I read The Imperial Cruise last winter soon after it first came out, but I'm reviewing it now because it's due soon in paperback and, more importantly, because I think that even though this book was a bestseller, I honestly don't believe it received the attention it deserved. As readers of his Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys know, James Bradley is a talented storyteller; so fine, in fact, that I think that many reviewers minimized the significance of its message. The narrative is spellbinding, doubly so because it involves two fascinating men: President Teddy Roosevelt who dispatched future U.S. president William Howard Taft on an extended diplomatic mission to Asia in 1905. What happened on that mission though is even striking than their amply-sized personalities: Ignoring Congress and, indeed, the U.S. Constitution, TR sent WHT halfway around the world to make secret agreements that set the cast on our Asian foreign policy for decades and might have doomed us to war in that faraway region. Bradley's book shows how Roosevelt's personal mindset (and reading!) shaped his fateful decision and our subsequent history.
PRAISE FOR THE IMPERIAL CRUISE : The Imperial Cruise ] is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency."—Janet Maslin , New York Times The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best."—Ronald Steel , New York Times Book Review Gene Santoro , American History USA Today Associated Press
"A page-turner."
"For readers under the impression that history is the story of good guys and bad guys...this book could be useful medicine."
"[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions."
Gene Santoro - American History
"A provocative study...What is fascinating about Bradley's reconstruction of a largely neglected aspect of Roosevelt's legacy is the impact that his racial theories and his obsession with personal and national virility had on his diplomacy. Engrossing and revelatory, The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best."
Ronald Steel - New York Times Book Review
PRAISE FOR THE IMPERIAL CRUISE :
"Incendiary...[The Imperial Cruise ] is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency."
Janet Maslin - New York Times
[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions.American History
A provocative study...What is fascinating about Bradley's reconstruction of a largely neglected aspect of Roosevelt's legacy is the impact that his racial theories and his obsession with personal and national virility had on his diplomacy. Engrossing and revelatory, The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best.New York Times Book Review
"A page-turner."
"For readers under the impression that history is the story of good guys and bad guys...this book could be useful medicine."
"[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions."American History
"A provocative study...What is fascinating about Bradley's reconstruction of a largely neglected aspect of Roosevelt's legacy is the impact that his racial theories and his obsession with personal and national virility had on his diplomacy. Engrossing and revelatory, The Imperial Cruise is revisionist history at its best."New York Times Book Review
PRAISE FOR THE IMPERIAL CRUISE :
"Incendiary...[The Imperial Cruise ] is startling enough to reshape conventional wisdom about Roosevelt's presidency."New York Times
Mr. Bradley favors broad strokes and may at times be overly eager to connect historical dots, but he also produces graphic, shocking evidence of the attitudes that his book describes…if he brings a reckless passion to The Imperial Cruise, there is at least one extenuating fact behind his thinking. In Flags of Our Fathers he wrote about how his father helped plant the American flag on the island of Iwo Jima during World War II. In The Imperial Cruise he asks why American servicemen like his father had to be fighting in the Pacific at all.
Theodore Roosevelt steers America onto the shoals of imperialism in this stridently disapproving study of early 20th-century U.S. policy in Asia. Bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley traces a 1905 voyage to Asia by Roosevelt’s emissary William Howard Taft, who negotiated a secret agreement in which America and Japan recognized each other’s conquests of the Philippines and Korea. (Roosevelt’s flamboyant, pistol-packing daughter Alice went along to generate publicity, and Bradley highlights her antics.) Each port of call prompts a case study of American misdeeds: the brutal counterinsurgency in the Philippines; the takeover of Hawaii by American sugar barons; Roosevelt’s betrayal of promises to protect Korea, which “greenlighted” Japanese expansionism and thus makes him responsible for Pearl Harbor. Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt’s policies and paradoxical embrace of the Japanese as “Honorary Aryans.” Bradley’s critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced. He doesn’t explain how Roosevelt could have evicted the Japanese from Korea, and insinuates that the Japanese imperial project was the brainstorm of American advisers. Ironically, his view of Asian history, like Roosevelt’s, denies agency to the Asians themselves. Photos, maps. One-day laydown.(Nov. 24)
Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers) has written a compelling book on a forgotten diplomatic mission. In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt sent Secretary of War William Howard Taft on a cruise to Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, China, and Korea, a diplomatic mission that also included Roosevelt's daughter, Alice. The mission was to solidify a secret U.S.-Japanese agreement to allow Japan to expand into Korea and China, with the irrepressible Alice distracting reporters. This agreement, resulting in the Treaty of Portsmouth, ultimately helped spark not only World War II in the Pacific but the 1949 Chinese Revolution and the Korean War. Bradley describes Taft and Roosevelt as firm believers in the White Man's Burden: since Japan embraced Western culture, Roosevelt wanted it to spread that culture to the rest of Asia. However, their policies backfired because anti-American feelings grew in China, the Philippines, and Korea as America turned its back on these countries, while America and Europe did not check Japanese aggression. Ultimately, Bradley reminds readers in well-cited detail of Roosevelt's often overlooked racist attitudes. Bradley's writing style will appeal to the general reader, with its good mix of letters, newspapers, and sound secondary sources. VERDICT Anyone interested in American history will want to read this book, especially those who want background on the foreign policy of this first sitting President to win the Nobel peace prize. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 7/09.]—Bryan Craig, MLS, Nellysford, VA
The story of a forgotten diplomatic excursion inspired by Theodore Roosevelt's bigotry. Bradley (Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, 2003, etc.)-who wrote about his father's experience at Iwo Jima in Flags of Our Fathers (2000)-examines a little-known effort by Roosevelt to manipulate the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War and extend the Monroe Doctrine to Asia by encouraging Japan to act as a proxy for the West. In the summer of 1905, a party that included Secretary of War William Taft and Roosevelt's rebellious daughter Alice set sail on the ocean liner Manchuria to their Pacific destinations of Hawaii, Korea, Japan, China and the Philippines. At the time, the voyage captured the public imagination. However, Taft was charged with an agenda that included maintaining dominance over American territories-the protests of America's Hawaiian and Filipino "wards" notwithstanding-and promoting Roosevelt's dream of an "Open Door" in Asia. Bradley argues that the mission was a result of the president's adherence to a crackpot philosophy of "Aryan" racial superiority. "Like many Americans," he writes, "Roosevelt held dearly to a powerful myth that proclaimed the White Christian as the highest rung on the evolutionary ladder." In Roosevelt's mind, this excused American brutality in subduing Filipino insurgents, and it furthered his public image as a wise Western warrior. However, the president made a major intellectual blunder when he decided the Japanese could be considered "Honorary Aryans," due to "the Japanese eagerness to emulate White Christian ways." This, coupled with his contempt for the Chinese, Filipino and Hawaiian peoples, inspired him to play nation-builder, with disastrousconsequences. Bradley asserts that Taft and Roosevelt violated the Constitution by offering Japan a secret deal, characterized as a "Monroe Doctrine for Asia." Arguably, Japanese pique over America's unwillingness to acknowledge this subterfuge fueled their expansionist dreams and pointed the way toward the Pearl Harbor attack. A rueful, disturbing account of a regrettable period of American imperialism.
"Engaging...this is a book to admire and, it must be said, to enjoy."
David M. Shribman - The Boston Globe
A page-turner with solidly attributed eye-opening passages.Associated Press
For readers under the impression that history is the story of good guys and bad guys, and that Americans are always the former, this book could be useful medicine.USA Today
[Bradley's] ingenious narrative thread is to track an across-the-pacific 1905 goodwill voyage by Roosevelt's emissaries....[his indictment of Roosevelt] raises tantalizing questions.American History
In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt sent Vice President Taft, daughter Alice, and several members of Congress on an extended cruise aboard U.S. warships to foreign ports in the Pacific. The mission expressed the president's interest in the expansion of U.S. influence in Asia. The author exposes how President Roosevelt's racist beliefs and secret pacts came to influence the futures of Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, Korea, and China. Author James Bradley reads the first and last chapters, and gives an introspective interview. His halting and unprofessional delivery falls far short of Richard Poe's. Poe adds spice to the bland narrative with subtle changes in his voice for the hundreds of quotes, an attentive treatment of the poetry, and a palpable enthusiasm for his task. J.A.H. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
