Praising Teddy and Banishing Imperialism

Abstract

Several scholars have recently written fresh and generally positive treatments of Theodore Roosevelt's handling of foreign policy. Yet none has undertaken a more ambitious reinterpretation of both TR and the character of early twentieth-century foreign relations than Richard H. Collin.1 In his two books totaling a combined 844 pages, Professor Collin provides an aggressive and laudatory brief on behalf of Roosevelt's policies in the Western Hemisphere and the Philippines. In so doing, Collin also questions the existence of U.S. imperialism at the turn of the twentieth century. In the first of these studies, Collin declares imperialism “unrecognizable as an American phenomenon during Theodore Roosevelt's presidency.” While implying but never explicitly stating that imperialism was the equivalent of a narrow, economically motivated expansionism, Collin argues that the United States's expansionist foreign policy was best explained as a function of modernism—of an American dynamism “in all endeavors: art, intellect, diplomacy, technology, and culture.”2 In his second volume, Collin expands on this theme. Once again, modernism (not imperialism or dependence) provides the essential context. A vibrant, materialistic, technologically advanced, conjoint, and Protestant United States confronted a less-developed, comparatively inert, disparate, and Catholic Latin America. The implication is that both conflict and U.S. predominance were likely, if not inevitable. Turning more specifically to Roosevelt, Collin deems strategic considerations central; the president's “main purpose was the exclusion of Europe, not the subjugation of Latin America” (p. ix). He sought “stability, not dominance” (p. xiii), and his policies demonstrated a “beneficent paternalism” designed to facilitate Caribbean autonomy and development (p. 547).