The Imperial Cruise
A Secret History of Empire and War
-
-
3.8 • 77 Ratings
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. Roosevelt's glamorous twenty-one year old daughter Alice served as mistress of the cruise, which included senators and congressmen. On this trip, Taft concluded secret agreements in Roosevelt's name.
In 2005, a century later, James Bradley traveled in the wake of Roosevelt's mission and discovered what had transpired in Honolulu, Tokyo, Manila, Beijing and Seoul.
In 1905, Roosevelt was bully-confident and made secret agreements that he though would secure America's westward push into the Pacific. Instead, he lit the long fuse on the Asian firecrackers that would singe America's hands for a century.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Theodore Roosevelt steers America onto the shoals of imperialism in this stridently disapproving study of early 20th-century U.S. policy in Asia. Bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley traces a 1905 voyage to Asia by Roosevelt's emissary William Howard Taft, who negotiated a secret agreement in which America and Japan recognized each other's conquests of the Philippines and Korea. (Roosevelt's flamboyant, pistol-packing daughter Alice went along to generate publicity, and Bradley highlights her antics.) Each port of call prompts a case study of American misdeeds: the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines; the takeover of Hawaii by American sugar barons; Roosevelt's betrayal of promises to protect Korea, which "greenlighted" Japanese expansionism and thus makes him responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt's policies and paradoxical embrace of the Japanese as "Honorary Aryans." Bradley's critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced. He doesn't explain how Roosevelt could have evicted the Japanese from Korea, and insinuates that the Japanese imperial project was the brainstorm of American advisers. Ironically, his view of Asian history, like Roosevelt's, denies agency to the Asians themselves. Photos, maps. One-day laydown.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
Bradley, again captures my attention and bombards me with questions about the history of the Pacific War. Only this time, the history goes farther back, past the beginnings of Japanese expansion, and to the colonization of the Philippines, the Conquest of Hawaii and westernization of Feudal Japan. Again providing us with extensive research, Bradley makes us think about our nation's past and how it's actions are both in the wrong in today's eyes, but called for in it's time. Not only does it do that, but it expands our ever-growing knowledge. To history-lovers like myself, this is a gold mine. No other book serves to provide a full history of the US presence in the Pacific and can relate it to both World War II (Bradley's first topic of study) and today. I very much enjoyed this book and I hope you do too. I highly recommend it.
I can't believe I paid for this
I am very upset that I actually paid for this book. I should have borrowed it from the library or from a friend or downloaded it illegally so the author didn't get credit for a sale and get royalties from me.
What a load of garbage this book is. I bought it because I had read Bradley's other books. I feel like he was setting us up with his previous works so he could then write this book with his true feelings.
There aren't any reputable historians who agree with Bradley's version of events. He takes comments and quotes out of context and assigns his own biases to everything he selectively chooses to include in the book.
I'm guessing from the other readers who rated this book 5 stars that this book probably fit very well with their political beliefs and view of America. If you are a sane person who doesn't hate this country, you will not like this book.
The Imperial Cruise
Basically a political diatribe by a writer committed to condemning Roosevelt by judging him under current politically correct standards with no sense at all about the era and mentality of the time. There is actually not much about the cruise but plenty about how malevolent Teddy Roosevelt was.