In Command
Theodore Roosevelt and the American Military
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
2019 Theodore Roosevelt Association Book Prize
Although Theodore Roosevelt was not a wartime president, he took his role as commander in chief very seriously. In Command explores Roosevelt’s efforts to modernize the American military before, during, and after his presidency (1901–9). Matthew Oyos examines the evolution of Roosevelt’s ideas about military force in the age of industry and explores his drive to promote new institutions of command: technological innovations, militia reform, and international military missions. Oyos places these developments into broader themes of Progressive Era reform, civil-military tensions, and Roosevelt’s ideas of national cultural vitality and civic duty.
In Command focuses on Roosevelt’s career-long commitment to transforming the military institutions of the United States. Roosevelt’s promotion of innovative military technologies, his desire to inject the officer corps with fresh vigor, and his role in building new institutions for command changed the American military landscape. His attempt to modernize the military while struggling with the changing nature of warfare during his time resonates with and provides unique insight into the challenges presented by today’s rapidly changing strategic environment.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Oyos, a Radford University history professor, delivers a convincing portrait of Theodore Roosevelt as a feisty war hero turned chief executive first as New York governor and then as the 26th president. Roosevelt, he argues, was looking for a war to cement his personal and political goals as well as his Victorian notions of military valor. He found one in 1898 in Cuba, when the battleship U.S.S. Maine blew up in the Havana harbor, sparking the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt, who had already served as assistant secretary of the Navy, made his name dispatching the Spanish with bluster at the head of the First U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as the Rough Riders. His enthusiasm for the military cemented his role as a modernizer of U.S. forces, and Oyos displays an impressive command of the details of Roosevelt's zeal and curiosity, especially when it came to naval affairs, updating the armament, improving military administration with revolutionary ideas (such as promoting officers based on merit rather than connections), and new types of training designed to bring the American Armed Forces up to the standard of European armies. Oyos also takes stock of Roosevelt's missteps, including his disgraceful treatment of African-American soldiers after the 1906 Brownsville, Tex., riot. Roosevelt buffs and hardcore fans of 20th-century military history will sink their teeth into this.
