BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Birth of Pan-Americanism
No doubt history never quite repeats itself, but some historical situations seem to exist in first and second states, and it is impossible in reading this admirable work, to keep from one's mind the relevance of many of the problems arguments and policies to the present world situation. The United States in 1830, and still more in z800, was,weak, its infant steps uncertain, its position in the world undefined. It was not certain that it could escape being a client of either France or Britain. And, an unforeseen by-product of the Napoleonic .invasion of Spain, the whole question of the future of the Spanish and Portuguese empires in the Americas suddenly became most urgent.
There is a sense in which the story told by Professor Whitaker is -almost too well known to bear retelling, and if these lectures had merely been a matter of dotting the " i's " and crossing the " t's " of the standard version there would b.! little profit or pleasure to be gained for any but the tiny group of students of the history of American foreign policy. But Professor Whitaker has thought out the eventful history from his own angle. He- has studied the sources and reflected on their meaning, taking issue when necessary with Henry Adams or the late Master of Peterhouse. He inclines, decisively, to the school which holds that the main author of the Monroe Doctrine was, oddly enough, President Monroe. For John Quincy Adams, as diplomat or orator, his admiration is highly tempered by criticism. Yet Adams with his dogmatic New England prejudices, with his heightened and forceful way of putting things, provides some of the best reading in this book. His bold if not quite consistent statement of the position of the extreme isolationists of his day gets its due place here. It illustrates the drawbacks of having a Secretary of State, even disguised as a professor, say too. much on Inde- pendence Day! It also awakened speculation in the mind of one reader who could not help wondering at the lack of prophetic sense shown by Mr. Bennett Champ Clark in neglecting so powerful and comforting a statement of his own position by a statesman whom -the Senator from Missouri once honoured with a biography. But that book was written in i932,_before Hitler and Roosevelt.
On the genesis of the Monroe Doctrine, Professor Whitaker has much to say that will be novel to many British readers. He is no blind admirer (not, perhaps, an admirer at all) of George Canning. He sees the danger to the United States not in the invading armies and fleets of the Holy Alliance, but in the foster- ing of what we now call " Fifth Column " activities in the re- volted colonies. He reminds us, what• we easily forget, how surprising was the sudden and apparently complete success of the armies of Charles X, where the armies of Napoleon had failed. The storming of the Trocadcro was the culmination of a Blitzkrieg that disturbed the optimists of the Left in 1823, almost as much as Hitler's victories did in 1940.
In the United States, a Government, bound to take a close account of public opinion, had an especially complex problem on its hands. There was a general republican enthusiasm -for the revolted colonists. But, alas, there was no convincing proof of an equal republican enthusiasm among the new rulers of Latin America. Brazil became, and for two generations remained, an empire. Mexico became an empire for a very short period, and Buenos Aires dallied with the dream of a constitutional monarchy. These were grounds for doubts. There were less rational grounds, too. Astonishingly little was known in 'North America of the regions to the south. Jefferson was much more than merely polite when he greeted Humboldt's account of New Spain as the revelation of a hitherto unknown world. It is true that com- mercial intercourse was growing, but that produced new strains, new variations in political pressure. -Nor, even if more had been- known of Latin America, would the result have been necessarily helpful. There was a deep-rooted sense of Anglo-Saxon superiority in the American mind. These victims of popery and tyranny, debilitated by the climate and the Inquisition, were they the stuff out of which orderly, progressive republics on the model of the United States could be made? It was -widely doubted, and it was certainly doubtful. The chief spokesman of the school that believed in the new republics, and in close collaboration with them, was Henry Clay. But, wrote the hostile National Gazette: "The success of Mr. Clay is the triumph of rhetoric, aided by the force of a liberal and natural, though not, perhaps, well applied sympathy. Liberty and independence are magic words in this country, and objects which we think ourselves bound to wish to all distant communities of men, who may appear to be struggling for them, without consulting their disposition and capacity to put them to a good use."
American foreign policy, then as now, had to be conducted
in a blaze of publicity and criticism. Each side accused the spokesmen of the other of being the victims, innocent or venal, of the subtle propagandists sent from Madrid and Buenos Aires to corrupt the American mind. Emigres added to the confusion by denouncing each other. It was no wonder that the Spanish Minister, Don Luis de Onis, while admitting the potential weight of the United States, took comfort from the weakness inherent "in the absurdity of its constitution." Then as now, the native blind attempted to lead the blind in America and the European view of American realities was hopelessly distorted by the prejudices of the paid observers of Old World governments.
D. W. BROGAN.
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