Empire: World History - 168. Teddy Roosevelt Takes on the Old World

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

In 1898, whilst his boss was on a break at the osteopath, Teddy Roosevelt basically started a war. A master of the press, he managed to whip up war fever amongst jingoists in Congress, leading the United States to declare war on imperial Spain. Building on an established independence movement in Cuba, the US was ambiguous about its intentions. Was it liberation or colonisation that it wanted for this Caribbean island? Listen as Anita and William are joined again by Daniel Immerwahr to discuss the Spanish-US war. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpower.com. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Turimple. And today I'm so pleased to say we are again joined by Daniel Imavar, Professor of History at Northwestern University, of the spectacular how to hide an empire, the short history of the greater United States. And we are today going to talk about the Spanish-U.S. war, perhaps, and maybe you have a different

thought about this, the most seismic or one of the most seismic moments in U.S. history? Arguably, also one of the most forgotten and most ignored wars in U.S. history. Well, we'll put that right today, shall we? I think it's high time. I think we had a high time we did sort this out. So I think we should start a good place to start as the run-up to 1898, the run-up to this war that is so important and yet so unknown. Tell us what was happening in America and in the world at the time. Yeah, so there's two histories that converge with each other. So in the United States, the textbook story that we tell is that from the start of the founding of the country, it had been locked in a series of confrontations which often became wars and

sometimes became massacres against indigenous people. And that had gotten especially bloody in the late 19th century, but it also ended in the late 19th century. The last battle that is officially recognized between the U.S. Army and Indians against Ojibways is the Battle of Sugar Point in 1898. That year will carry an ominous significance for us. But so in some ways it's kind of the end of one major confrontation theme

in U.S. history. And for some people at the time, notably Teddy Roosevelt, who would become president, famously the historian called Frederick Jackson Turner, it was the end of the frontier. And there was a lot of kind of 1890s agitaph about, well, what does it mean to have been a country that was defined by frontier confrontation, frontier warfare, and for that no longer to be a part of U.S. history. And surprisingly, because the 1890s was the time when the United States was growing, but was also growing through the boom and bust pattern of capitalism. So it was also experiencing depressions and strikes and unemployment. There was a lot of concern that the United States had ended a golden age of expansion and was going to encounter geographical limits, just having bumped into the Pacific. And that those geographical limits were going to be social and economic limits, too, that the United States had kind of run out of gas.

I mean, to sort of do a parenting analogy, it's when your child finishes the jigsaw puzzle puzzle and goes, well, now what? And then sort of tips the whole thing. I've done it now. Now what? Last bit of puzzle pieces sort of clicked into place and you think, destiny manifested. You know, what's the point now? Yeah, yeah. What do we do next? And the center of this story really is Cuba. And Cuba at this point is a Spanish colony. Let's do a little thumbnail sketch of the history of Spain and Cuba, if we can. Yeah. So, I mean, how long have the Spanish had Cuba as one of their colonies?

So long. So it's kind of jarring from a U.S. perspective to really have to zoom out and understand just the massive duration of European colonization of the Americas, particularly Spanish colonization of the Americas. So Columbus had landed on Cuba. Columbus had declared Cuba the property of... We're doing 15-11, like long time. Yeah, yeah, so Columbus lands at 492.

But, yeah, the first settlement is in 15-11. We are talking centuries have elapsed under which Cuba was nominally and actually Spanish before the United States sort of politically enters on the scene. And then, mustn't forget, the British capture Cuba in the seven-year war. There's Admiral Keppel does the first marine landing, doesn't he, at Hibana? This is good, yeah. So there's a lot of can we dislodge the Spanish Empire, a lot of sort of, quick changing of hands throughout the Caribbean of various colonies, but also an enormous amount

of persistence. It's an important. It's a good jewel, a good bobble to have if you are into colonies because, you know, you can plant sugar and tobacco in Cuba. You know, the conditions arise for that. And it's one of the very big economies. It's like Jamaica. It's one of these forgotten 80th and 19th century mega economies that today we think of

these all as sort of sleepy holiday resorts. but in the 18th century, it's bigger than America. No, no, that's right. So sugar, tobacco, all the good stuff. And from the 18th century perspective, Cuba is where it's at. Cuba is the center economy of the Americas. Cuba, Jamaica, and San Domingo, these three massive sugar-producing. Exactly, right, right.

And so there's a moment when Thomas Jefferson says, you know, he's looking at the country as it originally is, which is just a sort of stub of what is now the United States. and, you know, he imagines that the United States will expand. But what he's interested in is not expanding West until we hit California. He's interested in Cuba. Strategically, economically, if you really want to grow as a country, you want to seize the Caribbean, you want to have control of the Gulf of Mexico, and Cuba gives you all of that. Does Jefferson name it?

Does Jefferson name that and say, right, we need this if we're going to grow and survive? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Jefferson's explicit expansionary interest is Cuba. And he's not alone in that. Right from the founding father's first thought of the first United States. That's amazing. No, they think they're going to expand south, not west. How interesting.

That's where all the riches are. And we always forget, we dealt with this when we were talking about the American Revolution, that the thing the British really wanted to hang on to was not the American colonies. They wanted to make sure they did not lose the massive economies of the Caribbean, these enormous slave economies producing vast wealth for Britain. Yeah, and these are some of the richest societies on our. So let's talk about Cuba then, you know, once the jigsaw puzzle has been done. So it's been under Spanish control, more or less continuously. But what does it look like in, say, the 1890s? Is it thriving everywhere, or are there bits that thrive and bits that are poor? I mean, is it a checkerboard kind of territory. Yeah, there's two things to note about it. One is that it is under Spanish control, but Spanish control is weakening and a lot of the actual economic ties. are increasingly to the United States.

So U.S. elites own sugar plantations, own tobacco plantations. A lot of the trade is with the United States. And there's just a lot of travel back and forth. So it is relevant that the famous Cuban nationalist Jose Marti is in exile in New York City. Really? And the guy who designs Cuba's flag is also in exile in New York City. And they're in exile from the Spanish? Yeah, exactly.

And then the other part of it, and this is, you know, what you're referring to is that you have to always have an asterisk when you say a colonial economy like this is rich because the pattern of colonial economics is to make some people fabulously rich. Some people are very, fair, poor. Exactly, right. And Cuba has slavery for much of the 19th century. And after that, it's not like labor conditions drastically improved. So it is not a good place to be born into, but it is a great place to own a plantation. And yet also, when we were looking at Haiti in our slavery series, there's an awful lot of wealth in the middle, too. There are small holders with quite rich agricultural holdings. It's not just great landowners sitting in their clubs in Havana and poor peasants. When we were doing Haiti, the extraordinary libraries and so on. There's a whole world of education and philosophical societies and this sort of thing going on there, too. Yeah. And there is a outright Cuban elite, right, a native elite that has. political contestation with Spain as they want just in the way that the indigenous, not indigenous in the Native American sense, but the indigenous is born in the United States, elite had wanted

increasing autonomy from Britain in the 18th century. At the end of the 18th century, at the end of the 19th century, you see a similar pattern with Cuban elites and the Spanish Empire. Right, but when you have elites like that who are so fabulously wealthy, and then you have sort of the majority of people who are extraordinarily poor, it chafes and you have rebellious. spirit rising up. And one of the ways, I think, that the rich sort of sort of sought that out is to try and chase most people into the cities. What do they call it? Reconcentration. Is that what they do? So, yeah, this is a military tactic that is relevant because Cuba is not at peace in the end of the 19th century. In fact, Cuba is, I don't want to say constantly at war, but it is frequently at war.

There's a 10-year-s war in 1868, and then there's a series of wars after culminating in yet another major war in 1895. And at that point, the Spanish are so palpably losing control of the colony that they start to resort to kind of violent last-ditch tactics and one known way of dealing with a rural insurgency where it's really hard to sort out who's on your side and who's not, who's the enemy, who's a friend, is just to stipulate geographically who is an enemy who is a friend. So there will be this kind of safe zone. And if you agree to come into it under intensive Spanish colonial governance, then you're with us. But if you stick to your home and you don't answer the safe zone, that we will presume you're an enemy and we will fire on site. It's like the green

zone and the rest of the world in multiple places today. Exactly. It's a way of dealing with not being able to control an insurgency. Right. It's just a way to kind of get order in a place that feels like from the imperialist perspective is slipping out of control. There's a US observer who looks at what's left after you start corraling people into this safe zone and punishing people who are not willing to move or able to move. And he says, I did not see a house, man, woman, child, a horse, mule or cow, not even a dog. I didn't see a sign of life except an occasional vulture or buzzards sailing through the air. The country was wrapped in the stillness of death and the silence of desolation. It is the sort of slow murder of a country, really, if you do something like this.

In two ways. One is the emptying out of places where people live, but that also means places where people are growing food, getting a living in all kinds of ways. And when all of those people are violently funneled into small, confined urban spaces, often the ways they had of getting by are no longer available to them. And so they're entirely dependent on the colonial government to supply, which it often doesn't. So the reconcentration zones are areas where disease runs rampant, where people are dying, where people are hungry, you know, choose your poison. It's desolation outside, but it's also something else inside. One of the things we should mention at this point is the view from the United States. No longer does the United States want any other European powers

having power anywhere in the Americas, the Monroe Docton 1823. Tell us about that. It's a funny thing. It comes up a lot in international relations. and diplomatic history textbooks. I mean, one of the few things we did study at school over the history of this period. It's actually a non-event. It's funny how many big things in history that one learns about turn out at the time

to have come and gone without anyone tickly noticing it. Yeah, it is an idle presidential statement in 1823 that really the Americas are not the proper province of European powers and the United States will, with its other, quote-unquote, sister republics, defend the right of American liberty throughout the hemisphere. But it's not backed up by force. It's not law. It's just the kind of thing you say when you're fed with the spirit, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then later on, around this time at the turn of century a little bit later,

it becomes retrospectively understood to not just be we happy band of brothers who all stand together, but no Europeans should have imperial power over the Western Hemisphere because that's our job, because the United States should have that power. Right. Well, that's what I thought it was. thought, you know, actually it's the Spanish who have done this, you know, where you can't even see a dog or a mule or a horse and only vultures buzzing. So what would get back to America? Look at these terrible Spaniards, what they're doing. And, you know, we've got to, we've got to give them some of our freedom over there. I mean, is that what is in the press and the air at the time? It's right, because it's an interesting sort of explosion of anti-imperialism from within the

United States. So you can find people like McKinley, who's the president of the United States, talking like a speddle-flicked anti-imperialist, right? He's like, he's like, look, see what they're doing? This is absolutely extermination. I can't believe how horrible colonial governance is, when the Spanish do it. And then that gets connected to a racist sense that the Spanish are not quite white and, you know, and then they're these sort of rapacious Catholics who are besmirching the dusky virtue of the, you know, Cuban maidens and that it's their job to come in and save the Cuban.

But there's ambivalence about whether the role of the United States should be to stand with Cuba against empire or to replace the Spanish who are the deficient imperialists, yeah, with a better imperialist. And you talked about the exiles who are moved from Cuba to the United States. Is there a sense that the United States is beginning to sort of encourage freedom struggles within Cuba? And that's not new. The United States had actually at points, not always, but it had encouraged freedom struggles throughout the Americas. Bolivar, that sort of stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Then I have a colleague who wrote a book about the enthusiasm for the Latin American liberator, Simone Bolivar, and just pointed out how many people in the United States, which you went through the census, were named Bolivar, like after the Great Liberator, including some famous generals, Simon Bolivar Buckner. It's like in India. You go around the south. A lot of people are called either Stalin or Hitler. I've been driven all around Tamil by a taxi driver called Hitler. Whose proper name is Hitler?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was picked up by a Lenin when I was last there. Yeah. Honestly, honestly, honestly. Weird, but. So McKinley is talking about those dreadful Spanish and how terrible it is. And news of the depredation of the land is sort of swirling around. And you've got people in New York saying, look, it's terrible. You need to help us.

You need to help us America. You know, this sort of link between Cuban revolutionaries and America is long and deep. I didn't realize how long indeed, actually. I hadn't either. Again, this is new to me. Yeah. So then what is the first time the Americans decide to do something with that? It's an ambivalent moment and it is also a, in some ways, step by step moment.

I don't quite want to say slow because it happens fairly quickly. But as things seem to be spinning out of control in Spain, as there is more interest in the press, in the U.S. press, in talking about what's going on and kind of enjoining the U.S. to do something and as there are calls from Cuba to help, McKinley, it's not obvious. obvious to him what should be done. He's lived through the civil war. He doesn't want to see that again. But on the other hand, he's not totally deaf to the calls from within his party and from the potential political value of doing something. So he stations a battleship, the USS Maine, off of Cuba. So it's not an invasion. It's not nothing. It's just kind of a half measure in case things go pear shaped, we're here. With what mandate? Just hang about in the war show? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just, we're here, you know, you know. It's a show. I mean, wars often start that way. With battleships being

sort of a raid. World War I arguably starts that way too. So it's, it's there ready in case something happens. And then something does happen. Something absolutely happens. The battleship explodes and 262 people die. Do we know exactly how that happens or only suspect? Great question. We, we We do not know. On the one hand, it seems extremely suspicious, and you think, God, of course, the Spanish blew up the battleship. On the other hand, it really does turn out that storing a lot of coal in a battleship in the late 19th century is dangerous, and sometimes they spontaneously combust.

That sometimes really happens. Would the Spanish have mined the waters? I mean, it was that kind, I don't even know what maritime technology and warfare was like in those days, but would they have been mined waters or? I don't think you had mines 1890. I don't know. I'm asking. I am asking. My understanding is that it is not moving when it blows up, right? So the Spanish could have done it. I mean, I think militarily that is possible. But it is not obvious that this was a

good idea for the Spanish to do, nor was it obvious that they did. Well, it just unleashes everything, doesn't it? And what is the reaction in America? What do people say when they hear that all these sailors dead? McKinley says, it's actually unclear what happened. And we really need to take some time to think through this. And that does not go over well. The main reaction is screaming, bloody murder, they're treacherous Spaniards. Look what they've done. They've done it to the Cubans. Now they're doing it to us. Clearly, we can't allow this to go on. We have to invade. And leading that charge is Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt. This is this man's glory moment. I am so fascinated by Teddy Roosevelt. I mean, I've absolutely devoured the bully pulpit, which I just think is a

fantastic book about Theodore Roosevelt. But this is a man who is full charisma. He's like 90 parts charisma, 10 parts. I don't know, canny or something. But he's been itching for He's been on a boy's own adventure since childhood. Yes, give us a pen portrait of him. Yeah, he's so bizarre because he's, you know, he is the child of the New York elite. His father helped found the museum. The mad. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, right. So. A sickly child. I mean, that's what I'm so fascinated by. He was a sickly spindly child who just sort of wants to defy his creator by turning himself into this roughy-tie-tuffly lion-wrestling man of an adventure. Jim going. buff bodied.

All of it. So his name kind of tells you the story, right? If you didn't know who he was, and then I asked you to picture someone who was growing up in the early 20th century whose name was Theodore Roosevelt, right? You would expect this to be a kind of, you know, spinly, rich guy, you know, who went to parties.

That sand kicked in his face. Yeah, exactly, right. He signs his letters, thee. You know, it's just like unspeakably hoity-toity from the U.S. perspective. And then he, exactly, he rebels against that. So we had this amazing picture of him where he's a student at Harvard,

and he just looks like an absolute bruiser. It just looks like he's ready to punch anyone in the face, and you're just like, is this guy a Harvard student? Like, who let him in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then he does the thing that, you know, he looks for the kind of most macho thing that you can do in a time of relative peace, right?

The generation older than him went to war. They fought the civil war. And he was just a kid, and he was like watching the troops march by, and he was very excited about that. And he hates the fact he has no war to walk into. It kills him, right? It absolutely loads it and writes beautifully about this.

I mean, he documents everything that he's feeling. For the kind of like mouth-breathing bruiser that he tries to be, he's actually a wonderful writer. You know, he's a Churchillian. So he goes west to Dakota territory to be, you know, a cowboy. And he's like right in the middle, all of it. It's all these like hunting books about how to shoot a bear. I mean, just scads of them. And they're all kind of amusing.

Even for the cowboys, he's a bit much. It's like like properly over the top. But the thing he can't do is get in any Indian wars because they've kind of run out. So there's one moment where he encounters like five or six Sioux Indians and he just tries to start something with them. And, you know, he like pulls out his gun and they run away and he's like, they're dastardly cowards. But even when reading his own account, you're like, you just pulled a gun on unarmed people. You just wanted to fight. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So he gets to be, after his Dakota episode, he gets to be the assistant secretary of the Navy. And he's eager for war, which the president is not. And usually when the president and the assistant secretary of the Navy disagree on policy, custom in this country dictates that the president prevails, not the assistant secretary of the Navy. Okay, so this is what Roosevelt does. So first of all, he's assistant secretary of the Navy, so he has no power. However, his boss, the secretary of the Navy, goes to visit an osteopath.

for the afternoon. Going out for a few hours, hold down the telegraph machine, whatever. And Roosevelt decides, he's like, well, I guess that makes me the acting secretary of the Navy for these few hours. For the next couple of hours.

Yeah, exactly. How long is he going to be gone? Yeah, I hope that osteopath takes a while. This is a ridiculous story. It's absurd. It should, I mean, I'm surely is illegal. So what does he do? He starts giving orders, so all the squads walk.

He sets everything up for a while. war. And not only sets everything up for war, so squadron commanders keep full of coal, he requisitions reserve ammunition, ask Congress for the unlimited recruitment of seamen. And then this is a really important thing. So not only is he laying the groundwork for war, he gives an order to the Asiatic squadron, which is nowhere near Cuba, because, as the title suggests, it is the Asia. Asiatic squadron. Yeah. And he says, okay, what you need to do is you need to go to Hong Kong. And the reason you need to go to Hong Kong is that Spain not only has colonies in Puerto Rico and Cuba, it also has a large colony in the Philippines. And if we go to war with Spain, your standing order is when that war starts, seize the Philippines, which is, by the way, a far larger colony than any of others that are up for discussion and is not involved in this war.

And has got bugger all to do with Cuba. This is all happening in a two-hour break, one lunch break in the afternoon. He's on a roll and don't stop him. And the only thing it has to do with Cuba is that it also is having a sort of late Spanish Empire series of rebellions. So Spain's hold on it is also weak. So that's what happens. His boss comes back and he's like, set everything up for a war, including if this war happens,

it will be a trans-oceanic war, that it will include a Pacific theater as well as the aforementioned Cuba, and war spirit is generally high enough that his boss does not have the guts to counterman the order. Just one other quick thing about Theodore Roosevelt, who I am slightly obsessed with, he knows how to work the media. He's got friends in the media. So he is sort of got this sort of Boris Johnsonian charisma where they eat from his palm. He calls him the bully pulpit and he's sort of rude about them and he calls him the muckrakers,

but he's not averse to whipping him up as well. So, I mean, and things like calling McKinley saying he's got the backbone of chocolate Claire, they eat this up. This is a headline that could run even today. You know, it's so sort of contemporaneously jubbing. So, yes, as you say, war fever is gripping the whole nation. Now, just to put this in context, this is in the run-up to the Russo-Japanese War. There's already lots of other stuff swirling around at this time.

Yeah. No, this is a great age of naval acquisitions. And the reason it is, is that Roosevelt's perception, is, you know, when he goes west is the frontier is over, you know, there's no more free land to be taken. But that's a global perception of imperialists too. They feel that all of the colonies that could be grabbed have been grabbed and any future colonies are going to have to be grabbed from present imperialists, right? It's no longer going to be you take a colony from indigenous people. It's going to be you take a colony from indigenous people and from

whichever imperial power is holding it. And Spain looks like the weakest one. Okay, so we've got weakened Spanish Empire. we've got the ferment of war swirling around. Everybody's in the mood. He's on his lunch break arranged for a war. So when does it actually all kick off and how does it all kick off? Eventually, McKinley can't really hold out against calls for war. So he agrees.

And interestingly enough, there's still enough anti-imperialist resistance within the United States that within Congress, the anti-imperialists managed to pass a law called the Teller Amendment, which says that, okay, we get that the United States is probably about to go to war in Cuba. However, all this talk has been about liberating Cuba, say the anti-imperialist. So we're going to pass a law. If you go to war in Cuba, it cannot be a war for Cuba. You cannot claim Cuba as part of the war. That is, before the United States goes to war, there's already a kind of limit on the kind of war that it can do. You love your checks and balances, don't you? In America, I mean... It's shockingly effective. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It matters.

At what point does that get ripped up and turned into confetti? It doesn't. I mean, that's the amazing thing. It means that when the United States goes to war with Spain, it doesn't annex Cuba. However, the Teller Amendment does not exclude Puerto Rico. It doesn't exclude Guam, another Spanish colony, and it doesn't exclude the Philippines. Daniel, we've got a break coming up. But just before we get there, how far are vogey?

in Washington seeing this as an opportunity for expansion? And how far is it just anger against the Spaniards? Yeah. So Teddy Roosevelt's group, who are often called the jingoists, play on the ambiguity. All you have to say out loud is, look at how horrible things are going on with Spain. And the more ambiguous you can keep it in some ways, the better it goes, both because then you can create a large camp that is in favor of war that both includes liberationists and imperialists. and crucially, you don't want to say it all out loud so that colonized people can hear. Because in order for the United States to fight this war, it's not going to fight it just with its own Navy and with its own sailors and soldiers. It's going to need Cubans. It's going to need Filipinos. It's going to need Puerto Ricans.

Yeah, it's going to need to be a sort of collective. But privately, do we hear Teddy Roosevelt talking about an American empire? Teddy Roosevelt has been eager for expansion this whole time. Teddy Roosevelt went into the 1890s feeling like the United States was missing two things, wars and territories. And he's openly writing this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is not a surprise.

Yeah. Again, just for context, this is presumably the height of Kipling's jingoism in Britain. Empires, all the rage. Everyone wants an empire. And Teddy wants to be part of the action. Well, it's funny that you mention Richard Kipling. So he has his famous poem, The White Man's Burden, Take Up the White Man's Burden. When is that?

So that's in 1890. And we often forget this. It's not generally a poem about the virtues of empire. It is advice to the United States. Yes. And an advanced copy of it is sent to Teddy Roosevelt. Very nice. We'll take a break now.

After the break, we will talk about the outbreak of the war against Spain. Take up the white man's burden. Send forth the best ye breed. Go bind your sons to exile to serve your captive. need to wait in heavy harness on fluttered folk and wild, your new court sullen peoples, half devil, and half child. Now, what the hell is Kipling going on about there, Daniel Imovar? Let's, first of all, it's a famous poem. And it is probably the most famous cultural artifact from the age of full-sroated imperialism. Right. I mean, it's in every textbook. That's when we want

a portrait of what was imperialism about, that's the one you go for. Is Kipling living in America at this point, by the way, he's married to an American wife, isn't he? I don't think he's living in America because he publishes the poem in London, but he has connections, yeah. And let's talk about the context of that. So we normally think about it as just a pro-imperialism poem, but there's two things to note about it. One is the connections to the United States, particularly. This is not just advice to people. This is advice to Americans who are on the fence about the civilizing mission on the fence about whether this is a good destiny for their own country. And interestingly, Kipling doesn't say, this is the best thing that will ever happen to you.

He says this will be unpleasant. This will be burdensome. Literally, it is a burden, but nevertheless, it's what adults do. The world is full of people who unfortunately need to be civilized, and there are only a few people who can do the job. And it devolves to white men, to act like men. and to do the work of bringing the rest of the world along. It's bloody and it's thankless, but you'll have to do it. I'm just doing a sigh.

That's all. That's all I have to comment on that. You love Kipling and we always fall out over Kipling. I don't love Kipling, but I think it's interesting. And having hated him as a teenager, I'm now more intrigued by him than I was. It's extraordinary that, you know, that phrase, white man's burden, which is just sort of, it's such a famous phrase, comes from that. And this moment, yeah.

And this moment in time. I mean, we're looking at this as the moment that American imperialism begins. Everything that happens in the 20th and 21st centuries are up to now. It's a door that's open by what we're acting. But what's interesting about that poem is it shows that Kipling at the time is recognizing this as a moment of change and saying, come on, United States, it's your turn to do what we've been doing. Yeah.

And an important thing to recognize is that, I mean, there's many reactions that people at the time had to the poem. The poem is quite popular in the United States, and more popular, it's quite publicized in the United States. So people understand that the way to argue about the question of overseas empire is in some ways to invoke and argue about the poem and to use the fact that the poem gives you a counterscript as well. It tells you how difficult this will be. So anti-imperialists sometimes pick at that. But one reaction that Teddy Roosevelt has to the poem, in some ways he agrees with it in the sense of, yes, we should enter into a world of forthright overseas colonialism.

On the other hand, he says, but we've been doing this the whole time. What do you think we were doing with the Apaches? He's like, we've always been picking up the white man's burden. This is not new for the United States. It's just happening in a different space. Well, let's talk about the space that it happens in, because the first clash is Manila Bay on the 1st of May 1898.

I mean, just tell us a little bit about what happens here. Yeah, I think it's really important to note that the war that is supposed to be about Cuba starts in the Philippines. It starts as a naval battle and it starts as, from the perspective of the United States, a phenomenally successful naval battle. The United States sinks every Spanish ship. Commodore Dewey becomes a national hero. This is George, George Dewey. Tell us a little bit about him. Yeah, I mean, on the one hand, he's a fairly obscure figure to that point because he commands the Asiatic Squadron. No one thinks the Asiatic Quadrant is going to see a lot of action. And suddenly, he's the hero of a war that

no one thought was happening and everyone's like grabbing their maps and being like, conquer the Philippines. Where's the Philippines? But isn't he described, David Reynolds has a lovely, the historian says he's a beak-nosed little sailor. I mean, isn't it? I told you, I'm not feeling very well. Bitchy is my vibe at the moment. We haven't noticed, Anita. He wasn't a man of sort of great distinction, and yet distinction is thrust upon him by this great naval success. And he's so lauded in America that they start making a dewy cocktail. Do you know about the dewy cocktail? It sounds disgusting.

Whiskey, brandy and Benedictine, and one journalist said at the cocktail, one of them will make you feel like a true American. Two will cause you to wonder why you're not fighting for your country, and five or six will make you believe yourself to be a bigger man as Dewey. Oh, I love it. I've never had a Dewey cocktail, and now I feel that I've missed it. Benedictine is disgusting, so I can't imagine that it's any better drinking it with brandy and whiskey. I've been brought up by Benedictine monks all my life. I've always had the version. But this puts more lead in the, as if he needed any, more lead in the pencil of Roosevelt.

What does he then do? Because as you say, it's different on sea and it's different on land. What does he think about now? So Roosevelt understands that a war is brewing. He's amazingly managed to orchestrate this from a position within the Navy and not a commanding position within the Navy. He's assistant secretary. And Roosevelt leaves the Navy to join the army and to fight actually his army. actually himself. And all of his friends are just like, are you kidding? Like that is incredibly

dangerous. You already have a high-ranking position in the military. He's got a really nice office. Yeah, yeah. Like you're already quite consequential. And he's like, no, no, no, we need to actually kill the Spaniards. So he's got a revolver that has been salvaged from the wreck of the main. He has a copy of his book, Anglo-Saxon superiority. And he arranges to get a volunteer cavalry unit. so he'll have a horse and he wants to personally invade Cuba, he wants to fight the war himself. We should perhaps just describe what this guy looks like. He's all sort of beefsteak. He's got a little kind of mustache curling round his upper lip. He's got two little round pince-nez resting on his nose. But he has this sort of enormous physique. He's a big bruiser. Charismatic, you know, it's not a bad-looking fella on a horse. And he's now got his war. He's now got, you know, he can be a hero. All of his dreams. are coming true.

And I think we need to, and let's get to those dreams, but I think we also need to acknowledge he's not a very tall man. No. And he's known for having a high-pitched voice. So there's a way in which he shows well in the photographs. Because he's on a horse. A lot of the time he's on a horse. Got to stay on the horse.

Yeah, exactly right. And there's a lot of pictures of him in bridges, with Panama hats on, all this sort of stuff. It's very flamboyant. But this volunteer cavalry is known as the rough riders. So, I mean, they, you know, they are the A team. You know, they branded themselves. The soldiers of fortune. You're right. So it's interesting, like, what is the A-Team supposed to look like? And in some ways, it looks

like two things. Roosevelt has a hand in pulling together this motley crew. And on the one hand, he gets graduates of Harvard and Yale, because that's what you need. On the other hand, he's quite proud that he has a lot of men from the territories themselves. So from the Western territories, i.e. the cowboy types and a non-small number of Native American troops as well. So this is all of that kind of rough and tumble world of the frontier. The world he missed in many ways. He's recreating it now in Cuba. Okay, so he's on his horse and he's got his riders with him and they're rough. That's how they're branded. That's the merch. Take us to San Juan Heights because this is an absolutely bonkers, potty, nutty battle. None of them have horses. They all brought their horses to

Florida, but they couldn't get, there wasn't room for all their horses. There's a major shipping log jam. So, but he gets his horse. So he's got his horse and they don't have their horses. So you just have they're just rough. They're just rough standards, I would say. They're rough pedestrians and they're ready for action. And so look, he's a volunteer unit. And they're supposed to take San Juan Heights. That's a multi-stage operation. And the role of the rough riders is that they're going to storm kettle hill. We should say where it is. I mean, it's just on the south eastern tip of Cuba, just outside Santiago. It's a bunch of hills. So San Diego. So the idea is that you want to control Santiago.

And the rough riders have managed to lands peacefully. They're ready to take Kettle Hill. Roosevelt is especially ready to do it. And they're like fifth in line, right? There's like this whole like just line of like other units that are like going first. And Roosevelt can't stand it. And he's like jumping up and down. He's like, you know, send me in, send me in coach.

And finally they're like, all right. Teddy, you can do it. It's like it's his moment, right? His hour of glory. He's riding up and. down on the horse, trying to rally his men, go straight up Kettle Hill, and it works. They take Kettle Hill, him and, you know, a million other guys. And then he looks over to a larger objective, San Juan Heights.

And he's like, okay, we can take San Juan Heights. And already he's come under fire. I think he's had a... But it graze his shoulder or something. His elbow, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so he's got like a little bit of a war wound and it's not huge. But, you know, it's just as it's like a Monty Python. It's a scratch.

It's a scratch. It's a real pleasure, too. The man has been shot. I would probably call it a day, I think, if I'd, you know, capture that. And he's absolutely wearing to go. So he's like, okay, now we want to take San Juan Heights, kind of grumbling acquiescence. There's a fence so he can't take the horse over. So he runs over to San Juan Heights, calling his men to follow him.

And there's more enemy fire. And then he realizes no one is following him. It's just, and look, this is all his own account. It is uncontradicted by other military records we have. So, like, we are allowed to indulge in it. But, you know, whatever. This is the Teddy's eye view of the situation. Can I just do the imaginary conversation from his man?

What is he doing? That guy is nuts. Like, what is he doing? Yeah, yeah. No, no, there's just a huge cloud of like WTF that just hangs over Teddy Roosevelt for his entire life, right? What is he doing is basically his motto? So he's running over. He looks back, realizes that he is solo.

Yeah, just just a personal invasion. And so he runs back. There's shooting at him some more. He has to hop the fence again. Then he comes back and he just starts berating the men. He's like, come on, this is war. He then gets them. And then they all come.

They rush back over the fence, more enemy fire. He gets up San Juan Heights. He personally gets to kill a Spaniard with the pistol that he is taken from the wreck of the man. I mean, it's perfect. And then, look, we have a picture of Teddy Roosevelt and the rough riders at the top of San Juan Hill, beaming with pride. On the one hand, you're like, fair enough.

He's just done military valor. On the other hand, you're like, wait, who's photographing? Well, exactly, Daniel MFR. So hang on a minute, wait a minute. Because there's no sort of like documentary film crew on hand. What happened here? How does this happen? Who is the photographer?

He's doing it for the gram. He's doing it for the gram. He's like, okay, it's not enough to be the guy. You have to be photographed as the guy. So there are photographers. He makes sure to pose for them. And then there is an early film crew is one of the first. instances of filming more.

What are they doing there? How have they got there? They're behind the lines. They're not really going to get the real action. He storms the hill again for the film. For their delectation and delight. Take two, taking the hit at the heights. Initiating war documentary fakery, which goes on up to the moment.

Can we just say, again, this is a man who really understands. I mean, Teddy Razor, I mean, we're sort of laughing at some high-pitched voice short man, just slightly mental. He is also the man who goes on to found the police force, the postal service, you know, in many ways and extraordinary sort of groundbreaking mind, but a man who does not believe in any limits and also knows how to use the media. I'm looking at the picture now,

and if you'd spent a whole day posing this, you couldn't have it better. He's standing absolutely in the middle. He's got a pair of braces on. He's got a cravat around his neck. He's got boots and a cowboy hat. The men, his rough riders are all around him. They're all wearing these Stetsons

and they've got knee-high boots on. and the whole thing is arranged so that it culminates in the US flag, the stars and stripes, fluttering over all of them. And it's sort of pointed in a pyramidal fashion so that all the eyes are on Teddy and the flag above it. He is the focal point. He is absolutely the focal point of that. It is one of the most reprinted photographs in US history.

And you can see why? Because every man has a kind of walrus mustache. Every man's got a stets and hat on. Every man is wearing jeans and boots. This is America as it dreams of being American. Look, let's also say the other thing. So when Roosevelt gets all of this military glory and directs everyone's attention on this particular military operation rather than everything else that's happening throughout the war theater, there are black troops who have been right beside Roosevelt. They're not in the picture, Daniel.

And they're not in the picture, right? And they're not. And in the narrative, Roosevelt describes their particular cowardice and how they had to be scolded. And this becomes, in the way that often showing military valor becomes a way forward for climbing rights, the ability of black veterans to say we were there and we fought with valor becomes a huge flashpoint. And the feeling is that Roosevelt to sort of undermine his own fellow soldiers. Was he racist? I don't understand.

What was the reason? Absolutely. Was the Pope of Catholic? Is it just, we are racially superior, therefore I'm going to cut you out? because even in battle, if you fall with a brother soldier or a brother soldier is charging over a stuccade, it challenges that, one would think. 1898 is absolutely the peak of this sort of white superiority. I understand, but I'm talking about a complicated man who has shown great complexity through life.

I just want to know what you think is going on in his head. It's both things. One is that literally he is carrying a book called Anglo-Saxon superiority as this all is happening. So he, not just as personal racism, he is a historical racist. He believes that the forces of history are carrying Anglo-Saxons from victory to victory, and that's a part of it. However, Anita, you're right. He is a complicated person.

And one of the other famous things that he does in the black, white race relations zone is that as president, he has Booker T. Washington to dinner at the White House. And that might seem like a small thing. But the bans on interdining are so profound at the time that the idea that a president would invite and then break bread with a black man is huge. And especially because everyone at the time is thinking, well, if white people dine with black people... Then where does this end? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the reason I ask the question of what is going on, WTF, that hangs over our heads even now when you think about Theodore Roosevelt, is that part from Bookerty, Washington,

which causes a huge stir and a stink, and people are really confused about what is he doing, dining with somebody who is inferior and making it look all right to dine with somebody like that. He also entertains an Indian woman who comes to the White House in Asari and sits and takes tea with him and has a lovely tea party with him. So there is like no consistency sometimes with this. Yeah, this is very interesting. And I thought if he could do that and he sees men charging over a stockade with him, wouldn't that sort of shake his thought process? Because if you're a soldier, you respect a soldier, don't you? It's madness.

Anyway, just thinking out loud. No, no, this is good. Yeah. I think it's weird when you think of all of the racial injustices of the late 19th. century, the main one I would pick out would not be, and those black soldiers didn't get enough credit for seizing Cuba. But nevertheless, I think it becomes one partly, Anita, you might be right, because that's a moment of possibility. You can imagine Teddy Roosevelt having done that differently, and it would have been meaningful, at least to those black soldiers and all the causes that are

lined up behind him. Daniel, let's take stock now. The war has been won. Spain has been defeated. We have a treaty of Paris, 10th of December, 1898. Yeah. So, The whole war has been ambiguously fought by the United States. Was it a war of liberation? Was it a war of colonization? The answer is going to come, as the answer is often due, with the treaty that ends the war. And that treaty is signed between Spain and the United States. On the one hand, that makes sense Spain was fighting the United States.

On the other hand, that's kind of ludicrous. Spain has not just been fighting the United States. Spain has been fighting Cuban revolutionaries for most of this time. Spain has also been fighting Filipino revolutionaries. In fact, the United States just came in quite at the end. So it shows up at the end of the war at a war that, frankly, the Cubans were already probably winning. And the United States, you know, is a welcome addition to the war from the Cuban perspective as long as it continues the war as it was being fought, i.e. as a war of liberation. But suddenly the United States is in the room with Spain. No Cubans are there. No

Filipinos are there. No Puerto Ricans are there. And the United States gets to decide with Spain what the end of this war is, and the end of the war shall be that the United States will take three of Spain's colonies. And so this was not a war of liberation. This was a war of colonization. So for the first time, America is taking foreign lands through war with the purpose of creating colonies. I would say that a little differently because the United States had taken a good bit of Mexico earlier. But yeah, no, this looks different because these are populace and so populace that it becomes hard to imagine that the United States is going to displace the indigenous or local populations. It seems like for the United States to continue to have these places, it will have

to administer them like overseas colonies in the European model. And can we just very briefly just talk about Guantanamo Bay as well? I mean, it's a sort of special case of Guantanamo Bay. Does it stretch back as far as all of this? The United States, it annexes as a result of this treaty, it annexes the Philippines and Guam and Puerto Rico, but not Cuba. And the reason that it doesn't take Cuba is that the Teler Amendment had been put in place to prevent that. So anti-imperialists had successfully blocked the United States for making a colony of Cuba. And so the United States is in this weird position where it is the central place where it was

fighting the war is also the place that it cannot colonize. So Cuba goes on a different path. And what Washington does instead is occupy Cuba. So it militarily rules it on the understanding that it will leave that this is temporary. But then you have the question, how temporary and under what conditions will the United States leave? It occupies it for a few years. And then it leaves under two really striking conditions. One is that Cubans right into their independent Cuba constitution, the right of the United States to intervene if politics go wobbly in Cuba.

So the Cuban constitution contains a right of the United States to invade Cuba. And another thing is that a part of Cuba, Guantanamo Bay, be indefinitely leased to the United States for use in its naval purposes. Wow. And that's where we are right here, right now. It is a really good place to end this. Next time, we're going to be talking about the Philippines. And if you want to hear that episode right here, right now, you know what you have to do. just go and sign up to Empire Club for early access at. You got a pen. Here it comes. Empirepoduk.com.

That's Empirepoduk.com. Daniel, we're so grateful. This is just fascinating, beginning, middle and end. Thank you very much. Until the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Drup.