Reviews for Power across the Pacific

The average rating for Power across the Pacific based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-10-02 00:00:00 Brent Dunlevy The United States’ rise to its current size and stature occurred in fits and spasms. Controversial as many periods have been, one period that has been closely scrutinized and criticized by historians and non-historians alike is the antebellum period of western continental expansion, often identified with the US program of manifest destiny. In The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War, David M. Pletcher considers the US acquisition of Texas, the Oregon territory, the New Mexico territory, and California and their relation with the pivotal 1846-1848 Mexican American War which directly and indirectly netted the United States all of the said territory. Through his analysis, Pletcher evaluates several factors which heavily influenced this period of expansion, most importantly including the maintaining precarious global balance of power, US political complications especially as it related to the issue of slavery, and US president James Polk’s motives and decision making. Pletcher’s scholarship is heavily backed by primary sources and lends itself well to the period’s precarious balance of power. Use of the papers from Great Britain, France, Spain, Mexico, along with private papers from almost every diplomat involved in the United States’ “diplomacy or annexation” lends his historical analysis major credence. That Pletcher so aptly utilizes his resources is easily recognized by the plethora of footnotes he includes. British and French diplomatic interventions regarding the independence of Texas and further, its relations with Mexico attempt to maintain the status quo in the western hemisphere. He refers to Mexico as “the sick man of North America.” Its weak and inefficient government, disparate political forces, being wracked in debts, and feeble hold over its north in the face of an aggressive northern neighbor concerns the British and the French. In US overtures to annex the Republic of Texas, the British and French worried about further US intentions in the western part of the continent. The Europeans feared that American expansion might render Mexico unable ability to pay debts, interrupt valuable European commercial interests (including the Hudson Bay Company’s monopoly on the Northwest’s natural resources), deny them of possible territory ambitions in North America, spread slavery into captured Mexican territories, and offset the European power status quo. According to Pletcher, diplomacy, especially that of Britain usually attempted to contain the United States in some way. Such efforts nearly resulted in war with the United States, especially in the instance where Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel’s cabinet and Polk could not reach a settlement on Oregon as late as 1846. The implication of slavery on expansion was another avenue of exploration for Pletcher. The question of the annexation of Texas during the John Tyler administration meant adding another slave state to the already sensitive balance. Secretary of State John C. Calhoun, a southerner adamantly fought towards its annexation, yet when Calhoun was displaced by the Polk administration, he was less insistent on the annexation of other territories less certain to be slave states. His contributions to the Senate during Polk’s term were crucial in that opinions waivered on the subject of annexation, especially among the Democrats. The Polk administration’s diplomacy was especially affected by conflictions in Congress on the Oregon issue and on the issue of war and peace with Mexico. Perhaps the central figure in Pletcher’s analysis and his addressing of concerns with the justification for expansion and the Mexican American War is that of Polk. Largely, Pletcher sees Polk as a weak diplomat and a personally flawed leader, but one that in four years accomplished all of his inaugural objectives including the reduction of the protectionist tariff, the settlement of the Oregon question, and the acquisition of California. Polk’s assertive stance in the Oregon question and in the terms of war and peace with Mexico spilt much blood and nearly cost the United States war with Britain, but in the end, netted him results. Pletcher ultimately determines that Polk’s main objective was not to conduct war with Mexico with the aim of territorial aggrandizement, but merely to negotiate with Britain and Mexico from a position of power. Pletcher’s book is definitive on the period in that it skillfully weaves the US “diplomacy of annexation” together in a coherent way, despite its many actors and issues. He maintains both an international and domestic approach while considering American and British politics and economic issues. While occasionally there is some confusion in the books flow, especially as he jumps around time trying to make necessary connections (the events during the Martin Van Buren and Tyler administrations are especially jumbled), The Diplomacy of Annexation is highly readable and thought provoking.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-01-20 00:00:00 Donovan Mike A little dull. Read it for a Civil War class. Interesting history on Texas that I never received before.