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H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE

David M. Pletcher, _The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American
Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900_ (Columbia, Missouri:
University of Missouri Press, 1998)

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Schoonover Reviewers: John Belohlavek, Jurgen
Buchenau, Paul Dosal, Seth Fein, David Healy, Aissatou-Sy-Wonyu

________________________________________________________________


David Pletcher
Professor Emeritus of History
Indiana University

I have always thought that a round table or panel discussion (essentially
the same thing) should comment on the point of departure (in this case a
scholarly monograph) and then take off on related topics, perhaps at some
distance from the starting point. It appears that the commentators here
represented had different views, for most of the essays in this collection
do not go beyond the limits of a standard book review. Accordingly my
reply to the contributions of these writers will deal mostly with their
negative criticisms of the book and will be largely defensive. After I
have, so to speak, done myself justice, I shall suggest a few lines of
discussion that I thought might be inspired by the various parts of the
book.

I guess the best place to start is my brief reference to the New Left in
my Introduction, since several writers bore down heavily on those three
paragraphs. My purpose was not to vilify a school of historical
interpretation for which I have considerable respect but to locate my own
interpretation of late nineteenth century foreign policies in the
mainstream of historiography-the sort of thing we are always looking for
in the dissertations we direct. I regard William Appleman Williams as the
founder and chief representative of the New Left school and his book
Empire As a Way of Life published near the end of his life, when he was
president of the Organization of American Historians, as the culminating
expression of his historical credo. My remarks on the New Left were
written with Williams, not Walter LaFeber, in mind. I believe I was
justified in this, for historians of the last forty years have
consistently placed Williams at the head of the New Left. Indeed,
Diplomatic History has just published (Spring 2001) yet another round
table discussion of Williams' current influence on history-writing. It is
interesting to observe that although this round table. and other
appreciations of Williams give lavish attention to his earlier writings,
there is almost no mention of Empire As A Way of Life (Anyone reading this
collection of exaggerations and snap judgments will understand the
omission.)

I am especially surprised at the criticisms by Paul Dosal, Jurgen
Buchenau, and Lester Langley (who reviewed my book in Diplomatic History,
Summer 2000) for what they call my antagonism to Walter LaFeber, whom I
mentioned briefly in a footnote (no. 4, p. 3), On the basis of this, Dosal
even absurdly calls me a closet imperialist. My relations with LaFeber, a
more cautious historian than Williams, have always been friendly and
respectful, and he admired my earlier monograph, The Awkward Years:
American Foreign Relations under Garfield and Arthur, enough to request a
copy of my manuscript while he was writing The New Empire (see his
acknowledgment). I found his book stimulating and used it for years in my
undergraduate and graduate teaching at Indiana, as many others of my
generation seem to have done. When I started work on The Diplomacy of
Trade and Investment I expected to continue much of the same
interpretation as in The Awkward Years (i.e., that the late 19th century
was largely a preparation for the post-1900 period) which would have
agreed with most of The New Empire. However, as I sifted through the
sources, I found that they did not conform with this view, so I gradually
changed it to the interpretation set forth in the Introduction to The
Diplomacy of Trade and Investment. Nevertheless, I continued to cite The
New Empire in over a dozen footnotes, mostly in my chapter on the 1890s. I
also made use of Hans-Ulrich Wehler's Der Aufstieg des amerikanischen
Imperialismus, which largely agrees with LaFeber's interpretation. I have
also cited LaFeber's later book, The Search for American Opportunity
although I have found it less useful.

Leaving my brief treatment of the New Left and the lengthy criticism of
that treatment by several contributors, let me turn to more substantial
comments on my book. I welcome the group's practically unanimous
appreciation of my depth of research and the variety of the sources I
used. But I was a little distressed by the statements by Langley, Seth
Fein, and Buchenau that these were not enough since I used too few
secondary sources beyond 1980-a serious criticism, if accurate. I counted
the secondary sources in my bibliography beyond 1980 and found 42-in other
words, about two a year. That seems to me an adequate number, especially
since the three critics did not mention many specific omissions. Those
they did mention were nearly all published in the 1990s, several from 1996
to 1999, when the book was already in the hands of the publisher. (Its
publication date was 1998.) Langley implied that I should have used the
books in his edited series "The United States and the Americas." I was
already familiar with the series, having prepared a detailed publisher's
report while it was being considered. I used the volume on Chile by
William F. Sater but found the one on Mexico by W. Dirk Raat inadequate on
the late 19th century, so I did not use it. Among the other monographs
mentioned I found several that I would have used if I had encountered them
in time-what author could not say this about a completed work? But I
cannot say that they would have required much if any change in my
interpretation.

Another substantial comment by my reviewers is most forcefully stated by
Buchenau and hinted at by Langley, Fein, and perhaps others. This is what
they call my failure to appreciate adequately the "pull" factor working on
Latin American trade with the U.S. or, put more generally, the Latin
American reaction to U.S. influence. According to this criticism, I did
not sufficiently use Latin American archives or Latin American secondary
accounts. This criticism would have more substance than the others but for
one thing: I never intended the book to be a study of Latin American
institutions or culture. As the title and Introduction indicate, this is
an examination of American trade and investments in the hemisphere-how
they grew, how the U.S. government helped or hindered them, and how they
fared in foreign settings. (I consistently included Canada on an equal
basis, although most contributors, being Latin American specialists,
passed quickly over the Canadian chapters.) The subject of the book is not
Latin American history, geography, agriculture, mining, government
patronage, popular culture, etc., etc., and I included only as much of
these matters as I thought necessary to make my points about American
trade and investments. If my critics had cited Latin American details or
accounts contradicting my account of U.S. trade and investments, their
objections might carry more weight.

Aissatou Sy-Wonyu, Fein, and John Belohlavek commented favorably on my
treatment of Mexico, especially in Chapter 3. I am surprised that others
who felt that I undervalued Latin American materials overlooked my
detailed treatment of U.S.-Mexican relations during the critical years
1865-1880, when trade and investment replaced annexation as the major
theme in these relations. In that section of the book I used many Mexican
materials, both archival and secondary, including the papers of Matías
Romero, a key figure in that replacement. Fein wondered why Mexico
virtually disappeared from my narrative after 1880. I did not drop Mexico
entirely from consideration-for example that country figures in the
discussion of reciprocity during the 1890s in Chapter 9. In planning my
concluding chapter, covering some events of 1900-1914, I decided not to
introduce the Mexican revolution of 1910-1920 because I would have had to
drop it halfway or become involved with European politics, World War I,
and an entirely new period. My decision was not an ideal arrangement but
one fairly common in history-writing. Some prominent developments in
U.S.-Mexican relations after 1890 point toward the revolutionary years, so
I did not emphasize or even include them.

My attention to Latin American subjects and materials was sometimes
determined in part by the fact that U.S. relations with nations of that
area during the 19th century were spotty, except for Mexico, the isthmian
transit question, and Cuba. That is, the history of other hemispheric
relations lacks broad questions extending over decades and making possible
a sustained narrative. The reason for that, of course, is mostly a matter
of geography and ease of communication. In the case of Cuba, two early
overarching developments permitted a sustained narrative, 1865-1890. These
were the expansion of U.S. trade and investment and the vigorous but
unsuccessful Cuban efforts at revolution. The former was more germane to
the subject of my book, so I gave it priority, although I think I did not
slight the Ten Years War and Cuban-Spanish relations.

Coming to the second Cuban revolution, 1895-1898, and the Spanish-American
War, I continued to follow the policy of inclusion and arrangement I have
already laid down-that of emphasizing subjects contributing to a history
of American trade and investment in the hemisphere. I have no objection to
calling the conflict "the Spanish-Cuban-American War", but the longer term
is unwieldy, and I chose to follow the more common practice. Dosal and
Langley faulted my treatment of the causes of U.S. intervention in Cuba,
but Dosal's criticisms was so much involved in his defense of LaFeber that
I had difficulty following him. Both of them would explain U.S.
intervention with Luis Perez's simplistic statement that the U.S. acted to
prevent Cuban independence rather than to establish it. Certainly many
Americans felt this way, including an undetermined number in office, but
nothing I have seen supports this line of thought for McKinley or his
administration. Without clear evidence on this point, it is impossible to
make positive judgments about motives and opinions. The causation of the
war is and probably will remain an unanswered question. My account was
intended to set forth the business point of view, and I did this at
considerable length (pp. 340-354) I do not see that Dosal or Langley-or
Pérez, for that matter-had anything pertinent to say on that subject. I
did not set out to explain the coming of the war, only the part played by
Americans and I felt no obligation either to attack or to defend American
intervention. Thus I cannot understand how Sy-Wonyu arrived at the
conclusion that "the US was imperial, hegemonic in nature and by
necessity," or how Dosal figured out that I had given my readers "an
extensive, ill-disguised, and unpersuasive apology for American expansion
and intervention."

I have tried to indicate what I consider the principal weaknesses of the
seven reviews of my book (including Langley's earlier work), but I should
thank several of the contributors for their more balanced judgments. By
his reader's report David Healy helped to get the book published in the
first place; no author could find fault with his appreciative review. John
Belohlavek provided the most objective summary of the book's contents, and
although he offered only a few value judgments, his fair précis went far
to offset some exaggerations of the others. Seth Fein penetrated more
deeply than most others into the book's meaning and significance, either
to approve or to criticize. Although not offering comments of his own, Tom
Schoonover's fair summaries of the others' remarks set up a level playing
field for the soccer match.

Here are some ideas for independent discussions. Fein's essay contained
many excellent ideas, including: How did the problems of the late 19th
century foreshadow contemporary international economic problems? More
specifically, how has the concept of "free trade" changed since 1900?
Might the changing U.S. attitude toward the Mexican revolution, 1910, ff.,
be a better opening date than 1898-1900 for the new American foreign
policy?

Did the generally passive, executive leadership, 1865-1900, contribute
importantly to the uncertain, tentative foreign policy? Periodization:
Which of the following dates makes the most defensible dividing point
between the "old" American foreign policy of the 19th century and the
"new" policy that succeeded it: 1890? (Beisner) 1898-1900 (conventional)
1910-1912 (Mexican revolution) 1914? (World War I) None of these?

Should the present generation of historians try to provide meaning for a
generation traumatized by Vietnam?(Langley, 535)

Should history be objective or instrumental? (Healy, 3)



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