Tattnall had been dispatched to the Far East in 1858 to deliver William Reed
as U.S. minister to China. He then joined British and French warships at the
mouth of the Peiho. The Western military threat forced the Chinese emperor
to sign the Treaty of Tientsin, which opened eleven additional Chinese ports to
foreign trade and missionary activity and allowed foreign plenipotentiaries—
including Reed—to reside in Beijing. The next year, when the emperor
attempted to renege on the treaty, Tattnall rejoined the allied task force in an
attempt to force Chinese acquiescence. The American commander famously
stated that ‘‘blood is thicker than water.’’^5
Even more significant than these operations off China’s coast was the expedi-
tion to ‘‘open’’ Japan in the mid-1850s, under Perry’s command. In command
of a squadron of the navy’s newer, steam-powered warships, Perry employed firm,
imaginative diplomacy and the threat of military force to wring an agreement
from Japanese leaders to establish formal diplomatic and economic relations with
the United States. It was a demonstration of ‘‘soft’’ American imperialism at its
most effective in East Asia.
The United States formally inserted itself into China’s internal affairs in the
late nineteenth century, when American gunboats and other warships began
patrolling Chinese coastal and riverine waters on a regular basis. This practice
was inaugurated by the 1874 cruise of USSAshuelotup the Yangtze River,
and reached maturity with the establishment of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet in
1902.^6
U.S. naval forces in fact served as the nation’s primary vehicle for exploration
and surveillance of Pacific waters during the latter half of the nineteenth century.
In addition to the operations noted earlier, significant missions included Commo-
dore Charles Wilkes’s path-breaking voyages through the South Pacific between
1839 and 1843. In 1871 a force commanded by Rear Admiral John Rodgers jour-
neyed to the Korean Peninsula in an abortive attempt to ‘‘open’’ Korea. A second
expedition followed in 1882, under the command of Commodore Robert
Shufeldt. These efforts eventually succeeded, but compare poorly with Perry’s
visits to Japan in the early 1850s, largely because neither Rodgers nor Shufeldt
possessed the same diplomatic skill or military imagination.
No distinct maritime strategy was apparent in other U.S. naval and diplomatic
forays into Asia at this time, including U.S. naval and military participation
in the 1900 expeditions to punish the Chinese ‘‘Boxers’’ who had assaulted West-
erners in China. Similarly, U.S. participation in the 1919–20 military operations
that sought to overthrow the newly established Soviet government in Moscow
came more as an afterthought of World War I and Russia’s Bolshevik Revolution
than as part of a coherent American strategic maritime construct. In fact, U.S.
participation in World War I was limited almost entirely to the Atlantic and
European theaters; there was no significant American naval participation in Asian
waters, where Japan quickly took control of German possessions.
Clipper Ships to Carriers 49