Laying the Foundation of U.S. Power in the Pacific

Abstract

Book reviewed in this article: David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Involvement: American Economic Expansion across the Pacific, 1784–1900 This is the third volume in David Pletcher's trilogy on U.S. territorial and economic expansion in the nineteenth century. The first1 dealt with the acquisition of Texas, Oregon, and California, the second2 with the expansion of trade and investment in Latin America from 1865 to 1900. The volume under review covers American economic and territorial expansion across the Pacific before 1900. The process began with the voyage of the Empress of China to Canton in 1784. Through subsequent decades, the China market drew the United States to other Pacific regions, from the northwest coast of North America to Japan and India. Yet for Americans generally, the huge Pacific basin—much of it still uncharted—long remained an abstraction. American trade with China led the way to the Orient, but that trade never favored the United States. Chinese tea, porcelains, nankeens, and silks enjoyed a more lucrative market in the United States than did American exports of ginseng, sea otter and other furs, sandalwood, and opium—most acquired outside the United States—find markets in China. What hampered the China trade was the monopoly exercised by the Hong merchants in Canton and the Chinese restrictions on trade outside Canton. Following Britain's success in gaining access to other Chinese ports through its naval victory over China in the Opium War of 1839–1842, U.S. merchants in Canton pressed Congress for a naval force and a commercial treaty to give American merchants greater security against mistreatment, as well as wider access to the China market. These objectives the United States gained in the Treaty of Wang-hsia in July 1844. The treaty granted the United States all essential privileges won by the British. The American treaty became the model for all subsequent Chinese commercial agreements. The treaties never operated consistently because Westerners and Chinese never shared their ultimate intent: whether to expand Western trade or to protect Chinese interests and traditions.