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H-DIPLO ROUNDTABLE

David M. Pletcher, _The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment: American
Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900_ (Columbia, Missouri:
University of Missouri Press, 1998)

Roundtable Editor: Thomas Schoonover Reviewers: John Belohlavek, Jurgen
Buchenau, Paul Dosal, Seth Fein, David Healy, Aissatou-Sy-Wonyu
__________________________________________________________________

Aissatou Sy-Wonyu
University of Rouen, France
Aissatou.Sy-Wonyu@univ-rouen.fr

Already in 1981, describing the role and duties of the historian of
American foreign policy in the nineteenth century, Pletcher declared,
"Conflict and inconsistency are our bread and butter" ["Rhetoric and
Results. A Pragmatic View of American Economic Expansion, 1865-1898",
Diplomatic History (V, Spring 1981, 93)], in an amusing rapprochement
between the dreary image of the historian's task with the solid pragmatic
assessment of history taken as it comes and as it is, and not as one would
have it, clear, organized, readily open to clear interpretations. In his
conclusion to the same article, Pletcher expounded what will later become
the core of this present book: "What, then, was the significance of the
period between 1865 and 1898 in the relationship between business and
American foreign relations? I suggest that this was simply a period of
education, experimentation, and preparation but not of fulfillment" [104].
Here, he emphasizes the period, from 1865 to 1898, as if it had, so to
say, a life of its own. Hence, the triple qualification-education,
experimentation, and preparation- serves to characterize a period which is
usually rigidly examined to be as soon dismissed by historians as dull,
isolationist and protectionist of the most conservative kind, or, at best,
as preparatory for the more stimulating and momentous developments of he
twentieth century. Although Pletcher restores the second half of the
nineteenth century to a dignity of its own, not as a before or an after,
but as a period of "conflict and inconsistency" in the attitudes to
foreign policy, to business expansion, and economic expansionism, one
might be tempted, in a spirit of paradox, to reverse his previous question
by asking what is the significance and influence of the relations between
business and American foreign relations on the period selected?

In other words, how far was the period shaped by foreign relations,
provided that question is relevant in view of the generally accepted idea
that the post-Civil War up to the Spanish-American War period was one of
internal development with a rather marginal attention paid to foreign
policy issues. For anybody, who is devoted to demonstrating the
intricaciesand subtleties of American foreign policy advocates and
practitioners of the second half of the nineteenth, Pletcher's book is
very precious in the emphasis it lays on the evolutionary process of
American foreign policy and growing importance of economic and commercial
motivations in foreign policy.

Very often, he lists-implicitly or explicitly-the qualities which make a
leader in foreign policy, ironically vesting them on the first Canadian
prime minister who managed to combine empire-loving and an indomitable
kind of nationalism which led him to advocating independence vis-à-vis any
foreign nation, especially the United states, while understanding and
promoting close economic relations with the US. One can deduce from such
analyses that, first, Pletcher regrets the general lack of political
leadership in the US, meaning executive leadership and the surrender to
Congress of all initiative concerning foreign affairs; second, he shows
that most people involved in foreign policy very slowly came to the idea
that American independence and belief in self-sufficiency was inevitably
leading to disaster in a world-system where only open economies could
prosper. He demonstrates therefore that the US leaders had a world-view
which was based on old and traditional shibboleths which were becoming
less and less realistic (protectionism, national market). Yet, even that
idea is thoroughly discussed by Pletcher who wants to convey the idea that
the second half of the nineteenth was anything but monolithic in terms of
beliefs and policies about foreign policy.

Chapter 3 on Mexico is a perfect illustration of Pletcher's proposition
that American economic expansion is an experiment in dealing with a
country displaying all the characteristics of what the twentieth century
will name a Third World country: low income and purchasing power as
compared with the US situation, absence of political and civil liberties,
unequal distribution of wealth; to which can be added the problematics of
identity and identity definition by the more powerful country, based on by
then fairly deeply rooted views on American superiority and Mexican
inferiority, reducing Mexico to an area of expansion, a potential market,
a source of profit for the US, with little or no concern for the
prosperity of Mexico, thus creating a time-bomb: the inevitable
international consequences of an exploitative policy in terms of political
instability because of the poverty gap.

As Pletcher very rightly reminds the reader, the attempt to establish
economic relations with Mexico is an example of the short-sided and
tentative policies devised by the US, that can be summarized as the
hesitation between reciprocity and annexation, applying to the Mexican
case the problematics of Americanization and dependence. The ambiguities
of imperialism are here exposed although one could go further and reflect
on the dialectics of imperialism whether from the "victim's" point of view
or the "imperialist's". For if the negative consequences of the growth of
the US as the great power of the western Hemisphere are undeniable and
could even be guessed by contemporaries, there remains to determine how
far the imperialist or expansionist drive reverberated on the American
life, beyond mere economic profit, to reach national identity definition
and ethics. When one brings together the Mexican example and the radically
different ventures in Central America and the Caribbean (made of military
intervention, filibustering, wilful creation of political instability,
corruption and various entanglements), there emerges a clearer-if not
simpler-image not only of American economic expansion (as the title of the
book suggests) but also and, perhaps principally, of the basic foreign
policy dilemmas of the second half of the nineteenth. Pletcher's analysis
of the interactions between the various groups participating whether
closely or remotely in foreign policy (the press, Congress, statesmen,
businessmen, etc...) is an essay in reasoning on the significance of the
"scattered forces" in favor of economic expansion and of the "scattered
forces" or "economic nationalists" against economic expansion. The
positive and thought-inspiring aspects of this book are first its
analytical-entomological-quality; second that it points and unravels the
many paradoxes and contradictions of the period; third, it brings in the
mirror image of the US as seen by its partners (this is not original per
se but Pletcher does make a useful synthesis of the latest scholarship on
the subject). He brings new light on important aspects like the idea that
as early as the 1870s a correlation could be made between American
presence in Mexico and the social unrest there through railroad building,
which was probably as consequential to Mexico as the defeat of 1846-48.

The only serious objection that I would make is to Pletcher's
presupposition that the fate of the US was to build an empire and that the
process was slowed down by conservative/reactionary ideas and policies
working against modernity. Moreover, for him, those forces were
instrumental in the improvisation of government actions, policies and
intentions. By contemporary standards-those of the great powers of the
time-one cannot doubt that American diplomacy was amateurish, with a
general lack of prevision and control. Hence, while claiming, rather
vocally and universally, that they deserved a higher rank in the hierarchy
of nations, the US remained fairly conservative in terms of economic
policy at home and economic expansion. For Pletcher, it was as if the
country was walking backwards into the twentieth century where it finally
came of age. This is a fairly "traditional" view of the 1865-1898 period,
although I do acknowledge and admire Pletcher's fundamental argument which
revises "traditional" analyses of the importance of economic factors in
the shaping of US policy in the second half of the nineteenth century. In
other words, he is the author of a radical reassessment-an empowerment-of
the period as autonomous and worthy of more detailed studies of economic
expansion, yet falls back on a "traditional" assessment of the same period
in general as slowing down the progress to modernity, disregarding its
modern aspects, or at least those of some actors of the period.

What I find therefore less convincing is the underlying thesis that the US
was imperial, hegemonic in nature and by necessity, these arguments
remaining undefined. For example, there is no discussion of the ideology
of expansion in the light of a reflection on the capitalist system
established in the US. Is there a correlation between
expansion-territorial or economic-and the economic ideologies which
resulted into fumbling hesitations (free trade, laissez-faire,
protectionism)? For if expansioncan be demonstrated as consubstantial with
capitalism, perhaps one can find here an explanation as to why other
ideologies-like republicanism or democratic messianism-were so loudly
advocated yet so timidly applied during the second half of the nineteenth
century.

If one returns to economic expansion, there is another question which is
not discussed: could expansion in the hemisphere be avoided? Was it
necessarily going to mean economic imperialism with serious political,
social, and cultural implications? Were the forces slowing down economic
hegemony as strong as they seemed? Or, if economic expansion, and US
foreign policy in general were so amateurish and haphazard, yet achieved
so much, can we imagine what the results would have been if that expansion
had been planned, rational and coherent, and not tentative, experimental.
Nevertheless, what Pletcher does demonstrate perfectly is that, in the
field of economic expansion, the second half of the nineteenth is a period
of growth in complexity and implication to the development of the
hemisphere and of the US.

Moreover, he partly falls prey to a characteristic vein in most studies on
the subject, whether by nineteenth or twentieth century historians: the
taste for dichotomies, for apparently manichean descriptions which
sometimes tend to undermine dialectical reasonings; yet, instead of
opposing previous historical dogma about a clear-cut opposition between
"old" and "new" diplomacy, expansionism and imperialism, planning and no
planning, etc., Pletcher tries to reconcile those opposites by showing the
concurrence of economic expansionism and economic nationalism during the
period. By opposing intent and deed, aims and achievements, Pletcher
refuses oversimplifications which are morally relieving but intellectually
inadequate.

The most interesting implication of this view is that by tracing back the
creation of a mentality concerning economic expansion to a much earlier
period than usually believed, Pletcher sheds new light on the antebellum
era. I would suggest to name it "international nationalism" or "economic
internationalism", a notion which encompasses far more realities than the
term "informal imperialism" for instance. This notion makes it possible to
analyze contradictory policies and ideologies such as neutrality, the open
door policy, big stick diplomacy, and dollar diplomacy.

Pletcher's point is that American diplomacy at mid-century was a history
of experiments in empire. In another article and a few essays and
articles, he highlights the disproportion between the results obtained and
the disparate sometimes even suicidal policies put forward and applied
concerning economic expansion. In his mind, economic factors should not be
misinterpreted and given disproportionate importance in terms of policies
in favor of American economic interests. Thus, during the period from 1865
to 1900, economic factors did come to the fore in public speech and
government debates, like so many jingles ("we need markets"), but did the
US government and the other actors of foreign policy do what was necessary
to reach that end? The answer is clearly no. Hence, the significance
ofthis book is that it draws our attention on the process by which the
economy was rationalized not so much as an end but as a means to attain
deeper objectives: political and cultural leadership. To that end,
different routes were taken, blurring general appreciations of the period.
Thus, Pletcher neither qualifies American expansion as accidental, nor as
calculated, but suggests that they were both, a synthesis of rationality
and opportunity, by which some economic ideologies were gradually
abandoned and replaced by new ones as the nation was being "schooled" into
equating economic prosperity with economic expansion.

Moreover, by terming economic expansion as "half-hearted", I believe
Pletcher succeeds in reminding the reader that one should be very
suspicious of any comprehensive and definite judgement on the respective
importance of whichever factor of foreign policy depending on the period
considered. This book is therefore one more discussion of the
philosophical status of foreign policy in the American psyche: the refusal
of total involvement in any policy, the fundamentally democratic nature of
the country, the impossible consensus on any ideology or policy, the
passage from theory to practice and from practice to theory). Therefore-if
one adopts a world-system reasoning- Pletcher shows that the second half
of the nineteenth century is the period when the US was stumblingly
erecting a new order of its own with Latin America and Canada as the new
periphery of a periphery on the highway to become a core if not the only
core.

>From a European point of view, it is clear that Pletcher's scrupulous
scholarship provides an interpretation of the nineteenth century. One can
wonder whether his analysis can be considered as a post-Cold War,
globalized world analysis. Just as there was a Cold War analysis of the
nineteenth century. Immersed in the hesitations and ambiguities of
American foreign policy today, doesn't he tend to offer systemic views
evolving around the idea of the primacy of the economy; and to restore
complexity and dialectics to a period often described as relatively
simple.

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