From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (35 page)

The Pacific Ocean was a focal point of international rivalry in the mid-nineteenth century, the United States an active participant. American merchants entered the China trade before 1800. From the first years of the century, sea captains and traders sailed up and down the west coast of the American continents and far out into the Pacific. Americans dominated the whaling industry, pursuing their lucrative prey from the Arctic Ocean to Antarctica and California to the Tasman Sea. Americans were the first to set foot on Antarctica. During its dramatic four-year voyage around the world, the Great United States Exploring Expedition, commanded by Capt. Charles Wilkes, charted the islands, harbors, and coast lines of the Pacific. The U.S. Navy assumed a constabulary role, supporting enterprising Americans in far-flung areas. United States citizens on
their own initiative carved out interests and pushed the government to defend them.
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This was especially true in Hawaii, where Americans predominated by midcentury. Missionaries and merchants began flocking there as early as 1820 and by the 1840s played a major role in the life of the islands. United States trade far surpassed that of the nearest rival, Great Britain. New England Congregationalist missionaries established schools and printing presses and enjoyed unusually large conversion rates. As in other areas, Western disease ravaged the indigenous population and Western culture assaulted local customs. But the missionaries also helped Hawaii manage the jolt of Westernization without entirely giving in. Americans assisted Hawaiian rulers in adapting Western forms of governance and in protecting their sovereignty. On the advice of missionary William Richards, King Kamehameha II mounted a diplomatic offensive in the 1840s to spare his people from falling under European domination, pushing Hawaii toward the U.S. orbit.
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A result was the so-called Tyler Doctrine of 1842, the end of official indifference toward Hawaii. Protestant missionaries had also persuaded the Hawaiians to discriminate against French Catholics. When the French government threatened to retaliate, a nervous and opportunistic Kamehameha sought from the United States, Britain, and France a tripartite guarantee of Hawaiian independence. To get action from Washington, Richards even hinted at Hawaii's willingness to accept a British protectorate. Webster and the "Pacific-minded" Tyler perceived Hawaii's importance as the "Malta of the Pacific," a vital link in the "great chain" connecting the United States with East Asia. Unwilling to take on risky commitments, they rejected a tripartite guarantee and refused even to recognize Hawaii's sovereignty. The Tyler Doctrine did, however, claim special U.S. interests in Hawaii based on proximity and trade. It made clear that if other powers threatened Hawaii's independence the United States would be justified in "making a decided remonstrance." Seeking to protect U.S. interests at minimum cost, the doctrine claimed Hawaii as a U.S. sphere of influence and firmly supported its independence, establishing a policy that would last until annexation.
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As secretary of state under Millard Fillmore, Webster in 1851 went a step further. Under the Tyler Doctrine, U.S. interests expanded significantly. Hawaii resembled a "Pacific New England" in culture and institutions.
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The development of oceangoing steam navigation increased its importance as a possible coaling station. Again threatened by French gunboat diplomacy, Kamehameha II in 1851 signed a secret document transferring sovereignty to the United States in the event of war. Webster and Fillmore steered clear of annexation and warned missionaries against provoking conflict with France. At the same time, in a strongly worded message of July 14, 1851, the secretary of state asserted that the United States would accept no infringement on Hawaiian sovereignty and would use force if necessary. Webster's willingness to go this far reflected the increased importance of Hawaii due to the acquisition of Oregon and California and rising U.S. interest in East Asia. His threats infuriated the French, but extracted from them a clear statement respecting Hawaiian sovereignty.
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The United States' concern for Hawaii was tied to the opening of China. Until the 1840s, East Asia remained largely closed to the West because of policies rigorously enforced by both China and Japan. China's isolationist policy reflected a set of highly ethnocentric ideas that viewed the Celestial Kingdom as the center of the universe and other peoples as "barbarians." The notion of equal relations among sovereign states had no place in this scheme of things. Ties with other nations were permitted only on a "tributary" basis. Foreign representatives had to pay tribute to the emperor through various rituals including the elaborate series of prostrations known as the ko-tow. In the 1790s, China began to permit limited trade—to make available to the barbarians necessities such as tea and rhubarb, its officials said—but it was restricted in volume and tightly regulated by Chinese merchants. Japanese exclusion was less ideological but more rigid. Viewing outsiders and especially missionaries as threats to internal stability, they kept out all but a handful of Dutch traders, who operated only on an island in Nagasaki harbor. Indeed, the Japanese so feared contamination that they prohibited their own people from going abroad and forbade those who did so from returning.
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By the 1840s, the European powers had far outstripped the isolated Asians in economic and military power. Eager for expanded trade and outlets for missionary activity, they challenged Chinese and Japanese restrictions. In the United States, producers of cotton and tobacco fancied huge profits from access to China's millions. Some Americans even envisioned their country as an entrepôt for a global trade in which European goods would be imported, transshipped across the continent, and then sent from San Francisco to East Asian ports by steamship.

The missionary impulse reinforced commercial drives. The 1840s was a period of intense religious ferment in the United States, and numerous Protestant sects stepped up evangelizing activities around the world. China and Japan, which seemed particularly decadent and barbaric, offered perhaps the greatest challenge. The Chinese empire was "so vast, so populous, and so idolatrous," one missionary exclaimed, "that it cannot be mentioned by Christians without exciting statements of the deepest concern." The handful of American missionaries already in China questioned its rulers right to make "a large part of the earth's surface . . . impassable." They also emphasized China's weakness and pressed for its opening—by force if necessary.
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Britain took the lead. To redress a balance of trade chronically favoring China, Western merchants, Americans included, had taken to the illegal and profitable sale of opium. Chinese officials objected on economic grounds and also because of the baneful effects on their people. When they attempted to stop the trade, the British responded with force and used their trouncing of China in the so-called Opium War as leverage to pry it open. The Treaty of Nanking (1842), imposed on China by the British, marked the end of Chinese exclusion, putting into effect a system of blatantly discriminatory unequal treaties that reversed China's traditional way of dealing with other nations. The Chinese opened five ports to trade with Britain, eliminated some of the more obnoxious regulations imposed on British merchants, and opened their tariff to negotiation. They also ceded Hong Kong and agreed to a practice called extraterritoriality by which British citizens in China were tried under their own law rather than Chinese.

Through what came to be known as hitchhiking imperialism, the United States took advantage of British gains. Shortly after the Treaty of Nanking, Tyler sent Massachusetts merchant Caleb Cushing to negotiate
with China. The two nations approached each other across a yawning geographical and cultural chasm. Contemptuous of Chinese pretensions of superiority, the administration instructed its delegation to take with them a globe (if one could be found) so that "the celestials may see that they are not the Central Kingdom." Cushing was to use religion as an excuse not to perform the ko-tow.
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Chinese viewed the United States as "the most remote and least civilized" of Western nations—an "isolated place outside the pale." Their chief negotiator instructed the emperor to use a "simple and direct style" so his meaning would be clear. Hoping to play the barbarians against each other, the Chinese were willing to deal. In the Treaty of Wang-hsia (1844), they granted the United States the same commercial concessions as Britain. Most important, they agreed to a most-favored-nation clause that would automatically concede to the United States terms given any other nation.
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During the 1850s, the West made further inroads, implementing an increasingly exploitative form of quasi-colonialism. Capitalizing on China's prolonged and bloody civil war—the so-called Taiping Rebellion lasted fifteen years and took as many as forty million lives—and rewarding its intransigence and insults with high-handedness, the Europeans negotiated at gunpoint treaties that opened additional ports, permitted navigation into the interior, forced toleration of missionaries, legalized the opium trade, and, by fixing a maximum tariff of 5 percent, deprived China of control over its own economy.

Americans then and later fancied themselves different from the Europeans in dealing with China, and to some extent they were. Until the end of the century, at least, the United States remained a minor player. Trade with China increased significantly but remained only a small portion of China's commerce with the West. American missionaries were few in number and small in impact. "Our preaching is listened to by a few, laughed at by many, and disregarded by most," one missionary lamented.
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Americans generally refrained from the use of force. Some, like minister John Ward, sent to ratify the 1858 treaties of Tientsin, observed Chinese conventions; Ward even rode in a mule cart traditionally
deserved for tributaries, earning the contempt of his European counterparts and praise from his countrymen for Yankee practicality.
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The differences were more of form than substance. The United States sometimes participated in gunboat diplomacy and regularly used the most-favored-nation clause to secure concessions extorted by the Europeans at cannon's mouth. Like the Europeans, Americans generally looked down on the Chinese—one diplomat described a "china-man" as "surely the most grotesque animal."
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Some Chinese perceived a subtle difference and tried to exploit it, but in general they made little distinction. "The English barbarians' craftiness is manifold, their proud tyranny is uncontrollable," one Chinese official observed. "Americans do nothing but follow in their direction."
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The United States took the lead in opening Japan. Encouraged by Britain's success in China and viewing Japan as a vital coaling station en route to the Celestial Kingdom, the last link in Webster's "great chain," Fillmore in 1852 named Cmdre. Matthew Perry to head a mission to Japan. Regarding the Japanese as a "weak and semi-barbarous people," Perry decided to deal forcibly with them. In July 1853, he steamed defiantly into Edo (later Tokyo) Bay with a fleet of four very large, blackhulled ships, sixty-one guns, and a crew of nearly one thousand men. He maneuvered his ships closer to the city than any foreigner had previously gone. Japanese initially responded to the "burning ships" with panic, then by official stalling. Fearing they might simply wait until his provisions were exhausted, Perry, after preliminary discussions with low-level officials, sailed to China, informing them he would return the following year to negotiate.

Perry came back in March 1854 with a larger fleet, threatening this time that if Japan did not treat with him it might suffer the fate of Mexico. Instructed by the State Department to "do everything to impress" the Japanese "with a just sense of the power and greatness" of the United States, he brought with him large quantities of champagne and vintage Kentucky bourbon to grease the wheels of diplomacy, a pair of Sam Colt's six-shooters and a scale model train to display U.S. technological advancement, and a history of the Mexican War to validate its military superiority. He employed Chinese coolies and African Americans in his
entourage in ways that highlighted the power of whites over peoples of color. He used uniforms, pageants, and music—even a blackface minstrel show—as manifestations of Western cultural supremacy. Perry's reluctant hosts most likely negotiated in spite of rather than because of his forceful demeanor and cultural symbols. Aware of the West's technological advances, they disagreed whether to resist or accommodate with and learn about this new threat. Alarmed by developments in China, they decided to deal with the United States rather than Britain and make limited concessions rather than have more exploitative agreements forced on them. Thus in the Treaty of Kanagawa, they opened two relatively isolated and inaccessible ports and agreed to provide refuge to crews of wrecked U.S. ships. The treaty got the Americans a foot in the door.
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It remained for Townsend Harris, a diplomat of undistinguished credentials with no force at his disposal, to establish the foundation for Japan's relations with the West for the remainder of the century. Arriving in 1856 as the first U.S. consul, he was shunted to the small and inaccessible village of Shimoda by a government that would have preferred he stay home. He was forced to share a run-down temple with rats, bats, and enormous spiders. Sometimes going months without word from Washington, Harris rightly considered himself the "most isolated American official in the world." Frustrated by Japanese obstructionism, he also came to admire the Japanese people and appreciate their culture, perhaps through the influence of a mistress, assigned him by the government, who may have been the inspiration for Giacomo Puccini's opera
Madama Butterfly
. Confident that with patience the West could elevate Japan to "our standards of civilization," Harris stubbornly persisted, repeatedly warning his hosts that it would be better to deal peaceably with the United States than risk China's fate at the hands of the Europeans. Eventually, he prevailed. In 1858, the Japanese agreed to permit trade, opened five new ports, established diplomatic relations, and accepted extraterritoriality. Within a decade, Harris's treaty would cause a revolution in Japan, but the immediate result was more resistance. As the first U.S. minister to the country, he faced continued obstruction and what his British counterpart called the "perpetual menace of massacre"—seven foreign diplomats were killed in eighteen months (including Harris's translator), some of them hacked to pieces by gangs of sword-wielding assassins. Ironically, as other nations arrived in Japan, U.S. influence waned. By 1861, when Harris left, it was, as in China, a junior
partner to the British.
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Although a secondary power in East Asia, the United States established significant interests and framed a coherent policy based on the principle of equality of commercial opportunity, laying the foundation for a more active and influential role in the future.