In-Class Exercise:
What Kind of Great Power?
American Elites Debate America's Future in the World Order

It is July 1900.  In the wake of the Spanish American War, the United States has annexed the Philippine Islands.  It has been fighting a war for control over the Filipino population ever since.  The nation has also been jockeying with the major European powers (plus Japan) for access to the potentially lucrative China Market.  The American people have experienced the pride of their country's emergence to great power status.  But they are also beginning to understand its potential cost, dramatically underscored by a "Boxer Rebellion" in China that had resulted in the slaughter of hundreds of American and European missionaries and the besiegement of the foreign legation in Peking (Beijing).

Is America's extra-continental expansion necessary for its future economic health, or potentially harmful?  And what effect will it have on time-honored American values?  Should the United States continue its current--but very recent--policy of "informal empire--or should it adopt a new one?

These issues are on the table as the power elite--defined here simply as those Americans most aware of the issues of the day, most important for the implementation of American policy, and/or most able to mobilize American opinion--meet to discuss the future of their country as it enters the twentieth century.

In actuality, this meeting occurred in many ways--in private conversations, within organizations like the Navy League, in the halls of government, within the press--but for our purposes it will occur in class.

Student Groups
How To Prepare
Organization of the Exercise
    Orientation
    First Round Discussion
    Second Round Discussion
    Class Vote
    De-Briefing

Student Groups

Here are the student groups responsible for each perspective.  The links above each group of names identifies the interest group they represent and provides a link to a page that most closely embodies their world view.  However, in order to succeed in this exercise, it is vital to examine the other pages of the other groups as well.

1.  Pro-Expansionist Businessmen

2.  Anti-imperialist Businessmen

3.  Reform-minded Army officers

4.  "Status quo" or "Old Guard" Army officers

5.  Mahanian-minded Naval Officers

6.  Traditionalist Naval officers with a jeune ecole rationale

7.  The leadership of the American American community

8.  American missionaries

How to Prepare

For general background, see Chapters 8 and 9 of For the Common Defense and Toward an Organizational Society, 1877-1914.  The Boxer Rebellion page will outline that conflict.  The Philippine War page will do the same for that conflict.  Other lectures linked to the Military Reform and Informal Empire pages will supply additional perspective.

For the specific information needed to make your policy preference nation's, you will need to identify other groups likely to share your views or to be won over by them.  That means you'll need to examine the other pages as well as your own.  You may wish to divide the labor between members of your group, so that a member of Group 1 might specialize in the views of Group 7, etc. 

Organization of the Exercise

Orientation

The first 25 minutes of class will consist of a film clip from the 1963 film 55 Days at Peking, with brief commentary by Prof. Grimsley.

First Round Discussion

The next 20 minutes will consist of discussion within the group.  Clarify your world view and policy preferences.  How do these views affect your interpretation of the Boxer Rebellion and Philippine War?  Which of the other groups are your most natural allies?  Are there others worth talking to?

 5 minute break

Second Round Discussion

You will now have 20 minutes for discussion between groups.  If you decide to interact with more than one group, it will probably be best use representatives rather than go to each group en bloc.

Class Vote

The class will now have 5 minutes to vote on the future direction of American policy.  (The exact options have yet to be nailed down, but will definitely involving reconfirming the existing policy or scrapping it for one that seems more viable.)

Businessmen will have 3 votes each.
All other groups will have 2 votes each.

De-Briefing

Each group will offer the class a 3-minute explanation of their world view, policy preferences, whom they identified and why, and how successful was the encounter.

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Return to History 582.01 syllabus
Return to Burdens of Empire, Then and Now
 

German post cards lampooning the Boxer Rebellion