A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872

Abstract

the misalignment between the realities of American trade (and its reliance on opium) and American political rhetoric surrounding the First Opium War (1839–1842). This is powerful stuff and the best expression of Norwood’s idea of “political economy.” Minor errors like referring anachronistically to “Oregon Territory” instead of “the Oregon Country” distract slightly from an enjoyable and important chapter (p. 77). Given more space, Trading Freedommight have more fully unpacked some of its quips and reduced the risk of readers getting wrong impressions. The fleeting observation that diplomacy with China and the Sandwich Islands in 1842 formed “two expansions of US power in the Pacific in one,” for instance, begs for further explanation (p. 92). Had Americans shifted their view of China from “the Indies” to “the Pacific”? While the Chinese portion of Norwood’s source was in reaction to the British, the Hawaiian portion was a tepid response to a Hawaiian diplomatic mission seeking an affirmation of Hawaiian independence. At the same time, more space would allow for consideration of rival sea-to-sea visions like John Jacob Astor’s Astoria. The close timing of the Treaty of Wangxia in 1844 and the combination of the Oregon Treaty and the Mexican-American War in 1846–1848 seem like they should have caused a revolution, but not in Trading Freedom. Elsewhere, readers would benefit frommore elucidation instead of allusion. The “Propped-Open Door” in the title of Chapter Seven seems to be an allusion to John Hay’s “Open Door” policy, but why? Was the “irrepressible conflict” that Frederick Low suggested was coming between China and the West in the 1870s meant to be an echo of William Seward’s antebellum “irrepressible conflict,” or is the repeated phrasing a coincidence? The larger idea of the final three chapters, that the political-economic relationship between China and the United States changed in the later decades of the nineteenth century, is convincing. One wishes it were more complete. The California gold rush probably looms too large in the established narrative of anti-Chinese sentiment leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act (it is a long time from 1849 to 1882, after all), but the narrative in Trading Freedom overcorrects to the point that the gold rush barely registers. It is refreshing to see a discussion of the “Coolie trade” focusing on agricultural labor in the South instead of railroad labor in the West, but surely there should be room to discuss both. The final observation that a political abstraction of a “China trade” of obtaining Chinese goods gave way to an idea of a “China market” of selling American goods in China is appealing. One wishes there were space in the book to explore more fully the shifts in economy underlying the changing political rhetoric.