Fordham University Press 1898: Prelude to a Century

This work examines the year 1898 as the crucial precursor year to the twentieth century, "The American Century". It covers the war in Spain; the acquisition of territories in the Caribbean and the Pacific; Theodore Roosevelt; and numerous other personalities who were part of the times. Review "Written with a vigorous narrative style and an eye for the apt quotation and telling detail. I am reading it with great pleasure." -----James M. McPherson, From the Publisher 1898, prelude to "The American Century." The twentieth century is often referred to as "The American Century." In this new book, John A. Corry examines how the year 1898 was the watershed that set the scene for the century that would follow. It was 1898, in a decisive victory in a war with Spain lasting less than four months, that the United States acquired territories in the Caribbean and Pacific, marking its first major step toward becoming a world power. Other important events led to rivalries and alliances that determined the outcome of the First World War. Corry takes the reader from the shores of Cuba and the Philippines to the deserts and jungles of Africa, from the chancelleries of Europe to the halls of Congress. It tells the story of the larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt as he put the American Navy in a war footing, led his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, and, fifty years before Harry Truman, waged a tumultuous "whistle stop" campaign to win election as New Yorks Governor. Other memorable! ! characters who emerged in this year include the ambitious twenty-three year old Winston Churchill, Emile Zola, who exiled himself from France to escape imprisonment for his accusations against the military establishment in the Dreyfus case, and the intrepid Jean Baptiste Marchand, who led a small French contingent through more than three thousand miles of African wilderness only to be ordered home from his post on the Upper Nile. From the Back Cover 1898 was the year in which the United States first became a world power. In a decisive victory in a war with Spain lasting less than four months, it acquired territories in the Caribbean and Pacific, and positioned itself so that the Twentieth Century became to many "The American Century". This was not the only way that 1898 set the course for the next hundred years. The year also saw the first flowering of the "special relationship" between the United States and Great Britain that so significantly influenced the next century. By contrast, the mecurial Kaiser William II's decision to expand the German navy together with Germany's rejection of an English effort to foster better relations set the two countries on a collision course that eventually led to war. Meanwhile the resolution of a dramatic confrontation between England and France in the southern Sudan led the two countries to end their long-standing colonial rivalry and later join as allies in two World Wars. Finally, the turmoil created by France's Dreyfus Affair evidenced the strong anti-Semitism in supposedly enlightened Western Europe that foreshadowed the Holocaust. It tells the story of the larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt as he put the American navy on a war footing, led his Rough Riders up San Juan Hill, and waged a tumultuous "whistle stop" campaign to win election as New York's Governor. Other memorable characters include the cautious President William McKinley, whom events transformed into a committed imperialist, the ambitious twenty-three-year-old Winston Churchill, who emerged for the first time as a public figure, novelist Emile Zola, who exiled himself from France to escape imprisonment for his accusations inthe Dreyfus case, and the intrepid Captain Jean-Baptiste Marchand, who led a small French contingent through more than three thousand miles of African wilderness only to be ordered home from his post on the Upper Nile.