Grover Cleveland's New Foreign Policy : Arbitration, Neutrality, and the Dawn of American Empire

This book would not have been possible without the help of a great many people. I am particularly indebted to my PhD supervisors, Richard Crockatt and John Charmley, who guided me through a large part of the process of researching and writing and provided constant encouragement and astute insight. I must also thank the librarians, archivists, and staff at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, the British Library, and the University of East Anglia Library, who facilitated much of the research behind this book. I am indebted to everyone who read all or part of the manuscript in its various forms over the last six years. This includes Andrew Preston, Thomas Otte, Catherine Barter, and the anonymous reviewers; their feedback and suggestions on how to clarify my argument and improve the quality of my writing were gratefully received. The research for this book was made possible by bursaries from the School of American Studies and the Arthur Miller Centre, both at the University of East Anglia. Beyond this financial support I would like to thank my friends and colleagues within the school, some of whom have now moved on to pastures new, for their advice and guidance throughout. Finally, I have depended throughout this process on the support and encouragement of many friends and relatives. My parents, Richard and Janet Cleaver, have been the source of unceasing emotional, intellectual, and financial support, and my sister, Laura Cleaver, has provided both sound advice and a sympathetic ear. I am deeply grateful to them and to all the friends and colleagues who have helped make this book possible. ## \* \* \* Grover Cleveland is hardly a well-known figure in United States history. Even to historians he is generally known for one of two reasons: He was the only president in American history to serve his two terms non-consecutively and he weighed, at his heaviest, over 300 pounds. Such trivia does not serve to throw much light on either the man or his policies. It seems almost obligatory for any biographer of Grover Cleveland in the last 30 years to include in the introduction some reference to the various polls that have been conducted among historians in order to rank the presidents of the United States by achievement or ability. In such exercises, we are told, Cleveland has consistently scored well (one biographer describes how a 1966 poll placed him as "High Average"), and yet he has not survived in the public consciousness because the events he oversaw were not significant enough to excite broad interest. 42 Cleveland has shared the fate of almost all the chief Whereas the Spanish-American War has long been studied as a turning point in American history, Grover Cleveland's foreign policy. Nick Cleaver's study illuminates the dynamism and ideals of Cleveland's diplomatic moment, revealing their continuities with the engagement and expansionism of the McKinley presidency. The Spanish-American War has long been viewed as a turning point in the history of American foreign relations, the moment when the United States, led by William McKinley, finally shook off its post-revolutionary isolationist principles and embarked on a new course of foreign engagement and colonial expansionism. Comparatively overlooked has been the fact that the same factors that drove the US to war in 1898 - industrial growth, commercial expansion, and increased public interest in the wider world - had already powerfully influenced foreign policy in the years before the outbreak of war. As Nick Cleaver shows in this illuminating political and diplomatic history, McKinley's predecessor in the White House, Grover Cleveland, spent four years pursuing a different approach to foreign policy that acknowledged the changes taking place in American society at the end of the nineteenth century, even as it sought to harness them in very different ways "The Spanish-American War has long been viewed as a turning point in the history of American foreign relations, the moment when the United States, led by William McKinley, finally shook off its post-revolutionary isolationist principles and embarked on a new course of foreign engagement and colonial expansionism. Comparatively overlooked has been the fact that the same factors that drove the US to war in 1898 - industrial growth, commercial expansion, and increased public interest in the wider world - had already powerfully influenced foreign policy in the years before the outbreak of war. As Nick Cleaver shows in this illuminating political and diplomatic history, McKinley's predecessor in the White House, Grover Cleveland, spent four years pursuing a different approach to foreign policy that acknowledged the changes taking place in American society at the end of the nineteenth century, even as it sought to harness them in very different ways."--Goodreads.com. Front Matter....Pages i-ix Introduction....Pages 1-24 The Hawaiian Revolution, 1893....Pages 25-61 Walter Q. Gresham, 1893–1895....Pages 63-97 Nicaragua, Venezuela, and the Monroe Doctrine....Pages 99-145 The Cuban War of Independence....Pages 147-195 Conclusion....Pages 197-211 Back Matter....Pages 213-256