American Continentalism

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American Continentalism: An Idea of Expansion, 1845-1910Author(s): Charles Vevier

Reviewed work(s):Source: The American Historical Review, Vol. 65, No. 2 (Jan., 1960), pp. 323-335Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1842872 .Accessed: 30/09/2012 19:57

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American Continentalism: An Ideaof Expansion, 1845-1910

C(HARLES VEVIER*

IDEOLOGY is the means by which a nation bridges the gap between itsdomestic achievement and its international aspiration. American continental-ism, as the term is used here, provided just such an order of ideology andnational values. It consisted of two related ideas. First, it regarded theUnited States as possessing identical national and imperial boundaries.These were located within the physical framework of a remarkably coherentgeographic unit of continental extent. Second, it viewed much of NorthAmerica as a stage displaying the evolving drama of a unique political so-ciety, distinct from that of Europe and glowing in the white light of mani-fest destiny.' This attitude sharpened the practice of American foreignpolicy. Encountering the opposition of Europe's powers, it asserted that theUnited States was engaged in a domestic and therefore inevitable policy of

territorial extension across the continent. American diplomacy in the nine-teenth century thus appeared to demonstrate national political and socialworth rather than acknowledge its active involvement in international affairs.Relying on its separation from the Old World, the United States redefinedthe conventional terms of foreign relations by domesticating its foreignpolicy.

But sharp and immediate disengagements in history are rare. ProfessorNorman Graebner has argued persuasively that the acquisition of Oregon

and California-conventionally set within the background of territorial ex-pansion to the west and guaranteed by manifest destiny-was due predomi-nantly to martime influence and executed by a President whose party repre-

* Mr. Vevier presented this essay under its original title Imperial Aspects of AmericanContinentalism at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Washington,D. C., on December 28, 1958. An associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukeethe author's major interest is the history of American foreign policy and his major publicationis The United States and China, i906-19I3 (New Brunswick, N. J., I955).

I Bernard De Voto, The Course of Empire (Boston, I952), xiii and Albert K. Weinberg,

Manifest Destiny (Baltimore, Md., 1935), I-2, 8. For an over-all definition of continentalism,see Charles A. Beard, A Foreign Policy for America (New York, 1940), 12-35. The argumentpresented in this paper is not in support or opposition to Beard as such; in fact, I have deriveda considerable portion of the argument by reversing the order of Beard's term continentalAmericanism, in order to demonstrate that his insulationist outlook is also subject to an expan-sionist interpretation. See Max Lerner, America as a Civilization (New York, I957), 887-88,who raises this issue in a mild way without intending to pursue it further.

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sented the agrarian expansionism f Jefferson.2 n spite of its apparent er-ritorial nsularity, American continentalism was bound to an older doctrinethat had been overshadowed y the record of land acquisition of the I840's.In these years, and in the I850's as well, there were some men who wereaffected by the outlook of American continentalism nd who adapted ortheir own ends the great objective f European xpansion hat dated rom theage of Columbus and the Elizabethans. They sought to deepen commercialcontact with Asia, an ambition hat added a maritime dimension o the era ofterritorial xpansion preceding he Civil War.

Students of American Far Eastern policy have already pointed out therough coincidence f the westward movement across he continent with the

rising activity of American nterest n the Pacific Ocean and trade n China.3By the early 1840's, Hawaii had already hifted into the continental orbit.4Exploration of the Pacific Ocean had been undertaken by the governmentbeginning with the Wilkes expedition in 1838 and concluding with theRinggold voyages o the northern Pacific n I853-I859.5 The Cushing Treatywith China n I844 and the opening of Japan by Perry a decade ater reflectedthe attraction f Far Eastern trade markets o American merchants n theAtlantic seaboard. The gold strike of 1849stimulated ailroad passage acrossthe Isthmus of Panama, encouraged hipping operations etween New Yorkand California,6 nd suggested continuation f this traffic o the Oirient. Thewider commercial possibilities mplied by these forces meshed with an olderAmerican nterest n the Caribbean, articularly n Cuba and the picket ineof West Indian islands that ran down to Latin America. In an age of theclipper ship and the steady reduction of the tariff at the behest of agrarianelements, these developments drew taut the strand of national mercantileexpansionist ambition that seemingly had lain slack while the territoriallines of American continentalism were cast westward across North America.This added tension suggested to some that the United States was linkedto the historic expansionism f Europe westward to Asia, that it was thefulfillment of the long search for a passage o India, and that a great

2 Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific (New York, 1955), 3, 218; Robert G. Cleland,Asiatic Trade and American Occupation of the Pacific Coast, Annual Report, American

Historical Association, 1914 (2 vols., Washington, D. C., I9I6), I, 283, passim.3Eldon Griffin, Clippers and Consuls (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1938), 9-12 and Tyler Dennett,

A4mericans in Eastern Asia (New York, 1922), 175-76, 178.4 Harold Whitman Bradley, Hawaii and the American Penetration of the Northeastern

Pacific I8oo-I845, Pacific Historical Review, XII (Sept. 1943), 286-87.5 Allan B. Cole, The Ringgold-Rodgers-Brooke Expedition to Japan and the North Pacific,

1853-i859, ibid., XVI (May 1947), 152 if.6John Haskell Kemble, The Panama Route to the Pacific Coast, I848-I869, ibid., VII

(Feb. 1938), i if.


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mercantile empire could be developed on the basis of Asian commerce.7Historians have been prone to examine American expansionism n terms

of conflicting mercantile and agrarian nterests.8 They have overlooked he

presence of a unifying view of American world geographical centralismthat was grounded n a geopolitical nterpretation f American continental-ism and its place n the history of Europe's xpansion o Asia. What emergedwas a combination f two deterministic atterns of thought reflected n theoutlook of such men as William Gilpin, Asa Whitney, Matthew FontaineMaury, and Perry McDonough Collins. These men shaped an expectationof commercial mpire as an end in itself as well as a means of developingthe internal continental empire. Today, after the bitter experiences of itspractice n the ig3o's, geopolitics deservedly has an unsavory eputation. Al-though it did not exist in any organized form or established heory beforethe Civil War, it was, nevertheless, conceptual instrument whose economicimplications projected American continentalism onto the world scene andanticipated in some respects its greater use by the expansionists of i898.

William Gilpin, America's first Geopolitician, 9 declared that the unify-ing geographical features of the North American continent, particularly theMississippi Valley, contrasted favorably with Europe and Asia. A summaryof his views in the period 1846-I849 reveals his belief that the physical en-vironment of America promised the growth of an area equal in populationand resources to that of the entire world. A Jeffersonian democrat and adevotee of the writings of Alexander von Humboldt, he believed in the inev-itable westward march of an agrarian civilization to the Pacific Ocean. Healso associated westward expansion with American commerce and whalingenterprise already established there. During the Oregon crisis in I846, Gilpin

advised congressmen,as he

mayhave

suggestedto President James Polk,

7 Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Symbol and Myth (Cambridge,Mass., 950), 3-51. Smith's work has been very helpful n this study.

8 In his book The Idea of National Interest (New York, 1934), 50, Beard states: For thesake of convenience in tracing the application of the national interest conception in the externalrelations of the United States, those relations may be divided into territorial and commercial,although in practice the two are seldom, if ever, divorced. My point here in citing Beardis not to raise the issue of the over-all validity of the approach to the problem that he employed.His is a great work that attempted to lay out a theoretical framework for the study of Americanforeign policy. In this instance, I am more interested in the agreement of belief enforced byideology and the considerations ncluded in it rather than in the differences fostered by economic

interest and their political expression. By italicizing Beard's own qualfications above I havetried to indicate my own use of them in approaching the problem. See also footnote one.9 Bernard De Voto, Geopolitics with the Dew on It, Harper's Magazine, CLXXXVIII

(Mar. 1944), 3I5. De Voto's piece is brilliantly suggestive and should be read in conjunctionwith Smith, Virgin Land, 35-44. See also Maurice 0. Georges, A Suggested Revision of theRole of a Pioneer Political Scientist, Frances Greenburg Armitage Prize Winning Essays:Armitage Competition in Oregon Pioneer History, Reed College (2 vols., Portland, Ore., 1945-46), and James C. Malin, The Grassland of North America (Lawrence, Kan., I947), I77-92.


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that settlers moving into Oregon from the Mississippi Valley, the geo-graphically favored heart of the continent, would make the mouth ofthe Columbia River an outlet for the export of American arm produce o

Asia. Since agriculture sought through commerce an infinite market ofconsumption n the Far East, Oiregon became the maritime wing of theMississippi Valley upon the Pacific, as New England was on the Atlantic. '10A strong bid for Asian trade, therefore, depended on the construction f atranscontinental ailroad rom the Mississippi o the Columbia River thatwould link the agricultural eart of the North American continent with thePacific Ocean. By developing the interior, thereby gaining access to thecoast, the United States might become the center of a new world traffic

pattern. America's intermediate eographical position between Asia andEurope . . invests her with the powers and duties of arbiter between hem,he wrote in i86o. Our continent s at once a barrier which separates heother two, yet fuses and harmonizes heir intercourse n all relations romwhich force is absent. '1

The Pacific railroad, n fact, was closely dentified with the career of AsaWhitney, who had returned from China after a successful career as amerchant and who had campaigned rom i845 onward for the constructionof a railroad rom the upper portion of the Mississippi Valley to Oregon.It was Whitney's project hat dominated or five years the great Americandebate over this vital internal transportation cheme.'2 Unless Oregon wasbound to the rest of the country by a transcontinental ailroad, Whitneywarned, he nation would be forced to engage in a balance-of-power iplo-macy n the European manner, an eventuality hat he thought would destroythe continental homogeneity of America. In presenting his Pacific railwayscheme, he proposed o connect Oregon with the rest of the country, openoriental rade marts to American commerce and agriculture, articularly fthe railroad was tied to a Pacific Ocean shipping ine, and provide an instru-ment for the internal development f the nation-continent hat would serveas the means, and only means, by which the vast wilderness etween civiliza-tion and Oregon can be settled. Thus he exalted the continental potential

10 Gilpin to James Semple, Mar. I7, I846, in Report (Senate Executive Document, 29 Cong.,I sess., V, No. 306), 2I, 44, 23, 30; Speech on the Pacific Railroad, Nov. 5, I849, in Wil-liam Gilpin, The Central Gold Region: The Grain, Pastoral and Gold Regions of North

America (Philadelphia and St. Louis, i86o), 20-21; Gilpin to David R. Atchison, Jan. 23,I846, in Report (Senate Executive D,ocument, 29 Cong., I sess., IV, No. I78), 4.11 De Voto, Geopolitics, I9; Gilpin to Atchison, Jan. 23, I846, Report (Senate Executive

Document, 29 Cong., I sess., IV, No. I78), 6, 7; Gilpin to Semple, Mar. I7, I846, ibid., V,No. 306, 25, 30; Gilpin, Central Gold Region, vi.

12 Margaret L. Brown, Asa Whitney and His Pacific Railroad Publicity Campaign,Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XX (Sept. I933), 209-24; George L. Albright, fijidalExplorations for Pacific Railroads I853-I855 (Berkeley, Calif., I92I), Io-I 8.


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American Continentalismii 327

of producing the most necessary and important products of the earth-bread tuffs and meat, and stressed he value of an international commerceof reciprocity-an exchange of commodities. The railroad, he insisted,

would revolutionize he entire commerce of the world; placing us directlyin the centre of all ..., all must be tributary o us, and, in a moral point ofview, it will be the means of civilizing and Christianizing ll mankind. 13

Matthew Fontaine Maury, hydrographer f the United States Navy andadviser on railroad and international ommercial roblems o southern busi-nessmen and politicians, was also interested n the relationship f the Pacificrailroad ssue to the old dream of the passage o India. '14 But he formu-lated a wider geopolitical conception of the North American continent bylinking it with Latin America as well as with Asia. He agreed hat a Pacificrailroad was needed o develop he continental nterior as a means of raisingland values, encouraging ettlement of the western ands, and providing orthe continental defense of the nation. He, too, shared he conviction of theimportance f the Asian trade and, faithful to the interests of the South, hepressed or the construction f a transcontinental ailroad rom Memphis oMonterey.'5

Maury, however, was influenced by an old geographical-historical deathat river valley civilizations were the most enduring and fruitful forms ofsociety. In his view, the basins of the Mississippi and the Amazon Riverswere united in a vast continental-maritime omplex that depended uponAmerican supremacy of the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, the

American Mediterranean s he called it. Aware of the potential of an ageof steam, he believed hat conventional deas of geographical elationships adto change. Maury urged Americans o think of ocean navigation around he

globe in terms of great circle travel rather than of routes laid out on theMercator projection. This placed his Memphis-Monterey ranscontinentalrailroad project hat was to service he Mississippi Valley close to the great

13 Cole, Ringgold-Rodgers-Brooke, 52; Memorial of Asa Whitney, Feb. 24, 1846 (Sen-ate Executive Document, 29 Cong., I sess., IV, No. I6I), 8-9, I, 6, 2, 5.

14 Cole, Ringgold-Rodgers-Brooke, 153; Smith, Virgin Land, I53-54; Henry F. Graff,Bluejackets with Perry in Japan (New York, 1952), 45; Merle Curti, The Growth of A'mericanThought (New York, 1943), 321, for mention of Maury's religiosity. See R. S. Cotterill, Mem-phis Railroad Convention, 1849, Tennessee Magazine of History, IV (June 1918), 83ff., for an account of the South's view of the Pacific railroad issue. Maury was also elected avice-president of the National Railroad Convention that met in St. Louis before the openingof the Memphis convention. He represented the Board of Directors of the Virginia and TennesseeRailroad. Proceedings of the National Railroad Conventio;n which Assembled in the City ofSt. Louis on the Fifteenth of October, I849 (St. Louis, I850).

15 Maury to John C. Calhoun, Mar. 29, I848, in J. D. B. De Bow, ed., The Industrial Re-sources, etc., of the Southern and Western States... (3 vols., New Orleans, 1852-53), I, 257,259; Maury to T. Butler King, Jan. in, I847, in Steam Communication with China, and theSandwich Islands (House of Representatives Reports of Committees, 30 Cong., I sess., III, No.596), 23 ff.


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circle running from Central America to Shanghai at a point off the coast ofCalifornia. Cut a canal through the Isthmus of Panama that would linkthe Pacific Ocean with the American Mediterranean and the shortened

route to Asia would force European commerce to use a passageway thatMaury insisted should never be under the control of a foreign power since itviolated traditional American policy to allow foreign interference in theWestern Hemisphere. I regard the Pacific railroad and a commercialthoroughfare across the Isthmus as links in the same chain, parts of the greatwhole which ... is to effect a revolution in the course of trade... .Thosetwo works . . . are not only necessary fully to develop the immense resourcesof the Mississippi valley . . . but ... their completion would place the UnitedStates on the summit level of commerce. . . . In effect, Maury extendedthe line of American continental interest south from the Mississippi inorder to command the same degree of geographic centralism that had markedthe ideas of Gilpin and Whitney. The canal, taken in conjunction with thePacific railroad, demonstrated his ambition for the United States to overcomethe barrier that separates us from the markets of six hundred millions ofpeople-three-fourths of the population of the earth. Break it down ... and

this country is placed midway between Europe and Asia;this sea [Gulf of

Mexico and the Caribbean] becomes the centre of the world and the focusof the world's commerce. '

Tlis doctrine of geopolitical centralism was reflected in the activity ofPerry McDonough Collins, whose career had been shaped by the westwardmovement, experience with steamship operations on the Mississippi, and theCalifornia gold rush. Living on the West Coast in the 1850's, he not onlyabsorbed the impact of the nation's new geographical position on the Pacific

but also read about Russia's explorations of the northern Pacific Ocean andits expansion into eastern Siberia. Quickly he fixed upon the river Amoor inEastern Siberia as the destined channel by which American commercialenterprise was to penetrate the obscure depths of Northern Asia. 7

16 Maury to Calhoun, Mar. 29, I848, De Bow, Industrial Resources, 365, 373, 369, 370;Maury to King, Jan. I0, I847, Steam Communication (Report, House of Representatives, 30Cong., i sess., III, No. 596), 20, 23; William L. Herndon and Lardner Gibbon, Explorationof the Valley of the Amazon (Senate Executive Document, 32 Cong., 2 sess., VI, No. 36),190, I9I, 193, testifying to Maury's influence in urging this expedition and in coloring theconclusions regarding the linkage of the Amazon and the Mississippi Valleys; T. Butler King,Jan. I6, I849, Railroad Across the Isthmus of Panama (House of Representatives Reports ofCommittees, 30 Cong., 2 sess., I, No. 26), 2-3, citing Maury on the importance of an isthmianrailroad to link the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean; F. P. Stanton, Railroad to the Pacifc(House of Representatives Reports of Committees, 3I Cong., I sess., III, No. 439), 32, I4, 27.

17 I have drawn upon my article The Collins Overland Line and American Continentalismin the Pacific Historical Review, XXVIII (Aug. I959), 237-53. The quotation is in Perry Mc-Donough Collins, A Voyage Down the Amoor (New York, i86o), I. A valuable contribution


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Supported by President Franklin Pierce and Secretary f State WilliamMarcy, Collins traveled hroughout Siberia n i856 and saw there elementsof the American West. He felt himself to be a pioneer n these wilds in the

shape of a live Yankee, ncountering many of the difficulties hat all west-ern men who have blazed the first trail in a new country know by experi-ence. Russian expansion n this region he interpreted s similar n objectiveand spirit to that of American continental expansion. Russia, he predicted,would move into Manchuria just as the United States had gone intoLouisiana. The Amur River n eastern Siberia he likened o the Mississippi nNorth America. n his mind the spirit of the American rontier had interna-tional and historical significance: he emergence of the United States inNorth America was the first vital step in linking Europe and Asia. Theproblem of a North Western passage to India . . . , which has occupiedthe great minds of Europe for some centuries, has been solved by the con-tinuous and onward march of American civilization to the West . . . thecommerce of the world will find its path across this continent....h18

Collins nspired Western Union's project or the construction f an inter-national overland elegraph ystem through British Columbia, Alaska, and

Siberia n I865 which wasto be linked with Russia's own network to Eu-

rope. Basic to the whole scheme was the anticipation hat the transcontinentaltelegraph ine to the Pacific built by Western Union in i86o-i86i would bein the center of the vast enterprise. Consequently, an one of the company'scirculars, when the extension ine of this company shall be completed hecommerce f the whole of Europe, Asia, and North America, radiating romtheir great commercial enters will be tributary o it. 9

The outlook formulated by these various opinions suggests he existence

of two related American worlds. The first was the nation-continent reatedthrough the interaction of foreign policy and territorial expansion thatresulted in the acquisition of contiguous territory n North America. In

to knowledge of Collins' career and activities has been made by Vilhjalmur Stefansson in hisbook Northwest to Fortune (New York, I958), 243-53.

18 Perry McDonough Collins, Feb. 28, I857, Extract from Notes (House of RepresentativesExecutive Document, 35 Cong., I sess., XII, No. 98), 50; Collins to Marcy, Jan. 3I, I857, ibid.,I6-I7, I9-20; Perry McDonough Collins, Overland Telegraphic via Behring Strait and AcrossAsiatic Russia to Europe, in Western Union, Statement of the Origin, Organizationand Progress of the Russian-ACmerican Western Union Extension, Collins Overland Line(Rochester, N. Y., i866), I64.

L9Western Union, Statement of the Collins Orerland Line, I5. The company also hoped torun extensions from Russia's trunk system to China and Japan. This explains the grandiosevision of telegraphic supremacy in Asia. In addition, Collins began negotiations with LatinAmerican governments to unite their lines with the American trunk system. In this sense, oneshould read Western Hemisphere for North America in the passage quoted in the com-pany's prospectus.


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330 Charles Vevier

turn, it projected he concept of the second American world, the continentaldomain that was fated to extend its influence over the entire world throughthe expansion of commerce and control of international ommunications.

.The relations of both worlds were reciprocal. All this, however, dependedupon realizing the economic mplications f the central position conferredupon the United States through its expansion n North America and thesignificance f this event in the general expansionist istory of the Europeanworld.

By the middle of the i850o's aspects of this informal ystem of geopoliticalthought had made its impression upon public discussion, affecting debatesover internal communication nd transportation as well as foreign policy.26It is true, however, hat the notion of an American empire - ased on theidea of the United States as the great land bridge to Asia had given way tothe growing tension of the sectional debates over federal policy dealing withthe development f the continental nterior.21 Nevertheless, he fund of ideasthat had projected American continentalism nto the world scene were re-stated and maintained by William Henry Seward, an expansionist, wor-shipper of the continental radition established and exemplified earlier byJohn Quincy Adams, and a man whose outlook22 matched he geopoliticaldeterminism xhibited by Gilpin, Whitney, Maury, and Collins.

Ten years before Seward became Secretary of State, he advocated heconstruction f a Pacific railroad and telegraph n the debates over the ad-mission of California o the Union. Americans who understood he benignfuture of the American continent, Seward argued, had to prevent a divi-sion between he North and the South in order o overcome he more por-tentous split between East and West caused by the expansion of the United

States. Centralized political unity, the economic welfare of the continental20 The standard work dealing with this phase is Robert R. Russel, Improvement of Com-

munication with the Pacifi Coast as an Issue in A4merican olitics, z783-1864 (Cedar Rapids,Iowa, I948), I8-I9, who asserts that from the I850's onward the emphasis shifted to discussionof internal affairs and development. Smith, Virgin Land, 282, note 28; James C. Malin, TheNebraska Question: A Ten Year Record, 1844-1855, Nebraska History, XXXV (Mar. 1954),i4, for an interesting discussion of the global perspective of Stephen Douglas; Richard W. VanAlstyne, Anglo-American Relations, 1853-1857, American Historical Review, XLII (Apr.1937), 493 for an incisive critique by John F. Cramptan of American ambition in a letter toLord Clarendon; James G. Swan, The Northwest Coast (New York, 1857), 403, linkingaffairs in China and Russia with the Washington territory, and his article Explorations of the

Amoor River: And Its Importance on the Future Great Inter-Oceanic Trade Across the AmericanContinent, Hunt's Merchant's Magazine, XXXIX (Aug. I858), 176-82.

21 Smith, Virgin Land, 29.22 'Neither politicians nor statesmen control events. They can moderate them and accom-

modate their ambitions to them, but they can do no more. Seward to Charles Francis Adams,Nov. 4, I 862, Papers Relating to Foreign Afairs of the United States (Washington, D. C., I 862),23I; Seward to Thurlow Weed, Apr. 4, 1847, Thurlow Weed Papers, University of Rochester,for a sample of Seward's veneration of John Quincy Adams.


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American Continentalism 33I

empire, and mastery of the seas that bounded the great land mass betweentwo worlds-these were required if the United States was to take effectiveadvantage of its geographical position to direct commerce with Europe and

intercept trade with the Far East. He charged the South with obstructionof the American primacy on the world stage that was promised by its domes-tic development. This nation is a globe, he cried, still accumulating uponaccumulation, not a dissolving sphere. 23 Even the discovery of this conti-nent [North America] and its islands, and the organization of society andgovernment upon them, Seward stated, grand and important as these eventshave been were but conditional, preliminary, and ancillary to the greatgoal of European expansion for four hundred years, the attainment ofthe seat of all civilization-Asia.24 The revolts of I848 and the strain ofmaintaining the crazy balance of power forecast the destruction of Europe,and it fell to the United States to seize the torch and light the way. Becausethe United States was writ large on the sphere of world geography andhistory, it had the obligation to extend by means of its institutions the civil-ization of the world westward ... across the continent of America, acrossthe Pacific to Asia, on through Europe until it reached the other side, theshores of the Atlantic Ocean. 25

This rhetoric was not separated from the realities that Seward encoun-tered as Secretary of State. The continent under American dominion, he re-ported, like every other structure of large proportions, required outwardbuttresses that were strategically favorable to the United States. Thus thepolicy of attempting to buy naval installations in the Caribbean after theCivil War reflected his conviction at the outbreak of the conflict that Span-ish intrusion in the region partially justified the launching of a propaganda

counterattack throughout Latin America as well as war against Spain. InI864, he insisted that commerce and communication in North America werecentralized in the United States and had to be extended as a means of unit-ing domestic and foreign commerce and encouraging the development ofAmerican agricultural, forest, mineral, and marine resources. It wasSeward who wrote the vital provisions of the Burlingame Treaty of i868with China that provided for the importation of Chinese coolies to work onthe transcontinental railroad and western mining undertakings. He also

contributed to the continental basis of the argument used by Senator CharlesSumner, who supported the purchase of Alaska by pointing out that the new

23 The Works of William H. Seward, ed. George E. Baker (5 vols., New York, I853-84),I, 91.

24 Ibid., 247-49.25 Ibid., IV, I24; Cong. Globe, 36 Cong., 2 sess., 25I (Jan. 5, i86I).


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territory rounded off the continental domain and permitted contact with FarEastern markets by the shortest possible sea route from the West Coast. LaterSeward made his meaning more clear to Canadians when he implied that the

Alaskan purchase was a portent of commercial and political forces thatmade permanent political separation of British Columbia from Alaska andthe Washington territory impossible. 26 And, it was Seward's system ofroughhewn continental geopolitics and beliefs cut out of the American grainthat gives depth to the vigor with which he pursued American interests inthe Far East. Much of his ambitious program, however, was not fulfilledbecause, as he said, no new national policy deliberately undertaken uponconsiderations of future advantages ever finds universal favor when first an-nounced. 27 But Alfred Thayer Mahan countered this argument when heremarked in 1902 that all history is the aggressive advance of the futureupon the past, the field of collision being the present. 28

Mahan might well have added, however, that it was his geopolitics as wellas that of Brooks Adams that defined the field of collision. For the seriousdomestic crisis in the United States occurring in the I890's within the contextof a global economy and an international transportation revolution forecasta pessimistic future. Each, in his own way, attempted to swamp it witha conception of the past that he carried with him. Both Mahan's quest for anew mercantilism and Adams' propaganda for a new empire illustrate aretreat into history for a model that might avert disaster. One theme emerged-the extension of the nation's economic power from the line of the WestIndies, Panama, and Hawaii to Asia. Here, the expansionist projection ofthe American continental experience that was developed in the pre-Civil Warperiod acquired some relevance in the outlook of Brooks Adams. Viewing

the expansion of Europe and of the United States as complementary devel-opments, he turned to geopolitics to explain the nature of the problem.29

The Germans and the Russians appeared ready to march to the East.This move would reverse the historical westward trend of the exchanges that

26 Charles C. Tansill, The United States and Santo Domingo, 1798-i863 (Baltimore, Md.,I938), 227; Frederick W. Seward, comp., William Henry Seward: An Autobiography (3 vOls.,New York, I89I), II, 535; Seward to Chandler, May 14, I864, Western Union, Statement ofthe Collins Overland Line, 5I; Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia, 530; James Alton James,The First Scientific Exploration of Russian America and the Purchase of Alaska (Evanston andChicago, I942), 19, 35, 27; for Sumner's argument advocating the purchase, see Charles Sumner,His Complete Works, ed. George F. Hoar (20 vols., Boston, I900), XV, 36 f.; Baker, Seward,V, 574.

27 Seward to Yeaman, Jan. 29, I868, in Seward Papers.28 Alfred Thayer Mahan, Subordination n Historical Treatment, in Naval Administration

and Warfare (Boston, I908), 269.29 I have drawn upon my article Brooks Adams and the Ambivalence of American

Foreign Policy, World Affairs Quarterly, XXX (Apr. 1959), 3-I8.


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formed the basis of world power. Obsessed by the belief that control overAsia and its resources was the issue between the Russo-German loc andwhat he believed to be a weakened England, Adams called for an Anglo-

American rapproachement. his would allow the geographical center ofthe exchanges o cross he Atlantic and aggrandize America. The result?

Probably, Adams suggested, human society would then be absolutelydominated by a vast combination of peoples whose right wing would restupon the British Isles, whose left would overhang the middle province ofChina, whose centre would approach he Pacific, and who encompass heIndian Ocean as though it were a lake, much as the Romans encompassedthe Mediterranean. 30 pecifically, Adams, Mahan, and the imperial expan-sionists who clustered around Theodore Roosevelt urged upon the UnitedStates the large policy of I898, which revived the Caribbean-Panama-Pa-cific Ocean relationship hat had been sketched out in the I840's and I850'sand publicized by Seward.3' But by I909, the outer edges of this grandioseempire were frayed by abrasive realities n Asia. The failure of the opendoor in China, the knowledge that the Philippines could not be defended,the growing tension with Japan over Manchuria-all this was complicatedby the existence of the ideological

Realpolitikf Theodore Roosevelt, who

claimed American manipulative ower over affairs n Asia but who was cau-tious enough to realize that he did not have it. Roosevelt's efusal to carryout completely Adams' program drove Adams back to examine his ownnationalist assumptions n a biography of his grandfather hat he nevercompleted.82

At this point in his quest, the traditional elements of American conti-nentalism received a full statement-geographical eterminism, olitical and

social separation rom Europe, and independent action in foreign affairs.Nevertheless, Adams, like Mahan, continued to interpret the history ofAmerican continentalism s an expression f eighteenth-century ercantilistimperialism. ust as Asia appeared n his own time to be the principal ob-jective that would guarantee urvival hrough expansion, o North Americahad appeared o the European powers. Men believed that he who won

30 Brooks Adams, America's Economic Supremacy (New York, I900), I96, 13, 190, 12, 25.31 Julius Pratt, The Large Policy of I898, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XIX

(Aug. 1932), 233, 229-30, for Albert Shaw's agreement with Bryan on this as well as thestatement by Senator William E. Chandler; Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Interest of America inSea Power (Boston, I897), 260, and The Problem of Asia (Boston, 1900), 7-9, for his re-marks on the preparation or imperialist expansion that had occurred earlier in American historyon the basis on this geographical outlook.

32 Arthur Beringause, Brooks Adams (New York, 1955), 304 f.; Brooks Adams, Unpub-lished Biography of John Quincy Adams in the Massachusetts Historical Society (microfilm copyby courtesy of Mr. Lyman Butterfield and the Massachusetts Historical Society).


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334 Charles Jevzer

America might aspire o that universal mpire which had been an ideal sincethe dawn of civilization. 33 ranklin, Washington, and John Quincy Adamshad understood he need for a consolidated, nified, and expansionist tate

strong enough to establish tself in North America. In I823, the MonroeDoctrine confirmed what the American Revolution had already demon-strated: he leadership f the westward march of the exchanges would passfrom a divided Europe to a unified America. It was the first impressivemanifestation f that momentous social movement which has recently cul-minated n the migration of the centre of the equilibrium of human societyacross the Atlantic. 34 Here the nationalist met the imperialist when theexpansionist rojection f continentalism made clear that America, he prizeof empire n the eighteenth century, had to become an empire n the twen-tieth century.

Contemporary tudents of the United States oreign policy that developedat the turn of the century are confronted with a problem f perspective. romthe standpoint f the expansionist rojection f American continentalism e-vealed in the pre-Civil War era, the imperialism of McKinley and Roose-velt was not a new departure n American history. t was not an aberrationof national behavior which has been loosely defined as the emergence of theUnited States to world power. The geopolitical uggestions of Mahan andBrooks Adams helped American statesmen o install the United States assuch a power. It was also a startling demonstration f the adjustment f thenew ideological ustifications f the i890's to an older nationalistic xpan-sionist base formulated by men of an earlier generation.35 ilpin, Whitney,Maury, and Collins had sensed the meaning of the new technology, ts ef-fect upon geographical elationships, nd the interrelations etween aspects

of the economic ystem at home, and these men were captured by a desire oassume he leadership f an entire Western civilization n order to make alasting impression upon Asia.

Historians who are sensitive o the relationship f foreign and domesticaffairs as well as to the play of ideas upon foreign policy might do wellto reexamine and explore the concept of American continentalism as anideology of overseas expansion. Conventionally employed to explain theseparatist nd isolationist quality of the American outlook on world affairs

33 Adams, Unpublished Biography of John Quincy Adams, I30.34 Ibid., 299.35 julius Pratt, The Ideology of American Expansion, in Essays in Honor of William E.

Dodd, ed. Avery Craven (Chicago, 1935), 347, for a comment that stresses manifest destinyrather than American continentalism as employed in this essay. See also the judgment ofSeward's biographer regarding the continuity of the expansionist impulse in Frederic Bancroft,

Seward's Ideas of Territorial Expansion, North American Review, CLXVII (July i898), 79 if.


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in the nineteenth century, American continentalism also possessed a geo-political character-natively derived n large measure-that was contrary oits own spirit. The only virtue of geopolitics s that it draws attention to

the facts of political geography; ts greatest vice is that it lends itself toalmost mystical judgments of national purpose in international affairs.Seemingly dealing with reality, t becomes a refuge for unclear and unful-filled aspirations. Geographers ong ago learned his bitter esson. Historiansof American oreign policy might profit by investigating urther the activepresence n nineteenth-century merica of this aspect of thought, not asa justification or foreign policy but as an important timulus of nationalistexpansionism.

Documents

American Continentalism