cover image UNCLE SAM'S WAR OF 1898 AND THE ORIGINS OF GLOBALIZATION

UNCLE SAM'S WAR OF 1898 AND THE ORIGINS OF GLOBALIZATION

Thomas David Schoonover, . . Univ. of Kentucky, $30 (200pp) ISBN 978-0-8131-2282-3

In contrast to the traditional globalization assertion that the world's "Heartland" lies somewhere in the Eurasian land mass, Schoonover, professor of history at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, places it in the Caribbean/Central American region that from 1492 to the present has acted as a bridge and a springboard for Europe's, then America's expansionist quest for Asian markets. The Spanish-American war of 1898, according to Schoonover, was neither an aberration nor a false path temporarily followed. It brought together most of the major themes of U.S. history: imperialism, militarism, labor exploitation, racism. Industrial technology increased production to a level where global distribution was the only way of sustaining the profits Americans had come to expect. For Schoonover, westward expansion was not a search for land and freedom, but a stage in opening America's way to the Pacific basin. The Caribbean region played a vital role in the process because it was the site for the isthmus canal that linked the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic to a Pacific region where during the first half of the 20th century, U.S. aims and policies were asserted by sophisticated combinations of economic, political, military and cultural pressure. Asian reactions were predictable: "suspicion, distrust, anger, and hatred," a legacy that Schoonover finds endures to the present. Schoonover acknowledges his particular intellectual debt to Walter LaFeber (who provides an introduction) for many of these ideas. His concise history of the U.S.'s early imperial maneuvering is scarcely comforting and should play a role in ongoing debates about current actions. (Oct.)