America's Emergence as a World Power: The Myth and the Verity
Thomas A. Bailey
Pacific Historical Review
Every American Schoolboy knows-or would know if he bothered to read his textbook, that the United States did not become a world power until 1898.Commodore Dewey, according to the traditional tale, staged our memorable coming out party at ManilaBay on May Day of that year.At the risk of arousing the United Spanish War Veterans, I venture to take issue with this melodramatic interpretation and to suggest America became a world power 122 years earlier, that the day of its official birth, July 2-not July 4-1776.
I have collected the titles or subtitles of more than a dozen books that associate America's so-called spectacular eruption with the era of the Spanish-American War.This formidable phalanx of error does not include the scores of chapter titles or subtitles or magazine articles that reaffirm the May Day myth.I shall not name names, lest I redden the faces of certain scholars present, while magnifying my own sin.The embarrassing truth is that for eighteen years I further misled the youth of this land with a chapter title, which I have since then unobtrusively corrected.
I cannot exculpate myself completely by pleading that at a tender age I was misled by my elders and betters, or that I later erred in distinguished company.By the time I became a graduate student I should have realized that cataclysmic changes, especially in the power position of a nation, seldom or never occur overnight.I should also have known that the very first obligation of the scholar is to examine critically all basic assumptions-the more basic the more critically.The majority is often wrong, and repetition does not make things so.
The pitfalls of periodization have no doubt contributed richly to our misunderstanding.Watershed dates like 1898 are useful as pedagogical landmarks, and although the careful historian his mental reservation while using them, the rote-minded student is likely to accept them as gospel.
Most misleading is the singular indifference of many scholars to precision in terminology.Unabridged lexicons exist for standardizing the language, and we historians would do well thumb them occasionally.The least unsatisfactory definition of a "world power" that I have uncovered is given by Webster as follows: "A state or organization powerful enough to affect world politics by it's influence or actions."This concept is obviously too broad, and I therefore propose to narrow it to exclude "nuisance value" power, such as that exerted by Serbia in 1914.My rewriting reads: "A nation with sufficient power in being, or capable of being mobilized, to affect world politics positively and over a period of time." The term "great power" as distinguished from the less exalted "World Power," will be considered later.
Did the United States in 1776 measure up to the world-power formula that I have just propounded?The answer in my judgment is an emphatic affirmative.
First of all, what are the components of national power?I have made up a detailed list of about one hundred items, major and minor, tangible and intangible, but I shall not inflict them all on you.Let us examine a few of the more noteworthy with reference to the United States during the era of the American Revolution.
In territory, exceeded all the European states, except Russia, and possibly excelled them all in birth rate.In quality of population, we could boast what was perhaps the most of the European nations, and possibly excelled them all birth rate.In quality of population, we could boast what was perhaps the most literate people in the world, and certainly one of the more ingenious.In moral force we were from the outset probably the most influential power of all, the lodestar of liberals and the mecca of the masses.In state craft and diplomacy we could point pridefully to Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jay, and Jefferson, to name only a corporal's guard of the Founding Fathers.In the military strength we could muster adequate militia for defense, though shunning large professional armies.In the capacity to attract allies we could offer economic concessions and diversionary or additive military strength.In richness of soil, salubrity of climate, abundance of natural resources, and general self-sufficiency we were almost certainly the most blessed of all peoples.
Finally, in merchant shipping we were from the beginning a leader, ranking in the same top bracket with Britain, France, Spain and Holland.In the days of the windjammer and smoothbore cannon an amphibious nation could so easily improvise a navy that a great maritime devastating role in our two wars with Britain, and although we lost about as many ships as we captured, we bloodied our enemy's nose while getting our own bloodied.The menace of more privateers gave Downing Street nightmares during every Anglo-American crisis of the nineteenth century.
The power position of the United States, already formidable, was immensely strengthened by six fortunate circumstances.First, we had between us and Europe the watery vastness of the Atlantic Ocean- Americas greatest liquid asset.Second, we had defense in depth, as the footsore British redcoats learned to their dismay in two frustrating wars.Third, we had the precarious European balance of power, which caused our potential adversaries to fear the dagger thrust of an envious neighbor.Fourth, we had an imbalance of power in the Americas, with the United States enjoying the top-dog position from the outset, and with our weak neighbors dreading us rather than our people dreading them.Fifth, we had Canada under the muzzles of our muskets, as a hostage unwillingly given to us by the British for their good behavior.Finally, we had mountainous surpluses of foodstuffs, cotton, and other raw materials, upon which our most redoubtable diplomatic rivals, notably Britain, developed a dangerous dependence.Every time the British faced up to the prospect of again fighting the Yankees, they had to reckon with the sobering consequences of cutting their own economic throats.All this adds up to the conclusion that from its birth the United States has been incomparably the luckiest of all the great nations-so far.
I have said that the United Colonies became a world power in July, 1776, when the Continental Congress solemnly severed the umbilical cord.I might start even earlier and assert that in broad sense we had become a power before we became a nation.Charles and Mary Beard dated Americas birth as a "world power" from Edmund Burke's masterly speech of 1775 on conciliation-an appeal in which the orator revealed that the resources of the colonies were so boundless as to render them unconquerable.I do not accept this particular date, primarily because Burke's views did not prevail with Parliament, and because his speech neither added or nor subtracted from our power potential.
But America's strength was already considerable by 1775.Her trade, as Burke revealed, was nearly equal to that of England 's with the entire world in 1700.Her manufacturing, despite the frowns of the Mother Country, was prospering; in fact, her iron foundries, though smaller, were more numerous than those of England.Her economic coercive was such as to force Parliament to repeal the detested Stamp Act in 1766.Her nautical biceps were bulging.Benjamin Franklin noted that the total tonnage, gunnage, and manpower of the colonial privateering fleets in the war with France ending in 1748 equaled the entire English navy which had defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588.
In manpower and military strength, the conventional criteria of world power, the homespun colonials were far from contemptible.Thomas Paine, referring in Common Sense (1776) to the veterans of the recent French and Indian War, numbering about 25,000, could state with some exaggeration that we had "the largest body of armed and disciplined men of any power under Heaven."After Lexington, Washington commanded an army of some 20,000 men that trapped the British in Boston and finally ejected them.In the winter of 1775-1776, some seven months before independence, the brash Americans, not content with purely defensive operations against the world's greatest power, launched a two-pronged invasion of Canada which narrowly missed capturing the Fourteenth Colony.
In my view the most satisfying date for emergence is July, 1776, when the United States proclaimed a clean break with Britain.The Founding Fathers themselves believed that they were launching a new world power on the turbulent sea of international politics.The proud preamble of the Declaration of Independence proclaimed an intention "to assume among the Powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them."John Adams, who quarreled in Paris with Foreign Minister Vergennes, informed him in 1780, "The United States of America are a great and powerful people, whatever European statesman may think of them."
But actions speak louder than words.The strength of the upstart colonials was so apparent that France, seeking to redress the world balance of power, undertook to wean them away from their imperial apron strings and embrace them as allies.This move, the French reasoned, would have double-barreled impact.It would not only add to the strength of France but it would subtract correspondingly from that of Britain.The French consequently provided secret aid for about three years, and in 1778 finally came out into the open with twin treaties of alliance and commerce.One of the most striking features of these pacts was that in tone and terminology they implied an agreement between two equal and long-established powers.
The British, unwillingly to lose their most prized overseas possessions, had countered belatedly with an offer of home rule.The two most powerful nations of the world were thus openly bidding for the favor of the robust young republic.The anxiety of both rivals indicates that Americas strength was regarded as sufficient to tip the balance.
But the embattled British, outbid in 1778, turned the tables in 1782.Fighting desperately against a fearsome coalition, they in effect seduced America from a French alliance,a counter-seduction if you will, by offering incredibly generous terms of peace.These concessions were both the measure of Britain's desperation and of America's substantial weight in the world balance of power.
Yet many historians, awed by the magnitude of open French aid, are apt to downgrade the basic strength of the Americans.The truth is that the ex-colonials carried the burden of battle alone for three years-and against two nations.So tough was the colonial nut that the British were forced to seek assistance abroad and in hiring some 30,000 so-called Hessians made what amounted to a military alliance with a second power.American privateers, whitening the seas, established a partial blockade of the British troops, and in 1777, at Saratoga, compelled the surrender of the largest force that Britain had yet yielded to a foreign foe.
I would be the last to discount the French role during the American Revolution, especially secret aid and the naval contribution at Yorktown.But the United States could conceivably have won its independence without open assistance from France.After the signing of the alliance of 1778, a kind of let-Francois-do-it attitude began to prevail, and American enlistments declined in a ratio roughly corresponding to the size of the French expeditionary forces.If we gained from the alliance, so did the French.If they had not calculated that we would be of about as much value to them as they would be to us, they almost certainly would not have struck the perilous bargain.
More than a century later, when the Philippines fell as a gift from Heaven-or was it Heaven?-American imperialists insisted that we had to keep the islands to prove that we were a world power.To this argument the anti-imperialist Carl Schurz replied early in 1899:"Well, we are a world power now, and have been for many years."William Jennings Bryan, in his acceptance speech of 1900, was more specific:"The forcible annexation of the Philippine Islands is not necessary to make the United States a world power.For over ten decades our Nation has been a world power."But both Schurz and Bryan, the one a professional calamity howler and the other a hardy quadrennial, were voices crying in the cornfields.
Of different stature was Professor A. B. Hart of Harvard, who published a challenging article in Harper's Magazine in February, 1899.He cogently argued that the United States had been a world power from 1776 on, and he may have conveyed this notion dimly to Bryan.But the idea apparently wilted in the feverish imperialistic atmosphere of the era, and Professor Hart himself evidently weakened in the faith.In 1907, eight years later, he edited as one of the volumes of the American Nation Series a contribution by Professor John H. Latane, entitled, America as a World Power, 1897-1907.Professor Latane, himself declared cautiously that "the United States has always been a world power in a sense."He then went on to discuss our influence in shaping civil liberties and international law the world over.But Professor Hart is the only spokesman whom I have found, historian or layman, who unreservedly dates our birth as a world power from the declaring of independence.
Try as I may, I cannot escape the unflattering conclusion that we historians are largely responsible for the perpetuation of the ManilaBay hallucination.Certainly the Fourth of July orator never doubted for one moment that we were not only the greatest power of all time from the very beginning, but had twice whipped the next greatest power.How did the trained scholar, the professional custodian of our traditions, get so far off the track?
First of all, we historians have been unduly swayed by the smallness of our army and navy.We tend to judge national power by the size of armed forces in being.Until the present century the United States relied heavily on land militia and sea militia, and although amateurs rarely do as well as professionals, we somehow managed to muddle through with a minimum of disaster.Huge military establishments, contrary to popular fancy, are a source of weakness rather than of strength.They reduce productive employment, burden the taxpayer, and unless assembled for blatantly aggressive purposes, are an almost infallible symptom of insecurity and fear.
The United States was the only first-rate nation that until recent times could afford the luxury of a third-rate army.In 1812 Madison invaded Canada with some 6,000 men: simultaneously Napoleon invaded Russia with some 600,000 men.The erroneous assumption is that France wasone hundred times stronger than the United States.The fact is that we may not have had much o an army but what we had we had here, and Napoleon was powerless to come to grips with us.He was more than one hundred times stronger than we were in Europe, but we were stronger than he was in America.
A two-way provincialism thus continues to curse American historiography.If American historians are too American-centered, many European historians are too Europe-centered.A true perspective lies between these extremes.
Certain historians have also misinterpreted our early isolationism.We did not want to become one of the great powers of Europe, not so much because we were weak as because we thought it prudent to take full advantage of our unique geographical location and our phenomenal fecundity.Lord Castlereagh was quoted as saying that the fortunate Americans won their victories not on the battle field but in the bed chamber.Certainly to play for time, to avoid unnecessary entanglements. To fatten as feeders while the Europeans famished as fighters, all this was statesmanship rather than timidity.
The Monroe Doctrine has further muddied the waters.Some writers have hailed it as a virtual alliance with England, which it emphatically was not, quite the reverse."In 1823 the British and the Americans, both intent on keeping inviolate the newly opened trade of Latin America, navy, yardarm-to-yardarm with the modest American navy, was prepared to thwart possible intervention by the so-called Holy Alliance.The legend has therefore taken root that the Monroe Doctrine was upheld by the British navy throughout the nineteenth century and beyond.We thus have a mental image of the Yankee cringing behind the oaken petticoats of the Mother Country, a posture that hardly suggests world power.
The disillusioning truth is that the British navy upheld the Monroe Doctrine only when the policies of Downing Street and Washington ran parallel, as they definitely did not during much of the nineteenth century.The sacred dictum of Monroe was flouted, or allegedly flouted, a score or so of times before 1904; and the British were involved in many of these infractions, either actively or passively.Beyond a doubt, the Royal Navy could have hamstrung or halted all such encroachments, had it been the protector-in-chief of The Monroe Doctrine.And as far as defending the United States was concerned, during the dozen or so Anglo-American cries between 1823 and 1898, we rightly regarded the British navy as our most formidable single adversary.