fact that the presidency gave a reforming lead and
so helped to change the climate of American pub-
lic opinion. The Progressives were successful in the
passage of child-labour laws in over forty states,
and of laws governing the working conditions of
women, but their attempts to clean up politics and
smash the power of party machines failed. Lack of
supervision to ensure enforcement also weakened
much of the social legislation passed. After the
Great War was over, in 1919, one reform dear to
many Progressives, Prohibition (of alcoholic
drinks), was enacted by Congress nationwide.
Here, too, a large gap soon became apparent
between law and actual observance.
Theodore Roosevelt was the first president of the
US to play a role as world statesman. As in his
domestic policy, where he was inhibited by polit-
ical constraints, so in his ‘world’ diplomacy he was
circumscribed by America’s lack of military power
and the unwillingness of American people to make
sacrifices to back up a ‘large’ American foreign pol-
icy. Superficially Roosevelt succeeded in drawing
international attention to the US and to his own
role as diplomatist. In this respect his greatest
achievement was to act in 1905 as mediator
between the Japanese and Russians and to host the
peace conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire,
ending the Russo-Japanese War. The US next
played a part in the international Moroccan con-
ference at Algeciras in 1906. The following year, in
a characteristically ostentatious gesture, Roosevelt
sent the newly constructed US navy on a world
cruise to show the flag. Roosevelt made America’s
presence felt. But what really lay behind these
great-power posturings was apprehension that the
conditions that had given the US security for the
past century were passing away.
For this feeling, which actually anticipated
dangers that still lay in the future, there were two
principal reasons: the likely direction of European
imperialism and the consequences of America’s
own flirtation with imperialism at the turn of the
century. Both can be seen clearly at work during
the course of a war just won, the ‘splendid little’
Spanish–American war of 1898.
The American response to European imperial-
ism, which had led to the partition of Africa and
China, was to try to anticipate a serious challenge
to the Monroe Doctrine, with its declaration of
US opposition to any further European colonial
extension within the western hemisphere. What if
the Europeans next sought to extend their influ-
ence in the Caribbean and Central America and
so surrounded the US with armed bases? Captain
A. T. Mahan, in his day the most influential writer
and proponent of the importance of sea power,
was writing at this time that such a danger did
exist since crucial strategic regions of significance
in world trade would inevitably become areas of
great-power rivalry. One such artery of trade
would be the canal (later Panama Canal) which
it was planned to construct across the isthmus
of Central America. The backward and weak
independent Caribbean island states were also
easy prey for any intending European imperi-
alist. The island of Cuba, lying close to the main-
land of Florida was, then as now, a particularly
sensitive spot. Before the war with Spain, Cuba
was a Spanish colony, in chronic rebellion and
anarchy. The war on the island was barbarous
as most guerrilla wars are apt to be, and American
opinion, genuinely humanitarian, was inflamed by
the popular ‘yellow’ press. But the hidden aspect
of the situation as seen by the administration was
that a weak Spain as the sovereign power on the
island might be replaced by an aggressive Britain
or Germany.
A group of Americans, including a number of
senior naval officers, Theodore Roosevelt (then
an up-and-coming politician) and Senator Henry
Cabot Lodge, discussed ways and means of taking
precautionary action before these dangers materi-
alised. They were later seen as ‘imperialists’ or
‘expansionists’ and indeed this was the practical
outcome of their ideas, but their motivation was
essentially defensive – to preserve American secu-
rity in the coming conditions of the twentieth
century.
Imperialism was inextricably bound up with
this defensive attitude. The Americans intervened
and made themselves the gendarmes of the
Caribbean. After the war with Spain in 1898,
Cuba, though proclaimed an independent repub-
lic, became a virtual protectorate of the US. A US
naval base was constructed on the island and the
1
THE EMERGENCE OF THE US AS A WORLD POWER 69
