The following book review was written for the Mark Twain Forum by Kevin Mac
Donnell.

~~~~~


_The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American
Empire_. By Stephen Kinzer. Henry Holt and Company, 2017. Pp. 306.
Hardcover $28.00. ISBN 9781627792165 (hardcover). ISBN 9781627792172
(ebook).


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Reviewed for the Mark Twain Forum by:
Kevin Mac Donnell


Copyright (c) 2017 Mark Twain Forum. This review may not be published or
redistributed in any medium without permission.



Stephen Kinzer, whose journalistic credentials include stints as bureau
chief for the _New York Times_ in Turkey, Nicaragua, and Germany, has
penned the fourth book published in the last five years to explore American
imperialism by placing Mark Twain and Teddy Roosevelt in close proximity,
standing back a safe distance, and describing the result. Put another way,
the Twainian book-bag has been bulging with Teddy-Twain books lately. Well,
if this reviewer knows the signs of a live trend, and I bet I do, then
_this_ is one for sure. "Say--what is live trends good for?" the reader
might ask, and this reviewer would have to admit that live trends won't
cure warts like a dead cat, and of course, they can't compete with
spunk-water for nothing, but this particular trend bodes well for Twain
studies--and you can keep your dead cats and spunk-water.


The three books that have previously explored this territory are all cited
by Kinzer: Susan K. Harris's _God's Arbiters: Americans and the
Philippines, 1898-1902_ (2011), Philip McFarland's _Mark Twain and the
Colonel: Samuel L. Clemens, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Arrival of a New
Century_ (2012), and Mark Zwonitzer's _The Statesman and the Storyteller:
John Hay, Mark Twain, and the Rise of American Imperialism_ (2016). All
three of these books have been reviewed in the Mark Twain Forum. Harris's
book explains the historical and cultural contexts (exceptionalism, racial
and religious superiority, and America's duty to lead the world) that were
the underpinnings of the arguments that framed the debate on both sides and
demonstrated to what degree those same articles of faith are still
informing arguments today. McFarland compares six influences on the lives
of Twain and Roosevelt--war, the west, race, oil, family life, and
peace--and shows how these shaped their personalities and their actions at
the birth of American imperialism. Zwonitzer compares the biographies of
Twain and Secretary of State John Hay--with a heavy dose of Roosevelt
thrown in--to see how their thought processes and motivations were
sometimes in sync and at other times in collision as both men confronted
American imperialism from their very different vantage points, publicly and
privately.


This growing trend to examine American imperialism comes into focus when it
is remembered that the only other book devoted to Mark Twain and American
imperialism in the last twenty years (1996-2016) is Jim Zwick's
_Confronting Imperialism: Essays on Mark Twain and the Anti-Imperialism
Movement_ (2007), and the only book on the same topic in the previous
twenty year span (1975-1995) is Zwick's other book, _Mark Twain's Weapons
of Satire: Anti-Imperialist Writings on the Philippine-American War_
(1992). That this is part of an even broader trend comes into sharp
focus--based on an admittedly informal and highly unscientific survey--when
a tally is taken of the books published during those same time spans on
American imperialism in general, as well as books on Teddy Roosevelt in
which Twain is not a major player. Consulting the bibliographies and the
works cited by Kinzer and his fellow trend-setters, more than thirty books
on American imperialism are found in the last twenty years--more than twice
as many as in the previous twenty year span, and more than were published
altogether before 1975. Interest in Teddy Roosevelt and imperialism follows
along similar lines: More than fifteen books about Roosevelt have appeared
in the last twenty years--more than five times as many as in the previous
twenty year period, and three times as many as were published before 1975.
When it comes to Mark Twain studies, other than the five books already
cited, no other books have been exclusively devoted to the subject of Twain
and imperialism, although it has been a major theme in several books that
look at Twain's travel literature or his writings on China. Albert Bigelow
Paine suppressed some references to imperialism in his editions of Twain's
writings, but in recent decades there have been numerous discussions in the
form of book chapters and journal articles.


The reasons for these trends might seem obvious, but they are complex.
American expansionism and imperialism in Twain's lifetime set in motion
events that reverberate to the present day. Whenever a reverberation is
felt, a study ensues, and some conclusions are drawn. However, not every
American war or foreign policy blunder of the twentieth century necessarily
reflects the very same economic, racial, and nationalistic attitudes that
drove American foreign policy and armed conflict in Twain's day.
Historians, political scientists, and literary critics have a professional
obligation to use caution when drawing parallels between the past and
present. That said, if the blunders (and successes?) of the past cannot be
applied to our own times, why study the past? Likewise, if it is valid
research to trace the supposed roots of Twain's anti-imperialism back to
his reactions to the American Civil War, as some have done, why would it be
impermissible to trace the roots of modern imperialism back to the
imperialism of the 1890s? It seems to this reviewer that identifying the
motives and cultural influences that were at play during an historical
moment in time, and extrapolating those motives and influences backward or
forward in time and applying them to other events, is a reasonable
application of scholarship. This is fraught with no greater or fewer
pitfalls than any other historical or literary research whose conclusions
will not be convincing unless facts are proven and logic is applied, which
brings us to the question at hand: What does Kinzer bring to the table?
Given his credentials, it would be reasonable to expect Kinzer to draw
valid parallels between the imperialism of Twain's day and more recent
events.


He begins his account on June 15, 1898 at 5 PM--the very moment when
Congress was to hold a vote on whether the US would seize a foreign land,
while at that very same time the first major anti-imperialist rally was
scheduled to end at Faneuil Hall in Boston. Kinzer tracks the debates and
speeches in both places, which makes for a revealing juxtapositioning of
the arguments. There was a clamor to find new (captive) markets for
American made goods. Race was used to argue both pro and con, and George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Rudyard Kipling were
quoted to lend weight to opposing positions. "National unity, race, the
meaning of liberty, the place of the United States in the world and in
history--all of these grand themes shaped the debate" says Kinzer (13). One
side said America would pervert the meaning of our flag and suffer the fate
of the Roman Empire while the other side said America had seized all of its
existing lands from others by force, so why not seize more? As the speeches
at Faneuil Hall drew to a close in Boston, Congress held their vote in
Washington--Hawaii was annexed by a vote of two-to-one and the battle lines
were drawn.


Kinzer then introduces Teddy Roosevelt into the narrative and documents his
obsession with race and his irrepressible itch to get into a war somewhere,
sometime, somehow. Readers of the books by Harris, McFarland, and Zwonitzer
will find this well-trod ground, but it is strewn with tidbits that enliven
the story. There are the amusing attempts by the media to eventually settle
on "Rough Riders" to describe Roosevelt's troops in Cuba--after trying out
"the Fifth Avenue Boys, the College and Club Men, then the Cowboy Regiment,
and the Rustler Regiment, then Teddy's Terrors, Teddy's Texas Tarantulas,
Teddy's Gilded Age Gang, Teddy's Cowboy Contingent, and Teddy's Riotous
Rounders" (43). Less amusing are Secretary of State John Hay's affair with
the wife of Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, and the shocking fact
that President McKinley had only the vaguest notion of where the
Philippines were located. But readers of those previous books may also
question Kinzer's oversimplified conclusion that Twain was not originally
an anti-imperialist because "he was abroad during the late 1890s . . .
insulated from the tumult at home" (31) even though he later provides
evidence to the contrary.


Playing larger roles than in those previous books are media mogul William
Randolph Hearst, Harvard President Charles Eliot Norton, Presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan, and former President Grover Cleveland.
Hearst comes across as a pompous man-child. After being rejected by the
Navy he showed up in Cuba on his yacht, along with two chorus girls,
rounded up more than two dozen Cuban sailors who were abandoning a wrecked
vessel, wined and dined them on his yacht, even leading them in patriotic
American cheers before turning them over to a nearby battleship as
"prisoners of war"--and demanding a receipt documenting his pseudo-heroics.
Less amusing were Roosevelt's own over-blown heroics which included killing
an enemy soldier--never mind that Teddy shot the Cuban in the back as he
was running from American troops.


An awkward moment occurs when party-pooper Booker T. Washington talks about
racism at a McKinley rally. Less amusing is the moment when McKinley has a
"divine visitation" telling him to Christianize those who cannot govern for
themselves (87). A pivotal moment comes when Twain writes a troubled letter
to his friend, pastor Joseph Twichell, expressing his shifting views about
the Philippines, and a puzzling moment arrives when plutocrat Andrew
Carnegie and populist William Jennings Bryant become anti-imperialist
allies (although Bryan would later change sides in service to his
Presidential ambitions). The ugly mindset that drove so much of the
imperialist urge is palpable when Captain Alfred T. Mahan, better-known for
his great book on the influence of sea power on history, writes about
"people in the childhood stage of race development" (127), or when Senator
John Daniel of Virginia orates "There are people black, and white, blue,
brown and gray. There are even jotted [short] people and a kind that I
never heard of before, said to be striped . . . Not in a thousand years
could we raise the Filipino to the level of this country's citizenship"
(138). Striped? Had Senator Daniel never seen "The King's Cameleopard, or
the Royal Nonesuch"?


Mark Twain returned to American soil in 1900, and in September 1901, Teddy
Roosevelt was inaugurated as the new President after McKinley's
assassination, and that's when Twain begins making more frequent
appearances in the story and things heat up, but this part of the story is
already familiar to any Twainian who has read a couple of the previous
books mentioned. Twainians will also notice some details of Twain's
anti-imperialism missing from Kinzer's account, just as historians familiar
with this period will have already noticed things left out of his account
like US saber-rattling with England over Venezuela, the significant naval
conflicts with Germany, and the convoluted history of the Panama Canal.
Although the 1895 dispute over Venezuela precedes the period under study by
Kinzer and the Panama Canal follows it, they overlap and are an essential
part of the story of American imperialism, but they get only brief mention.
The conflict with Germany was occurring during the period under scrutiny
and was a major factor in some of the actions described by Kinzer; it is
all but ignored. Tracing the war of words, the overt political skirmishes,
the covert political machinations, the public debates, and the media's role
all make for interesting reading, if not comprehensive coverage. The end
result is sobering: 20,000 Filipino insurgents dead, hundreds of thousands
of dead civilians (many murdered by American troops), 4,234 Americans dead
and 2,818 wounded. American imperialism in the Philippines crammed in more
death and destruction in forty-one months than Spain inflicted during more
than three centuries of rule.


Kinzer's final chapter, "The Deep Hurt," describes how American imperialism
evolved after Twain and Teddy, but a single chapter does not allow him time
to fully develop his arguments. He discusses World War I and II, and
Vietnam (where the parallels and influences get murky), and the obvious
parallels are drawn between the "water-cure" of the 1890s and
"water-boarding" of today, the insurgencies and counter-insurgencies then
and now, terrorism then and now, the debate over the lawful treatment of
citizens versus non-citizens, and the expansion of Presidential war powers.
Kinzer explains how many of the early anti-imperialists' predictions came
true during the twentieth century. Massachusetts Senator George Frisbie
Hoar had predicted that imperialism would turn the US into "a vulgar,
commonplace empire founded upon physical force" (229). The effects have
been felt at home as well, Kinzer claims: military budgets have soared,
government has become highly centralized, and wealth dominates politics.
But Kinzer does not sufficiently connect the dots and explain exactly how
these things can be attributed to the imperialism of Twain's day.


One difference between imperialism of the past and present is worth noting.
Although there is a solid consensus on the facts and influences that
energized imperialism of the 1890s--the verdict has been rendered, so to
speak--this is not true of American imperialism of more recent times, and
there is even debate over whether American foreign policy today is in fact
a reflection of imperialistic aspirations. If drawing parallels between
historic moments where verdicts have long been rendered requires careful
research, making similar comparisons between the past and a present whose
verdict is yet to be rendered is speculative and festooned with uncertainty
no matter how careful the research. What Twain dubbed "the lust of
conquest" fueled American incursions into Cuba, Guam, Hawaii, the
Philippines, and Puerto Rico, but is it really clear that this "lust for
conquest" is the driving force today in the countries where America has
sent its armed forces?


Kinzer's crucial final chapter makes for interesting reading if not
persuasive argument, but he ends on a sober note that may be more
convincing than any of his other assertions stacked together: George
Washington's Farewell Address, in which the departing president warns
against the pitfalls of permanent foreign alliances, bloody contests,
overgrown military establishments, foreign intrigues, the illusions of
common interests, and entering into hostilities out of pride, ambition or
other pernicious motives. "Give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel
example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence.
Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a
nation with its virtue?" said the Father of Our Country before he lit out
to Mount Vernon, where he freed his slaves upon his death just a few years
later.