade Japan to keep the European powers (including 'Slavic' Russia) at bay and check their expansion into East Asia, while assuring the 'Open Door' in China for American commerce. And Japan was, of course, warned in clear language to stay away from the Philippines, America's largest colony. (Kaneko responded that Japan had her hands full with Taiwan, acquired in 1895 from China, and had no designs on the Philippines.) As Roosevelt wrote privately to his son in February 1904, Japan was "playing our game" and the Russo-Japanese War was in essence from his viewpoint a war by proxy.It is thus quite ironic that Japan's victory over Russia which was widely celebrated in the U.S. as an underdog's triumph marked the high point in U.S.-Japan relations, and from that time they worsened steadily until World War II, having been generally good in the 50 years from Commodore Perry's arrival to open Japan in 1853. Roosevelt's clever and (for his purposes) useful idea of a 'Japanese Monroe doctrine' - first suggested to the Japanese by U.S. diplomat General Charles Le Gendre (1830-99) in the 1870s according to Bradley - was one lesson too many for the willing pupil Japan. The concept tragically and disastrously morphed over time into the uncontrollable juggernaut of Japanese militarism, beginning with the weak buffer state of Korea being abandoned to its fate by T.R. - one of which he apparently approved - and made a Japanese protectorate in late 1905, and from 1910 a full colony (see Ch. 12, 'Sellout in Seoul'). In effect the inventive mind of the President inadvertently sanctioned the creation of a Frankenstein which, as Mr. Bradley indicates, others had to confront and defeat subsequently. (But the line of causation is too long and thin to blame Roosevelt directly for Pearl Harbor, though I am not convinced the author is actually doing so. Was the Pacific War 1941-45 foreseeable back in 1905? Surely not!)Theodore Roosevelt's publicly proclaimed admiration for Bushido, jujitsu and other aspects of Japanese culture as promoted by Kaneko, not to mention the superb training and remarkable courage of the army and navy, was doubtless in and of itself genuine, but it surely also had the useful result of helping to massage the egos of his Japanese guests, especially the intermediary Baron Kaneko. Interestingly, he wanted the Japanese to win, but not too overwhelmingly, and on August 23, 1905 he wrote confidentially to Kaneko suggesting that Japan should give up any claims to an indemnity in the forthcoming peace conference. When Japan did so and the terms of the Treaty of Portsmouth brokered by Roosevelt were made public there were serious riots by a discontented and disappointed populace in Tokyo (80% of police boxes and two churches destroyed) and throughout Japan. The souring of friendly U.S.-Japan relations surely began at that point. (How many Japanese would have rejoiced at the subsequent award to Roosevelt of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906?)Roosevelt meanwhile stressed Japan's many positive gains to Kaneko (withdrawal of Russian troops from Manchuria, a lease of the Liaodong peninsula, control of the Southern Manchurian railway, Korea and half of Sakhalin), but also probably shrugged his shoulders and blamed the Japanese leaders for raising the expectations of the Japanese people too high in the case of the indemnity. He may have had a point, since - as Sir Ernest Satow observed from Peking - the Japanese army had not captured enemy territory of sufficient importance (e.g. Vladivostok) which was the usual basis for an indemnity. However, Sergei Witte the chief Russian negotiator outwitted Komura Jutaro at Portsmouth by asking publicly the hypothetical question "If we let you have the whole of Sakhalin, will you still demand an indemnity?" To this Komura replied that Japan would under no circumstances give up the indemnity, which made him seem intransigent in the eyes of the American media. (Thus for Japan, military victory was followed by diplomatic defeat as ten years previously in the Triple Intervention of April 1895 after the Sino-Japanese War, and this only further stoked Japanese resentment and created a time bomb with a long fuse.)By the way, I should have preferred the author to use "Japanese" rather than the abbreviation "Jap", when using his own - or Roosevelt's - words outside quotations, likewise "Theodore" rather than "Teddy" which seems over-familiar for a historian, albeit an amateur one. The author's frequent use of the term "Aryan" also carries unfortunate and inescapable Nazi resonances, but 100 and more years ago ideas of 'Yellow Peril' originating in Europe were dominant and Caucasians generally feared Asian immigration, especially to California. (There is indeed much ugly and open racism in the early part of the book in quotations and cartoons, and also some stomach-turning accounts of massacres and torture in the Philippines. This inevitably will turn off some readers.) However, these are minor stylistic points and the book is generally an excellent and informative read!Ian Ruxton, author of 'The Diaries and Letters of Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843-1929), a Scholar-Diplomat in East Asia'

Your eyes will be opened. Everything about Teddy Roosevelt, Japan, China, and Queen Victoria you have been taught and believed in will be called into question after you read this. And you will get mad that you have been lied to all these years. A must read in today's China issues.

Driven by imperial desires and a abiding belief in racial and cultural superiority, a secret diplomatic mission sent by President Theodore Roosevelt set the stage for a century of misguided wars in asia. Well-written and tightly-paced, this book will force many readers to re-assess reputation of Roosevelt, Taft and an ignorant generation of American leaders who caused great suffering and destruction in the Philippines and Korea.

Really poor history with conclusions proper up with flimsy arguments and lousy sources. If you know the history of this period, it is a good read just because there are people who believe this fantasy.

映画『父親たちの星条旗』の原作者が書いた本。セオドア・ルーズベルト大統領の人となり、ハーバードでの人種論、米国のフィリピン、ハワイ併合の過程、金子堅太郎大活躍など、大変興味深い話が盛りだくさんです。日本の出版社の皆さん、良い翻訳者を見つけて翻訳出版したら絶対売れると思います。いかかでしょう？

An excellent easy read, well researched, exposing a little known part of American history. Probably little known because it's been deliberately kept hidden and certainly not taught in schools. For those wanting to know more about the murky dealings in the Philippines, this is a superb book.

Interesting read gives some perspective to history that has not been that well made public.