I think most Americans believed in 1900 that they were very well positioned to
take advantage of what was going on in the world. Within a very short period
of time, literally months, the United States had become a major power in the
Pacific and on the Asian mainland. And the Secretary of State, John Haye, said
that whoever understood China would have the key to world politics for the next
five centuries. And now McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt thought that they were
beginning to understand China. Roosevelt said that this was going to be the,
quote, "Pacific Century", unquote. And as a result of McKinley's diplomacy in
the previous 24 months, it looked as though the United States was going to be
in an excellent position with a very important naval base in the Philippines in
order to take advantage of this Pacific Century. So I think Americans were
looking westward. We were no longer looking eastward. We were looking
westward as we had throughout much of the 19th century, only now west was no
longer the Rocky Mountains and California, as it had been earlier. West was
now Hawaii, which we had just annexed in 1898. West was the Philippines, west
was Asia. This was our New West, as it became known in 1899 and 1900. This
was the west that was going to be the important arena, "the great theater in
the world hereafter", as one American politician put it, and it looked as
though the United States was going to be able to play a major role in that
theater.
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