¹ “I would say that when they [the Filipinos] are fit to walk alone they should walk alone, but I would not pledge myself as to a definite date for giving them independence… I would certainly try to prove to the islanders that we intended not merely to treat them well but to give them a constantly increasing measure of self-government, and that we should be only too delighted when they are able to stand alone.” Roosevelt to H. K. Love, Nov. 24, 1900, Roosevelt Mss. “I do not believe that as the world is now constituted permanent good comes to any nation merely from the smashing of some other nation. I acted upon this belief when as President I insisted upon our promise to Cuba being kept and Cuba being freed, and when I started the Philippines on a road which inevitably led to their ultimate independence [sic].” Roosevelt to Edmund R. O. von Mach, Nov. 7, 1914, Ibid. Hereafter, all citations not otherwise identified are to Roosevelt Mss. Letters from Roosevelt will be listed as “to.” Books by Roosevelt will be listed without his name.

² The letters of Theodore Roosevelt in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress are the principal sources for studying Roosevelt's imperialist doctrine. The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, 8 vols. (Cambridge, 1951–1954)Google Scholar edited by Elting E. Morison et al. (hereafter cited as Letters), are the most important published source. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, 24 vols. Memorial Edition, New York, 1922–1926Google Scholar, hereafter cited as Works) have been used to survey speeches and other public writings. Some use has been made of Roosevelt's writings as they appeared in individual monographs and pamphlets. The best single volume on this aspect of Roosevelt is Beale's, Howard K.Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power (Baltimore, 1956)Google Scholar. All the biographies give attention to Roosevelt as imperialist but the emphasis generally is on action rather than theory. A perceptive brief analysis is that of Blum, John M., The Republican Roosevelt (Cambridge, 1954)Google Scholar. Mowiy, George F., The Era of Theodore Roosevelt (New York, 1958)Google Scholar is a recent useful survey.

³ To Edward VII, Feb. 12, 1908; Edward VII to Roosevelt, March 5, 1908; to Mahan, March 18, 1901; to Cecil Spring-Rice, Nov. 1, 1905.

⁴ “Our people do not desire to hold foreign dependencies and do believe in self-government for them. Not a European nation would have given up Cuba as we gave it up… We keep Porto Rico because we can not help ourselves.” To Silas McBee, Aug. 27, 1907. “We can not permanently see Cuba prey to misrule and anarchy; on the other hand I loathe the thought of assuming any control over the island such as we have over Porto Rico and the Philippines. We emphatically do not want it; and nothing but direct need could persuade us to take it. …As a matter of fact what I have been ardently hoping for has been not that we should reduce Cuba to a position of the Philippines but that the Philippines would have made such progress that we could put them in the position of Cuba.” To George O. Trevelyan, Sept. 9, 1906. See also Roosevelt, , “The World Movement,” History as Literature and Other Essays (New York, 1913), pp. 113–114Google Scholar.

⁵ This is the theme of The Winning of the. West. For example, Works, X, 3; XI, 274–275.

⁶ “‘It is our duty toward the people living in barbarism to see that they are freed from their chains,’ he [Roosevelt] told Minnesotans a fortnight before he became President, ‘and we can free them only by destroying barbarism itself.’” Beale, , op. cit., p. 34Google Scholar.

⁷ Letters, VII, 32Google Scholar.

⁸ “To you India seemed larger than Australia. In the life history of the English speaking people I think it will show very much smaller. The Australians are building up a great Commonwealth, the very existence of which, like the existence of the United States, means an alteration in the balance of power of the world and goes a long way towards insuring the supremacy of the men who speak our tongue and have our ideas of social, political and religious freedom and morality.” To Spring-Rice, Aug. 11, 1899. For an illuminating analysis of Roosevelt's intellectual roots see Blum, , op. cit., pp. 24–36Google Scholar.

⁹ Works, XVIII, 341–354: “Of course the best thing that can happen to any people that has not already a high civilization of its own is to assimilate and profit by American and European ideas, the ideas of civilization and Christianity, without submitting to alien control; but such control, in spite of all its defects, is in a very large number of cases the prerequisite condition to the moral and material advance of the peoples who dwell in the darker corners of the earth.” Works, XVIII, 344.

¹⁰ Works, XI, 274–275.

¹¹ To Silas McBee, Aug. 27, 1907; to Whitelaw Reid, Sept. 11, 1905; to Edward Everett Hale, Dec. 17, 1901.

¹² To Joseph G. Cannon, March 2, 1907; to Whitelaw Reid, Sept. 11, 1905; to Lodge, April 30, 1906; to Leonard Wood, Nov. 27, 1908.

¹³ To Reid, March 24, 1910. For Roosevelt's views of Egyptian nationalism see Burton, David H., “Theodore Roosevelt and Egyptian Nationalism,” Mid-America, 04, 1959Google Scholar. Roosevelt was influenced by the British Agent General in Egypt, Lord Cromer whom he attempted to persuade to visit the United States in 1903 and to present his views on the administration of the Philippines and Cuba. To Earl Cromer, Jan. 15, 1903. Roosevelt called Cramer's Modern Egypt a “really great book.” To Francis R. Wingate, July 29, 1908.

¹⁴ Works, XIV, 68; to Elmer H. Copen, July 3, 1901; to Schurz, Sept. 8, 1905; to Henry White, Aug. 14, 1906; to Sidney Brooks, Nov. 20, 1908; to Bayard Hale, Dec. 3, 1908; to Susan D. D. Cooley, Dec. 2, 1914.

¹⁵ Works, XIV, 236; to David B. Schneder, June 19, 1905.

¹⁶ “English rule in India and Egypt like the rule of France in Algiers or of Russia in Turkestan means a great advance for humanity. English rule in India has been one of the mighty feats of civilization, one of the mighty feats of the white race during the past four centuries, the time of its extraordinary expansion and dominance. That you have committed faults I have not the slightest doubt, though I do not know them — my business being to know the faults we have committed in the Philippines ourselves of which I am well aware, and as to which I am steadily trying to advance and perfect remedies.” To Sidney Brooks, Nov. 20, 1908; to James Bryce, Sept. 10, 1897; to Cecil Spring-Rice, Dec. 2, 1899.

¹⁷ To Elmer H. Copen, July 3, 1901. “… You have done such marvelous things in India that it may be you will gradually as century succeeds century by keeping your hold transform the Indian population not in blood, probably not in speech, but in government and in culture, and thus leave your impress as Rome did hers on Western Europe.” To Spring-Rice, Aug. 11, 1899.

¹⁸ To Elmer H. Copen, July 3, 1901; Works, XIV, 103–106.

¹⁹ Works, XV, 338; to Copen, July 3, 1901.

²⁰ Works, XIV, 249; to Schurz, Sept. 8, 1905; to Sidney Brooks, Nov. 20, 1908.

²¹ Works, XIV, 237. “The victory [of Japan over Russia] will make Japan by itself a formidable power in the Orient because all the other powers having interests there will have divided interests, divided cares, divided burdens — whereas Japan will have but one care, one interest, one burden.” To Spring- Rice, Mar. 9, 1904. See also Works, XX, 473–481, in which Roosevelt praised the 1912–3 report of Count Terauchi, Governor-General of Korea for the civilizing work of the Japanese in Korea.

²² To Hay, Jan. 28, 1905.

²³ To Denison, Aug. 3, 1914.

²⁴ For example: China, Roosevelt, “Mechanics’ Pavilion Address,” Beale, , op. cit. p. 181Google Scholar; Mexico, to Susan D. D. Cooley, Dec. 2, 1914; Colombia, to Thayer, July 2, 1915; Santo Domingo, to Root, April 30, 1906, and to Eliot, April 4, 1904; Venezuela, to von Sternburg, July 12, 1901.

²⁵ To Cooley, Dec. 2, 1904; to Hale, Dec. 3, 1908; Works, XII, 593.

²⁶ Works, XVII, 128. Roosevelt also recognized the appeal of the western form of government. “The influence of European government principles is strikingly illustrated by the fact that admiration for them has broken down the iron barrier of Moslem conservatism so that their introduction has become a burning question in Turkey and Persia; while the very unrest, the importance of European or American control in India, Egypt or the Philippines, takes the form of demanding that the government be assimilated more closely to what it is in England or the United States.” Ibid., pp. 113–114. On the same point Roosevelt wrote: “‘Think of the peoples of Europe stumbling upward through the Dark Ages, doing much work in a wrong way, sometimes falling back, but ever coming forward again, forward, forward, forward, until our great civilization as we now know it was developed at last out of the struggles and failures and victories of millions of men who dared to do the world's work.’” The New York Tribune, Oct. 10, 1910, quoted in Beale, , op. cit., pp. 77–8Google Scholar. See also, to Willard, , 04 28, 1911, Letters, VII, 250–6Google Scholar.

²⁷ To Reid, Sept. 3, 1908; Works, XIV, 238–9.

²⁸ To Schurz, Sept. 8, 1905; to Mahan, March 18, 1901; to William B. Cutting, April 18, 1909.

²⁹ “If China became civilized like Japan; if the Turkish Empire were abolished, and all of uncivilized Asia and Africa held by England or France or Russia or Germany, then I believe we should be within sight of a time when a general international agreement could be made by which armies and navies could be reduced so as to meet merely the needs of internal and international police work.” To Henry White, Aug. 14, 1906. See also, to Cooley, Dec. 2, 1914.

³⁰ To Archibald B. Roosevelt, Dec. 2, 1914.

³¹ Works, XVII, 133.

³² Works, XIV, 247.

³³ Beale, , op. cit., pp. 181, 76Google Scholar. The latter provides an instance of Roosevelt's economic apology for imperialism. See to Raymond Reyes Lala, June 27, 1900.

³⁴ To Eliot, Nov. 14, 1900; to Joseph G. Cannon, Sept. 12, 1900; Roosevelt, in The Wyoming Tribune, 09 24, 1900Google Scholar, Beale, , op. cit., p. 79Google Scholar. Roosevelt, , Speech at Canton, Ohio, 01 27, 1903Google Scholar, The Roosevelt Doctrine, Garrison, E. E., ed. (New York, 1904), p. 82Google Scholar; Roosevelt, Speech at Arlington, Va., Aug. 30, 1902, Ibid., pp. 79–80.

³⁵ Works, XVI, 558, 501.

³⁶ Ibid., XVI, 475, 538.

³⁷ Ibid., XVII, 129, 223, 307, 663.

³⁸ To E. O. Wolcott, Sept. 15, 1900; Works, XVI, 557–8; The Roosevelt Doctrine, pp. 79–80; to Eliot, April 4, 1904; to Hay, July 1, 1899.

³⁹ Works, XVIII, 362, 356–7; XVII, 309.

⁴⁰ To Schurman, Aug. 26, 1904; to Reid, Jan. 23, 1906; to Silas McBee, Aug. 27, 1907; to Joseph G. Cannon, Sept. 12, 1904.

⁴¹ Works, XVII, 306–8, 387, 447; to Eliot, June 20, 1904.

⁴² “We ourselves must be the judges as to when they [the Filipinos] become ‘fit’ and when it would be ‘prudent’ to approve of independence.” To Joseph G. Cannon, Sept. 12, 1904; to Eliot, April 4, 1904; Works, XVI, 557–558.

⁴³ To Eliot, April 4, 1904; to Hale, Dec. 17, 1901; to Lodge, Sept. 30, 1906; to McBee, Aug. 27, 1907; to Cannon, Sept. 12, 1904; Works, XVI, 499.

⁴⁴ To Denison, Aug. 3, 1914; to Elihu Root, Sept. 30, 1906; to Hale, Dec. 3, 1908; Letters, IV, 801; Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography (New York, 1922), pp. 530–1Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Letters, IV, 801; to Trevelyan, Sept. 9, 1906; to Henry White, Sept. 13, 1906; to Root, July 20, 1908.

⁴⁶ To Henry White, March 30, 1896; to von Sternburg, Nov. 27, 1899; to Spring-Rice, March 2, 1900; Dec. 2, 1899; to Strachey, Jan. 27, 1900; to Oliver, July 22, 1915.

⁴⁷ Roosevelt, , America and the World War (New York, 1915) pp. 247, 161Google Scholar; to Thayer, July 10, 1915.

⁴⁸ “In international matters to make believe that nations are equal when they are not equal is as productive of far-reaching harm as to make the same pretense about individuals in a community. Keir Hardie has attempted to insist that in Natal the native Kaffirs should be treated on a political equality with the white colonists. The practical effort to do this would result inside of thirty days in the annihilation of nine tenths of the black men at one another's hands and the return of Natal to the condition in which it was when the white colonists first went there and found a vacant land, thanks to the extermination of the people by Chaka's Zulus.” To Gooley, Dec. 2, 1914.

⁴⁹ Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star (New York, 1921), p. 193Google Scholar; Letters, VIII, 400–1.

⁵⁰ To van Hise, Nov. 15, 1918.

⁵¹ To Michailovitch, July 11, 1918; National Strength and International Duty (Princeton, 1917), p. 90Google Scholar.

⁵² To Taft, Dec. 29, 1908; National Strength and International Duty, p. 91; to Spring-Rice, Feb. 18, 1915; Works, XXI, 409; “The Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Empires must be broken up if we intend to make the world even moderately safe for democracy. There must be a revived Poland, taking in all Poles of Austria, Prussia and Russia; a greater Bohemia, taking in Moravia and the Slovaks; a great Jugo-Slav community including Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the Rumanians in Hungary should become part of Rumania and the Italians in Austria part of Italy. The Turk must be driven from Europe and Christian and Arab freed. Only in this manner can we do justice to the subject peoples tyrannized by the Germans, Magyars and Turks. Only in this way can we remove the menace of German aggression which has become the haunting night-mare for all civilizations, especially in the case of the small well-behaved liberty loving peoples.” Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star, pp. 65–6; to Michailovitch, July 11, 1918.