The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War by James Bradley

From the Publisher

In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Taft, his gun-toting daughter Alice and a gaggle of congressmen on a mission to Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea. There, they would quietly forge a series of agreements that divided up Asia. At the time, Roosevelt was bully-confident about America's future on the continent. But these secret pacts lit the fuse that would-decades later-result in a number of devastating wars: WWII, the Korean War, the communist revolution in China.
One hundred years later, James Bradley retraces that epic voyage and discovers the remarkable truth about America's vast imperial past-and its world-shaking consequences. Full of fascinating characters and brilliantly told, THE IMPERIAL CRUISE will forever reshape the way we understand U.S. history

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

Mr. Bradley favors broad strokes and may at times be overly eager to connect historical dots, but he also produces graphic, shocking evidence of the attitudes that his book describes…if he brings a reckless passion to The Imperial Cruise, there is at least one extenuating fact behind his thinking. In Flags of Our Fathers he wrote about how his father helped plant the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. In The Imperial Cruise he asks why American servicemen like his father had to be fighting in the Pacific at all.

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.(Nov. 24)

Library Journal

Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers) has written a compelling book on a forgotten diplomatic mission. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt sent Secretary of War William Howard Taft on a cruise to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea, a diplomatic mission that also included Roosevelt's daughter, Alice. The mission was to solidify a secret U.S.-Japanese agreement to allow Japan to expand into Korea and China, with the irrepressible Alice distracting reporters. This agreement, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth, ultimately helped spark not only World War II in the Pacific but the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the Korean War. Bradley describes Taft and Roosevelt as firm believers in the White Man's Burden: since Japan embraced Western culture, Roosevelt wanted it to spread that culture to the rest of Asia. However, their policies backfired because anti-American feelings grew in China, the Philippines, and Korea as America turned its back on these countries, while America and Europe did not check Japanese aggression. Ultimately, Bradley reminds readers in well-cited detail of Roosevelt's often overlooked racist attitudes. Bradley's writing style will appeal to the general reader, with its good mix of letters, newspapers, and sound secondary sources. VERDICT Anyone interested in American history will want to read this book, especially those who want background on the foreign policy of this first sitting President to win the Nobel peace prize. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/09.]—Bryan Craig, MLS, Nellysford, VA

Kirkus Reviews

The story of a forgotten diplomatic excursion inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's bigotry. Bradley (Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, 2003, etc.)-who wrote about his father's experience at Iwo Jima in Flags of Our Fathers (2000)-examines a little-known effort by Roosevelt to manipulate the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War and extend the Monroe Doctrine to Asia by encouraging Japan to act as a proxy for the West. In the summer of 1905, a party that included Secretary of War William Taft and Roosevelt's rebellious daughter Alice set sail on the ocean liner Manchuria to their Pacific destinations of Hawaii, Korea, Japan, China and the Philippines. At the time, the voyage captured the public imagination. However, Taft was charged with an agenda that included maintaining dominance over American territories-the protests of America's Hawaiian and Filipino "wards" notwithstanding-and promoting Roosevelt's dream of an "Open Door" in Asia. Bradley argues that the mission was a result of the president's adherence to a crackpot philosophy of "Aryan" racial superiority. "Like many Americans," he writes, "Roosevelt held dearly to a powerful myth that proclaimed the White Christian as the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder." In Roosevelt's mind, this excused American brutality in subduing Filipino insurgents, and it furthered his public image as a wise Western warrior. However, the president made a major intellectual blunder when he decided the Japanese could be considered "Honorary Aryans," due to "the Japanese eagerness to emulate White Christian ways." This, coupled with his contempt for the Chinese, Filipino and Hawaiian peoples, inspired him to play nation-builder, with disastrousconsequences. Bradley asserts that Taft and Roosevelt violated the Constitution by offering Japan a secret deal, characterized as a "Monroe Doctrine for Asia." Arguably, Japanese pique over America's unwillingness to acknowledge this subterfuge fueled their expansionist dreams and pointed the way toward the Pearl Harbor attack. A rueful, disturbing account of a regrettable period of American imperialism.

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