Review: John Fass Morton - SEA POWER AND THE AMERICAN INTEREST

Review:

 

Sea Power and the American Interest – From the Civil War to the Great War 

John Fass Morton. Annapolis, Naval Institute Press, 2024. 312 pp. Notes. Illustrations. Bibliography. Index.

 

Reviewed by John S. Naylor

 

This, is a book about context. 

 

In Sea Power and the American Interest, Mr. Morton exhaustively provides context, describing the enduring influences that industry, politics, finance and monetary policy, technology, and extractive resources had on U.S. foreign policy through the Gilded Age and into the Great War. 

 

Anyone studying U.S. intervention overseas during the era will encounter a phrase akin to “to protect American interests”. Morton’s work fleshes out what these interests were and how these interests contributed to the nation’s growth—in providing an in-depth explanation how they developed, he affords a greater understanding of the intersection of industry, economics, politics, and military action in the late 19^th century.

 

Morton makes his argument in three parts; ‘An Industrial Republic in Pursuit of Expansion and Sea Power’; ‘The Navy and the Progressive Institutions of the American Century’; and ‘Internecine European War and the Arrival of America’s Navy Second to None’. 

 

The first part exhibits how the American Civil War saw the advent of national systems. During this period, regional structures grew in support of the national conflict. Rail systems, telegraphy and banking were all central to the war effort and would be essential to national expansion in ensuing decades. 

 

Following the war, the U.S. identified commercial competition with Great Britain and France in the Western Hemisphere as a challenge—at risk initially were the pre-war agricultural exports, but rail development at home and abroad would become the new competitive market where excess capital would be invested. The booms, busts and consolidation in American rail, combined with technological advancement in iron and steel, shaped both commerce and naval development.  

 

After showing how the American development of railways in many ways mirrored the ongoing development of Britain’s maritime capabilities, Morton delves into the inevitable shift in American focus from domestic commerce to hemispheric and international markets at the end of the century. The author makes the argument that Britain ceded influence in the Caribbean in return for influence over the tip of South America.[1] The U.S. would regarded a number of Caribbean and Central American countries as financial protectorates—as investments in these countries were made, and defaults ensued, the U.S. took on the mantle of enforcing collection of debts through the seizure of custom houses in port cities beset by conflict. 

 

None of this would have occurred without the growth of big financial markets; the growth of American industry and technology, and the continued exploration and exploitation of extractive resources, would garner captains of industry, robber barons, and oligarchs enormous wealth, and contribute to the incomparable growth in the U.S. economy. As the political discourse settled the question of whether gold or silver would back the economy, and a migration of influence in international banking from London to New York, U.S. investment banking defined national interests. With the closing of the American frontier, excess U.S. capital continued to seek new markets. Investments in steel, rail, communications, and extractive resources would seek influence on the  Asian continent, in competition with the Great Powers. 

 

With an inward focus on development, the U.S. lagged behind European navies in being able to protect interests over the seas; financial diplomacy and currency reform stood in for warships, enabling trade to follow the loan. The U.S. identified markets in China as the next great opportunity and found itself allying itself with Britain against other powers to maintain the “Open Door policy”. The defeat of the Russian army and navy by Japan exposed American weaknesses in region, forcing naval planners to develop strategies to counter Japan.  

 

In Morton’s second movement, ‘The Navy and the Progressive Institutions of the American Century’ he examines how the cycle of economic boom and bust in the 19^th century forced the U.S. to regulate money supply and provide liquidity in times of crisis through the formation of a central bank. Bankers built upon their own growth in investments, at home and abroad; in steel, rail, and extracted commodities, they created a mature, and more stable environment in which to realize greater returns. 

 

As finance matured, and oligarchs rolled in wealth, the progressive movement sought to control some of the largess through anti-trust legislation and prosecution. But, in the interest of the national defense, some trusts escaped concerted attention. Steel was essential to both rail’s expansion, and the growth of the “New Navy”, both of which contributed to the “collective good” economically. Trust busters could only go so far in regard to the national interest. 

 

Morton rightly identifies oil and petroleum as the next great advantage exploited as an American interest. Ohio and Pennsylvania were the center of the U.S. oil industry up until Spindletop was tapped in East Texas in January of 1901. Oil would change the face of rail and sea transport; as a fundamentally denser source of energy, providing greater range and power, and requiring smaller crews, fuel oil was easier to transport and transfer than coal. Just as shipping had become less susceptible to the vagaries of wind and sail took as steam took over, oil freed fleets from the shackles of coaling stations and bunker crews. 

 

The new reliance on oil required the intervention of government in establishing stable reserves, including access to public lands, and creating a national strategic reserve. It also increased interest in rail and extractive resources in Mexico. After the flex of sending a coal-fired Great White Fleet around the world, the upstart oil industry established itself as a fundamental “sinew” in the U.S. economy. 

 

U.S. entanglements with Mexico became the most complex amongst the Latin American countries prior to the First World War; with its wealth of extractive commodities, and a civil war spilling over America’s southern border, the Mexican situation festered through the Taft administration’s “Dollar Diplomacy” into Woodrow Wilson’s school of progressivism. As Mexico sought independence from the control of U.S. capital, American oligarchs in steel, rail, and oil, fought to maintain their investments and interests south of the border. 

 

Because Mexican rebels understood the strategic nature of her oil resources, they took good advantage of the situation with the government and the U.S. This disruption, more serious than any defaults made by other Caribbean and Central American countries, led to European navies evacuating citizens working in Mexico, and a concentration of the U.S. fleet off Mexican shores in 1914. In the defense of “American interests”, Bluejackets and Marines landed, followed by an Army of occupation, and eventual regime change, resulted in a new Mexican government. 

 

Morton shifts focus to the interests in the Philippines, where the U.S. was ill-prepared for the conduct of civil administration; however, it was prepared for exploitation of cash crops in the islands, and expanded consumer markets. The rapid expansion of the Army during the war with Spain, the enduring obligations of a rebellion in the Philippines, and infrastructure development central to nation building in the islands, finally resulted in the formation of a larger, standing, peacetime Army.

 

In the wake of the war with Spain, the State Department focused on Caribbean countries’ debt defaults, and the Navy focused on fighting as a fleet—these moves addressed shortfalls as they expanded and modernized their force in the face of challenges made by Germany both in the Pacific and Caribbean. As with the new standing army, the Navy occupied a larger role in the national interest. 

 

The debt crisis in Venezuela in 1903 forced the Navy to begin planning with the Army for future conflicts. Disputes with Japan led this alliance to focus on what would become War Plan Orange, which would dominate war planning in the Pacific for the next three decades. Without great civilian oversight Army-Navy policy begat policy essential to national interests. 

 

This construct would only elevate as the growth of the Navy accelerated. As the British withdrew from the Pacific to focus on Germany closer to home and granted the U.S. control over the construction of the isthmian canal at Panama, the General Board of the Navy continued to press for a fleet composed of 48 battleships, well exceeding any need anticipated by progressive politicians. This request did little to increase Congress’ interest in further expanding the fleet, even as the threat of war in Europe waxed. 

 

In the third part, Morton displays how the maturation of the banking system allowed for stability as Europe descended into madness. In abandoning the “Open Door policy”, the U.S. could focus on matters closer to home, particularly in the Caribbean, effectively making the U.S. “Latin America’s banker”. Where the primary exports to Asia were foodstuffs, in the western hemisphere finished-goods exports dominated, turning parts of Latin America into financial protectorates. 

 

Morton dives into the financial crises caused by the declaration of war in the summer of 1914, and how the mature U.S. financial markets dug themselves out of immediate debt, turning themselves into Britain and France’s creditors. And the author points out that none of this growth in influence was a result of naval policy. Although British naval policy did affect American interests, as American wheat supplanted traditional continental sources, British blockade efforts, including the use of mines, led to German adoption of unrestricted submarine warfare by January of 1915. This of course would result in the entry of the U.S. into the war in 1917.

 

Morton backtracks to explain where U.S. merchant shipping weaknesses developed well before the Great War began. Following the U.S. Civil War, when Britain was dedicating subsidies to shipping and shipbuilding, the U.S. invested in the development of the national rail system. U.S. rail barons eventually expanded their reach into control of shipping lines and control of American wharves and docks as the number of U.S. merchant ships dropped. Morton notes that after losing its antebellum “sea habit”, railroad-controlled steamship lines carried over 93% of the shrinking U.S. tonnage. 

 

Following the 1912 presidential election, American progressivism firmly established itself with the ascension of Woodrow Wilson. The political state joined big industry and big banking in forming the national policy, eventually mobilizing merchant shipping required for the European war. After a German submarine sank the Lusitania in May of 1915, Wilson’s room to negotiate the war without the entry of U.S. troops began to shrink. The dichotomy between the interests of the Mahanian General Board of the Navy, looking for a decisive fight on the high seas with a great power, and the Wilson administration, seeking a means by which merchant shipping bound for Europe might be protected, became moot with Wilson’s declaration that the U.S. would have a Navy “second to none”. This declaration challenged primacy of the Royal Navy and, in later years, would have an impact on the peace agreement and U.S. foreign and naval policy following the war. 

 

Morton sums up his analysis with the statement that U.S. national interests were formed by the “sinews” of its economic base. Steel, then oil, both drove and profited from our national foreign policy strategies in the expansion westward, in the Caribbean and Latin America, and in prosecution of the war against the Central Powers, our national interests remained constant. Lastly, he expresses his beliefs in where the modern Navy needs to invest itself to develop and exploit the sinews of our future role in the world and economy. 

 

And so, we understand Morton’s focus on context. He does not shy away from the minutiae that contributed to U.S. interests. Even a casual student of history recognizes the role rail played in the development of the American West, but may not have an understanding how development of rail in foreign countries was an expansion of American rail.[2] More importantly, where rail was laid, trade would follow, more so than it would following other financial investment. ‘Financial Imperialism’ was more important to American interests than ‘military imperialism’ before the U.S. found itself in the position of owning colonies. 

 

Morton ties the efforts of the captains of industry, robber-barons, and oligarchs directly to events in foreign countries in the protection of their interests. He also shares how certain commodities weighed in establishment of our interests.[3]. Morton traces the development of interventionist policies, and the maturation of “big” government, and how it morphed a small Navy and a small army into the muscle behind “national” defense policies. In this we understand the establishment of large standing military forces, which were traditionally anathema to American sensibilities. 

 

As stated, this is a work of context. It spends scant space on the conduct of military operations, or naval and military technology. “Sea Power” provides a useful bedrock of American history knowledge for military and naval historians covering the late 19^th century, supplying information that they will not find in battle histories, or primary sources connected with the services. It broadly covers the development of U.S. naval power as a subsection of sea power, itself a subset of the national interest, which is important, because for the great majority of the era it was financial power, not battleships or fleets, that gave the U.S. entrée to the ranks of the great powers. Morton assiduously tells us what was involved when U.S. forces mobilized “to protect American interests” overseas between the Civil War and Great War. 

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[1] The Hay-Pauncefote Treaty removed Britain from the trans-isthmian discussion in 1901. 

[2] In USMC history, Panama plays a fundamental role in emergency expeditions, even prior to the advent of the U.S. canal construction. The largest Marine mobilization between the Civil War and the Spanish War was in 1885, when two battalions of Marines deployed, under the command of the Colonel Commandant, to Panama to secure the rail line from the Atlantic to the Pacific. 

[3] Foreign guano is not a common item of discussion in military history or current events, yet in the days before chemical industry was mature, it was an essential source of fertilizer for American agriculture. Kerosene inherited the role of fuel for lighting from whale oil and tallow but lost its market share as electric lighting arrived. The evolution from iron to steel and the nickel required to alloy it was essential to its durability and strength, and essential to the wealth of industrialists