512
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
all the markets Df the wo.rld," the United States set
Dut to.
o.verwhelm
all natiDns that blDcked the expansiDn of American expDrts and the
establishment
Df
the American empire.
All this assumes that exports led the way and the government
tagged alDng behind. Yet a glance at the statistics shows that the chief
American markets lay,
nDt
at all in the parts of the world where the
United States sought to exert imperial sway, but in EurDpe. The China
market, for example, has always been one
Df
the great mirages of the
American experience. May it not have been that thDse glowing invoca–
tions
Df
the potentialities
Df
foreign markets were less the expression Df
the urgencies
Df
American capitalism than the bait, the lure, which
pDlitical and military leaders held befDre business leaders in Drder
to.
win
support fDr policies advocated by the state for reaSDns
Df
its
Dwn?
And what wDuld such reaSDns be? The obvious answer is the as–
sertion Df national power. Now the assertion of national power is SDme–
thing that has always concerned American elites much more than it
has cDncerned the American peDple.
FDr,
contrary
to.
the revisionist
mytholDgy, the United States has not been all that persistently "an ex–
panding imperial power." JeffersDn and Benton, thDugh they anticipated
the cDIDnizatiDn of the North American continent, did
nDt
foresee the
pDlitical expansio.n Df the United States; they thought that independent
Anglo-Saxo.n republics would be established
Dn
the Dther side of the
RDckies. JDhn Quincy Adams, it is true, supposed that, in time, the
United States and North America would be "identical," and Jefferson
wDuld have added Cuba
to.
the identity. But these things never came
to.
pass. We never annexed Canada; Texas waited Dutside the Union as
an independent republic for a decade; the movement
to.
acquire "all
Mexico." failed; the Ostend Manifesto was a flop; except fDr Alaska,
which Congress accepted with the utmost reluctance, Seward's expan–
sionist prDgram gDt nowhere; it took half a century
Df
agitatiDn before
we annexed Hawaii, and this might never have taken place had it
nDt
been fDr the war with Spain; even with that war we did not annex
Cuba. Despite the current idea of a people red hDt for empire since
1776, the imperial dream has encountered CDnsistent pDpular indif–
ferences throughDut American histDry. This has meant that Dur true
expansionists - Seward, Mahan, LDdge, Roosevelt, fDr example - were
far in advance of public and business Dpinion; hence the dangle Df for–
eign markets and profits in an attempt
to.
persuade Dpinion to come
along.
This exercise in salesmanship shDuld not Dbscure the fact that the
essential mDtives fDr expansionism were nonecDnDmic. The basic general
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