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HIST 112 US 1877- present Chapter 19 Part 5 Big Stick Diplomacy — Transcript

by History Class with Dr. W · 2,172 words · 417 segments · language en · Watch on YouTube

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0:01[Music]
0:12while attending the world's fair
0:14in buffalo new york in 1901
0:18president william mckinley was shot
0:21by a would-be assassin
0:25while he was severely wounded he did not
0:27die right away
0:29the vice president at that time was
0:31theodore roosevelt
0:32we're going to be talking a great deal
0:34about him in just a few moments
0:37it wasn't clear the severity of
0:40mckinley's
0:41wound at that particular time and so
0:43teddy roosevelt
0:44as was his way uh decided
0:48to head out into the mountains with his
0:51sons
0:52for a long awaited hiking trip
0:56while he is in the mountains mckinley's
0:58condition
0:59worsens and in fact mckinley dies
1:03and so some poor sap has to
1:07hike up into the mountains and go find
1:09teddy roosevelt
1:10to let him know that in fact he is
1:14the president of the united states
1:17this little anecdote tells us a little
1:19bit about
1:20teddy roosevelt uh he is certainly
1:23the most outdoorsy sort of rugged
1:26dynamic
1:27president up to that point he was the
1:30youngest
1:31president up to that point he had a
1:34reputation
1:35as a daring military soldier
1:39at the same time this is a little
1:42reckless isn't it some might question
1:45the decision
1:46to choose that moment to
1:49hike off into the mountains with your
1:51sons when the president of the united
1:53states is
1:54mortally wounded but
1:57these qualities in some ways define
2:00teddy roosevelt he
2:01is a man of action he is in some ways
2:04a little reckless driving forward he is
2:07an
2:08irresistible force
2:11he was also an intellectual while not
2:14a professional scholar he had written
2:17a number of expansive histories prior to
2:22becoming president he wrote
2:24many volume history of the american navy
2:27and many volume history of the american
2:30indians
2:33teddy roosevelt rose through new york
2:37politics
2:38much as his sort of distant cousin
2:42franklin roosevelt who will follow him
2:44later he served as police commissioner
2:47in new york city i believe i talked
2:49about him
2:51accompanying jacob reese the
2:53photographer
2:54walking the streets of new york city and
2:57examining crime scenes in the
2:59in the slums in the middle of the night
3:01he was the assistant secretary of the
3:03navy
3:04just before the spanish-american war i
3:07mentioned his experience with the rough
3:08riders
3:09and then governor of new york
3:12before being selected to run on the
3:15ticket with mckinley
3:16as vice president teddy roosevelt
3:20was an incredibly charismatic figure
3:23commanding speaker again young dashing
3:27uh franklin roosevelt would describe him
3:29later
3:30saying that at every funeral he must be
3:33the corpse
3:35at every wedding he must be the bride
3:38gives you a sense of the kind of person
3:40teddy roosevelt was
3:42right we all know these kind of people
3:43the sort who anytime they walk into a
3:46room
3:47all the attention is on them they kind
3:49of suck the air
3:50out of the room in fact we have a phrase
3:53um describing this for teddy roosevelt
3:57and that is that he transformed the
3:59presidency into what we call the
4:02bully pulpit the bully pulpit
4:06prior to teddy roosevelt one could make
4:08the argument that the most
4:10prominent politicians in washington dc
4:12were perhaps
4:14senators congressmen a supreme court
4:17justice
4:19and the president was just one of these
4:21actors there were
4:22many others of similar stature
4:26not teddy roosevelt he stands head and
4:29shoulders above
4:31everyone else this is the bully pulpit
4:34and yet he does have this kind of
4:37child-like reckless spoiled stubborn
4:41way of acting sometimes that led at one
4:44point the british foreign minister to
4:46comment
4:47the president of the united states is a
4:50boy
4:50of 12. so this is the man
4:54who assumes control in the white house
4:57in 1901 his diplomacy is often described
5:02using the cliche of the big stick
5:06walk softly and carry a big stick as the
5:09saying
5:10went so more or less
5:13let people go about their way unless
5:16they need straightening out and then we
5:19will implement
5:19force we will sort of bully people
5:21around or push them
5:23around there are a number of examples
5:27of this big stick diplomacy and i'll
5:29share a couple of them
5:31here the most famous perhaps
5:34is the episode leading to the panama
5:38canal and so there is a little bit of
5:41background
5:42necessary for this the united states had
5:44been contemplating
5:46a some sort of canal across the isthmus
5:50of south america for decades
5:53really since the gold rush and the
5:55development of california
5:58people had been looking for a quicker
5:59and easier way to get out to the west
6:03certainly military escapades like the
6:06spanish-american war
6:09heightened the need for something like
6:12the panama canal
6:13and so the united states had been
6:14looking for a long time
6:17at negotiating a route across
6:21south america somewhere i mean the
6:22problem is these are foreign nations we
6:24don't own this territory we don't
6:25control them
6:26so we had to negotiate if we were going
6:29to build a canal like this
6:32which leads us to panama specifically
6:35panama ultimately is going to be carved
6:37out
6:38uh of the nation of colombia and so
6:41after looking at any number of different
6:44possible routes
6:45for digging a canal we had settled on a
6:48path
6:49through colombia and for
6:52several years actually we had been
6:54negotiating with colombia
6:56to try to secure the territory so we
6:58could dig the canal
7:00these negotiations kind of stopped and
7:03started rose and fell
7:05and in 1903
7:09uh teddy roosevelt and the americans
7:11thought to be very close
7:13to securing a deal with colombia
7:17at the last minute columbia backed out
7:20decided they didn't want to do this and
7:23teddy roosevelt
7:24furious sent the american navy
7:28down off the coast of colombia and on
7:31november
7:323rd 1903 with american
7:35backing the panamanians
7:38launched a revolution against colombia
7:42it was a bloodless revolution lasted all
7:45of 49 minutes
7:47the colombians understood that with
7:49american warships at the ready
7:52they had no chance of preventing this
7:54revolution
7:56and so very quickly after that the
7:59united states
8:00secured the rights to what would become
8:03the canal zone
8:04and were able to begin undertaking the
8:07process of
8:08building the canal but this is the big
8:11stick at work
8:12we will try to negotiate we will try to
8:14come to terms
8:15but when things fell apart roosevelt was
8:17very quick
8:18to implement american force
8:23the building of the canal itself also
8:25tells us a little bit about
8:27roosevelt's character and perhaps in
8:29some ways this
8:30big stick the project of digging and
8:34building the canal
8:36which was an incredibly arduous
8:39engineering
8:40challenge
8:43had kind of stalled the the process was
8:46moving very slowly there were lots of
8:48different problems
8:50we discovered that mosquitoes
8:54and malaria became a huge problem we
8:56were digging this canal and people are
8:59down there in the muck
9:00and mosquitoes were everywhere and so
9:03for
9:04several years the project really was
9:06going nowhere
9:08until finally in 1906 uh
9:11frustrated and tired of reading these
9:14negative reports about the progress
9:16being made on the canal
9:18teddy roosevelt put on his
9:21uh hip boots hip waiters and went down
9:24to panama
9:25himself the thought being i'm going to
9:28dig the darn thing on my own if it's not
9:30getting done
9:31this is the sort of thing that teddy
9:32roosevelt would do
9:34and there are lots of pictures of him uh
9:36going about this process you see one of
9:38him here he's in the
9:40uh the tractor or whatever that machine
9:43is he's actually going to
9:44try to dig the canal on his own
9:48well we might say this is sort of
9:50foolish and rash and and
9:52childish and even silly it also
9:56sparked the nation to action
9:59uh it drew the attention of the country
10:01we were just captivated by this guy
10:04this man of action and following that
10:07the digging of the canal
10:08became a great source of national pride
10:11it became
10:13a project of huge note
10:16in terms of what the country was doing
10:18and by 1915
10:21uh at last the canal was complete
10:24but it is largely roosevelt's personal
10:27direction and drive that sparked
10:30the the process of building the canal
10:36this is just a map illustrating the
10:41route of the panama canal across
10:44the isthmus of central america
10:47and you get a sense from this of the
10:49challenges
10:50presented to the engineers who built the
10:53canal
10:54uh it's not readily evident in this but
10:57there's also a significant
10:58change in elevation from one side to the
11:02other
11:02the uh one ocean is something like a
11:05hundred feet
11:06higher than the other and so the
11:08challenge was
11:09how do you actually raise gigantic
11:13warships
11:14up a hundred feet or more and the answer
11:17is in the
11:18ingenious series of locks that are
11:21built in the panama canal perhaps some
11:23of you have been
11:24through the canal it's one of those
11:27things on my bucket list i've never done
11:29it but i've
11:30seen videos of it and read about it it's
11:32an intriguing
11:34engineering process you pull the ship
11:37into one of the locks
11:38and then it's pumped full of water and
11:40like a bathtub you know raising
11:42everything up
11:44the ship will rise it can then move
11:46forward into the next
11:48lock where the process repeats itself
11:50again
11:51truly a fantastic engineering marvel
11:59it is in many ways under teddy roosevelt
12:01that the united states
12:03really embraced an active role in terms
12:06of diplomacy
12:07all around the world this idea of big
12:09stick diplomacy is part of that
12:12as another example in his 1904 state of
12:16the union address
12:17roosevelt announced a policy that would
12:19become known as the
12:21roosevelt corollary and corollary
12:25meaning kind of an extension or
12:26an addition to something that already
12:29exists and in this case
12:30it's the roosevelt corollary to the
12:32monroe doctrine
12:35and what roosevelt says essentially
12:38in this state of the union address is
12:40that the united states
12:42reserves the right to intervene
12:45anywhere in this hemisphere to
12:49protect our own interests and so
12:52in essence what roosevelt is doing is
12:55extending the plat amendment remember we
12:57talked about
12:58the plan amendment in cuba extending the
13:01plat amendment to
13:03all of latin america again this is a
13:06very aggressive
13:07uh sort of policy and we did act on it
13:10in a number of different cases
13:11intervening
13:12um in other parts of latin america
13:16roosevelt is very active as well in the
13:19far east
13:20and in asia i'll just comment very
13:23briefly here
13:24i encourage you to review your textbook
13:26which goes
13:27uh into more extensive detail
13:30particularly about
13:31the united states relationship with
13:33japan
13:35which was on again off again during this
13:39period we were concerned about
13:41a number of issues with japan
13:44from japanese immigration into our
13:48country to the treatment of japanese
13:50immigrants
13:51in the united states and so on
13:54uh roosevelt was very concerned about
13:57what was happening in asia and in fact
13:59he was awarded the nobel peace prize at
14:02one point
14:02for overseeing peace between japan
14:06and russia but as part of this idea of
14:10the big stick
14:13the kind of footnote on this policy was
14:15came in 1907
14:17when roosevelt sent what we called the
14:21great white fleet
14:23on a worldwide tour the great white
14:26fleet
14:27was the magnificently outfitted and
14:30updated
14:30american navy you see a picture of it
14:33there below chugging across
14:35the ocean roosevelt was sending the
14:39fleet around the world as a message to
14:41everyone
14:42that this is what the united states has
14:45now we are now
14:46a power of note but this was
14:49particularly of interest
14:50uh when the navy was sent to
14:53japan again affairs with japan sort of
14:57rocky at times
14:58some people were worried you know here
15:00you are sending our navy
15:02pre-announced into uh the harbors of
15:05japan
15:06they could do anything at that point if
15:08they choose they could
15:09attack and yet they didn't everything
15:13went well everything went peacefully
15:15and in fact this great white fleet
15:18another example of
15:20roosevelt's big stick diplomacy was a
15:23smashing success
15:27this cartoon in many ways summarizes our
15:30approach to diplomacy in the age of
15:32teddy roosevelt the big stick in the
15:35caribbean sea
15:37roosevelt strides across the caribbean
15:39with
15:40absolute confidence wielding his big
15:43stick
15:44as necessary this philosophy
15:47is not far from the way of thinking that
15:50will lead us
15:51in the near future into world war one
15:54the next
15:55chapter that we will be studying the
15:58united states was not yet
16:00a great world power even on the
16:04verge of world war one but it was
16:07certainly
16:07on the rise it was coming on uh what we
16:11will see
16:12as we discuss the policies of woodrow
16:14wilson
16:15at the beginning of the next chapter is
16:18that he was not
16:18so eager to engage the united states
16:22in any war but especially a major war
16:25like world war one uh of course
16:29the way things played out during the war
16:31it became inevitable
16:32that the united states participated
16:36[Music]
16:57you

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