Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is a superb account of the complexities involved in America's annexation of Hawai'i in 1898. The author details the growing public debate, which included far more than the intrinsic value of this splendid North Pacific archipelago. Instead, the issue was at the core of the late nineteenth-century debate over empire-building in the world's largest ocean. U.S. relations with Japan were at stake as the two emergent imperial powers both saw the contested Pacific Basin as falling within their respective spheres of influence.
Professor Morgan stresses the importance of strategic factors--Alfred Thayer Mahan's advocacy of naval supremacy, the deployment of an all-steel navy, the need for coaling stations and bases on insular dependencies, and, especially, the great power rivalry between Japan and the United States--in securing Hawaiian annexation. The author's research was thorough and grounded in primary sources, while revealing of the latest scholarship. His conclusions were fresh, measured, nuanced, and logical. The writing was clear and crisp.
A fuller understanding of this complex, controversial topic makes Morgan's book required reading.
Thomas J. Osborne
Author of "Empire Can Wait:" American Opposition to Hawaiian Annexation, 1893-1898 (1981).
Click Here to see more reviews about: Pacific Gibraltar: U.S.-Japanese Rivalry over the Annexation of Hawai'i, 1885-1898 (ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy)
The first detailed examination of Hawaiian annexation in a generation, Pacific Gibraltar offers a fresh analysis and provocative conclusions about major episodes in this complex story. Based on a sweeping reevaluation of new and existing sources in three countries, it addresses such key questions as the extent of U.S. support for the overthrow of the monarchy, including the USS Boston's mysterious return to Honolulu to land troops as the revolution began, and President Cleveland's attempt to restore the queen using naval forces to intimidate the white provisional government. Morgan also examines the U.S.-Japan annexation confrontation in 1897 and the final acquisition of the islands in 1898 as the culmination of growing appreciation for Hawaii s value to U.S. defense.An ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Book published in partnership with the Association of Diplomatic Studies and Training.
