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Enclaves of America
The rhetoric of American Political Architecture Abroad, 1900â?"1965
By Ron Robin PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-04805-5
CHAPTER 1
Prologue
HESITANT BEGINNINGS
A distinguished-looking American wandering through the streets of London during a typically dark and wet evening attracted the attention of a passing policeman. "What are you doing walking about in this beastly weather?" the officer queried. "Better go home." "I have no home," Joseph H. Choate replied, "I am the American ambassador."
This anecdote surfaced frequently during the course of an extensive campaign for expanded diplomatic representation in the early twentieth century. The virtues of the story lay in its disclosure of the quest for a meaningful American presence in other lands. The ambassador's aimless meandering suggested that although the United States had become a force in world politics, it had not developed a clear global sense of purpose. Lacking an official abode—an opportunity to etch in stone its distinguishing qualities—the country could not translate clearly its cardinal principles into a readable and attractive formula. The vignette underscored a new sensitivity to "appearances" in foreign lands, a growing awareness of the need to devise an official American image abroad. Twentieth-century American diplomacy could no longer rely on the uncoordinated good works of private citizens. A forceful policy required sustained guidelines from the government and permanent representation on foreign soil.
Parables of the nation as "home" were not unusual. American public language invariably invoked familial and domestic terms to describe the country's political agenda. Historian George B. Forgie has observed that "in a society that valued progress and equality and in which authority of any kind, no matter how mild, was on the defensive," the concept of family, hearth, and home was the one "hierarchical institution compatible with modernity and democracy." Conversely, metaphors such as "rocky foundations," a "house divided," and "homelessness" were conventional analogies for political crisis, and calls for action.
The curious aspect of the tale of the homeless ambassador is the use of the metaphor to describe political aspirations outside of a familiar geographical setting. In contrast to the traditional image of the home located within firm perimeters, this tale of "home" and "homelessness" beyond the national borders reflected a crucial transition in the American frame of mind. The story suggests that twentieth-century American society, aided by new communication technologies that had expanded horizons and conquered geographical barriers, had discarded traditional divisions of space and distance. The political metaphor of "home" had lost the restrictive connotations of the previous century, when most citizens still clung to the belief that the government had no business involving the nation in foreign affairs outside of its direct sphere of influence.
Indeed, only once prior to the turn of the century did Congress appropriate large funds for an overseas activity, the occasion being relief for victims of the Venezuela earthquake of 1812. Legislators defeated similar measures for overseas famine aid packages introduced in 1847 and 1892 on the grounds that the use of public funds for foreign aid was unconstitutional. A nineteenth-century Victorian mentality, with its emphasis on a proper place for everything and its ordering of the world into distinct and mutually exclusive categories of familiar and foreign, would have found the removal of the metaphor of home from restricted surroundings quite confusing. Nineteenth-century Americans still believed that their continent had been conquered, a rebellion crushed, and unprecedented economic gains acquired in a relatively independent and isolated fashion. Moreover, American cultural mores consistently discouraged the presentation of national interests within a global context. A strong agrarian tradition, according to historian Henry Nash Smith, "made it difficult for Americans to think of themselves as members of a world community because it ... affirmed that the destiny of this country leads her away from Europe toward the agricultural interior of the continent."
The absence of broadly based and acceptable national interests in overseas foreign affairs prior to the turn of the century had endowed special interest groups with undue influence in shaping the country's international image. As foreign affairs assumed a small place among national priorities, private groups influenced quite heavily the course of America's foreign policy. Commercial organizations, humanitarian foundations, religious missionary movements, and the occasional wealthy individual exerted an influence disproportionate to their numbers. America's status and image abroad was the sum of the cumulative and ostensibly uncoordinated efforts of its businessmen, its philanthropists, and its missionaries.
The peculiar story of the creation of official ties between the United States and Persia serves as a good example of the haphazard development of official American interests abroad. The establishment of a diplomatic mission and numerous consulates in present-day Iran was the result of a massive influx of American missionaries to that part of the world. The first American missionaries had reached Persia as early as 1835; forty years later there were twenty-four American missionary stations, and twenty-five churches, most of which supported some form of educational facility. Congress consistently rejected attempts to establish diplomatic ties to the region. Not even a direct plea from President Buchanan in 1857 could persuade Congress to send permanent emissaries to Persia. In this "house divided," North and South united momentarily in their deep suspicion of the executive branch's involvement in the affairs of the world. Given the overwhelming preoccupation with an internal political crisis, Congress found no validity in Buchanan's visions of economic benefits that could be reaped through the appointment of official American representatives.
Finally, and quite abruptly, the United States established diplomatic ties in 1882. Congressman Rufus B. Dawes of Ohio accomplished the feat by single-handedly persuading his fellow legislators to approve the presence of American representatives in Persia. Dawes pushed through legislation to establish a legation in Teheran, as well as consulates in provincial cities where American religious foundations were most active. Within weeks, Persia was transformed from a country with no official American representation to one with the most elaborate, expensive, and widespread operations of the State Department. The indefatigable congressman's efforts and successful crusade sprang from a personal crisis that had nothing to do with the management of foreign affairs. He had a personal stake in the Kurdish uprising in Azerbaijan—then part of the Persian empire—where his sister was serving as a missionary. Dawes's colleagues had been moved to establish ties with a far-removed empire as a favor for a fellow legislator rather than out of some sudden interest in global affairs. Indeed, the primary function of the country's diplomatic outposts in Persia up until the Great War was the provision of diplomatic protection for American missionaries.
As the case of Persia suggests, the United States never formulated firm grand designs for its foreign dealings before the turn of the century. Consequently, unusual and ambiguous testimonials to national power accompanied the erratic development of America's diplomatic presence abroad. The typical sign of an outsider's interest in the affairs of any given nation usually took the form of an ostentatious embassy, the gift of a statue of a national hero, or, in extreme cases, a military garrison. Americans, by contrast, marked their presence on foreign soil with urban sewage plants, rural rehabilitation projects, or civil service reform initiatives. As practical persons, those private American citizens who initiated most of the country's global activities apparently felt that the nation's international interests were best served by good deeds rather than naked symbols of power.
Even in countries in which the United States had clear-cut vested interests, Americans translated their ambitions into practical projects. The United States initiated numerous civic reforms throughout Latin America, the intent being the establishment of model, albeit hazily defined, democratic infrastructures based loosely on the U.S. prototype. The common denominator of these hemispheric designs, according to historian Merle Curti, was the lack of a clear-cut political objective. "The motives were so mixed that American aims were never clearly defined beyond a vague desire to maintain a series of reasonably stable republics free from non-American domination."
This failure to establish a formal foreign presence was aggravated by the poor quality of the Foreign Service, perhaps the final residual of the nineteenth-century spoils system. Appointments to the service were based not on merit but on political favoritism. Consequently, each new presidential administration in the late nineteenth century carried out wholesale firings of diplomatic and consular officials. Between March 1897 and November 1898, the incoming administration of William McKinley removed 238 of the 272 principal consular officers. Four years earlier, the Democratic administration of Grover Cleveland had effected a turnover of about 90 percent in the consular service. The secretary of state had little control over the Foreign Service, Richard Werking observes in his study of the makings of the modern State Department, because all major appointments to the consular and diplomatic service were subject to congressional approval. The civil service reform act of 1883, which had not affected the Foreign Service, increased the pressure for political appointments in this final bastion of favoritism. Owing to shrinking opportunities to use federal appointments as political payoffs, the exploitation of the Foreign Service reached absurd levels. In 1898, when the consul general at Berlin died, politicians from nearly every state in the union suggested replacements even before the funeral.
The state of affairs in the diplomatic branch of the Foreign Service was particularly bad. As late as 1892, the United States had no ambassadors abroad, and only a handful of ministers, most in the important capitals of Europe. The home staff of the State Department amounted to a mere seventy-seven employees, including messengers; the department's annual budget was $131,500. Because the duties of a diplomat precluded collection of consular fees or other types of graft to supplement the low salaries, only well-to-do gentlemen could afford to hold the position. Consequently, the fulfillment of their duties was linked, in part, to their investment of personal funds.
The most glaring weakness of American diplomacy was its neglect of decorum and protocol. Power and prestige in the diplomatic world were traditionally conveyed by expressive embassy buildings as symbols of the nation. But as far as the United States was concerned, the location and form of the embassy edifice depended mostly on the whims and financial resources of individual appointees. The affluent and free-spending emissaries rented lavish palaces; their more parsimonious colleagues lived in modest abodes.
This uneven representation of America abroad aroused only sparse concern in the United States. The predominantly business culture of the nineteenth century could appreciate the necessity of consular functions such as certifying invoices and other commercial duties. But the responsibility of a permanent diplomatic mission based on an elaborate ceremonial representation of the government was hard to grasp.
Change in public attitudes toward explicit representation of the American government abroad occurred during the dramatic overhauling of the country's international objectives at the turn of the century. Economic realities dictated modifications in the United States' approach to foreign affairs. In the 1880s, American exporting underwent a transition. The country, which had hitherto been a predominantly agricultural exporter, now assumed the role of the world's leading producer and exporter of manufactured goods. Agricultural exports were seasonal and directly related demands for staples, but the selling of finished goods required promotion to sustain a steady market for an equally unwavering level of production. Businessmen, who had previously relied on their own resources in capturing foreign markets, now turned to the government for help in promoting their goods. They demanded an expansion of consular and diplomatic presence abroad as leverage in the ongoing battle to capture markets. The systematic market intelligence and the business propaganda that the government could provide through its legations appeared crucial. The wrenching depression of the 1890s heightened pressures for a methodical approach to analyzing foreign countries and their markets. The unprecedented economic slump rocked the foundations of American society. A debilitated economy produced specters of social cleavage and the breakdown of the free enterprise system. Continuing economic expansion and political and social stability hinged on the expansion of the country's horizons beyond its immediate borders.
The call for diplomacy as an effective political tool coincided with significant reforms in the Foreign Service. By the early twentieth century, the State Department had been effectively purged of the spoils system. Like the rest of the civil service, the Foreign Service was transformed into a relatively apolitical, formal bureaucracy. Beginning in the 1890s, a series of congressional initiatives and executive bills produced a government infrastructure based on merit and talent rather than political favoritism. Initial reforms began at the consular level during the Cleveland administration. Based on the authority of the 1871 Civil Service Act, new consular appointments were offered only to the existing staff of the State Department or to outside applicants who had passed a civil service exam. In 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt issued a crucial executive order mandating promotions on the basis of demonstrated excellence. By mid-1906, the crucial elements of a nonpartisan, professional consular service were in place.
Reform of the diplomatic branch of the Foreign Service quickly followed the consular overhaul when Congress authorized the appointments of the country's first ambassadors in 1893. Salaries rose to realistic levels, merit exams were instituted, and the State Department developed a new organizational structure of specialized sectors based on geographical divisions. Bolstered by an esprit de corps and buoyed by heightened prestige, this new body of ambitious bureaucrats sought clarification of its mission, for the functions of American diplomacy were still amorphous.
The new breed of professional diplomat found willing allies among businessmen who, by the turn of the century, accepted the need for the visible hand of government in negotiating favorable international trade agreements and sustaining access to foreign markets. This meeting of the minds between the diplomatic corps and businessmen culminated with the creation of the American Embassy Association, a lobbying group advocating the expansion of diplomatic representation and the erection of embassy edifices abroad. The hundreds of members of the association's national advisory committee included the presidents of chambers of commerce from practically all large and medium-sized American cities, at least fifty bank presidents and directors, numerous state governors and ex-governors, members of Congress and the Senate, and chairmen and chief executive officers from scores of American corporations who stood to gain from an expanding American profile abroad.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Enclaves of America by Ron Robin. Copyright © 1992 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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