October 1, 1911

It’s the tenth month of the eleventh year of a new century.  The President of the United States, who is nearing the end of his first term, has seen his popularity slip and faces a daunting challenge for reelection next year.  When he was elected president three years ago he brought with him strong majorities in both houses of Congress, but in last year’s mid-term elections his party lost its majority in the House of Representatives and saw its Senate majority drastically reduced.  Now he faces dissension in his own party, and an array of formidable challengers in the opposition party are vying for the opportunity to run against him.

President Taft

No, it’s not October 2011, and the President is not Democrat Barack Obama.  It’s October 1911, exactly 100 years ago, and the President is Republican William Howard Taft.  The Republican Congress elected with Taft in 1908 has been replaced by a closely divided Senate and a Democratic House of Representatives led by Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri.  Clark himself is a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912, but there are other strong contenders in the field, including the newly elected governor of New Jersey, Woodrow Wilson.

Roosevelt Returning to New York, 1910

The Democratic Party, however, is not Taft’s biggest political headache.  His Republican predecessor and one-time supporter, Theodore Roosevelt, returned last year from an extended big-game safari in Africa to a thunderous welcome back home.  Since then, talk of his challenging Taft for the Republican nomination has grown alarmingly, fueled by the growth of the Progressive movement and the dissatisfaction of Republican Progressives with what they see as the overly conservative policies of the Taft administration.  So far Roosevelt has insisted that he has no intention of running, but he has criticized Taft’s policies on a number of issues.  Most recent is the issue of international arbitration treaties, supported by Taft but denounced as “silly” by Roosevelt.

Gifford Pinchot

On September 15, Taft left his summer home in Beverly, Massachusetts, to embark on a cross-country speaking tour.  He spoke in St. Louis on September 23, and on September 25 he was in Kansas City with Missouri Governor Herbert Hadley addressing the third annual Conservation Congress.  Also in attendance were three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan and Secretary of the Interior Walter L. Fisher.  Another speaker was former Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger, whose dismissal of renowned conservationist Gifford Pinchot as Chief of the United States Forest Service last year was an early irritant in relations between Roosevelt and the Taft administration.

 

Porfirio Diaz

For most of its history, the United States has been focused on domestic affairs and geographic expansion within the confines of the North American continent.  Recently it has been keeping a wary eye on Mexico, where a revolution in May of this year toppled long-time President Porfirio Diaz.  In Canada, its other North American neighbor, a new Conservative government was elected September 21 on a platform of opposition to a proposed reciprocal trade agreement with the United States.

The Great White Fleet

Since its war with Spain in 1898, the United States has joined the nations of Europe in pursuit of overseas possessions and influence.  The American flag now flies in Hawaii, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and the Isthmus of Panama, where an American canal is under construction; and the administration’s attempts to promote American trade in the Far East and Latin America have been derided by domestic critics as “Dollar Diplomacy.”  For the most part, however, the United States remains only an interested observer of the diplomatic maneuvers commanding the attention of European governments.  The expansion and modernization of the Navy, which culminated in the round-the-world cruise of the “Great White Fleet” in 1907-09, has not been matched by the Army, which exists only to keep an eye on the Mexican border and the now mostly pacified Indian tribes.

Map of the World 1911

The nations of Europe are engaged in a race for empire.  The British Empire circles the globe, encompassing India, Malaya, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and most of east Africa from the Cape to Cairo.  France governs Algeria, Tunisia, much of central and western Africa, and Indochina.  Spain, Italy, Belgium and Portugal have African colonies, the Netherlands rules the East Indies, and several European nations control “treaty ports” on the coast of China.  Only three African countries, Liberia, Ethiopia and Morocco, are independent.  Liberia was founded in the middle of the last century by former American slaves, and the governments of Ethiopia and Morocco are under the protection of European powers (Italy and France, respectively).

Kaiser Wilhelm II

Germany is a relatively recent entrant into the European competition for colonial possessions.  Since becoming Kaiser in 1888, Wilhelm II has aggressively pursued a policy of imperial expansion, leading to tensions with other colonial powers.  In the Pacific, Germany now rules the Northern Marianas, the Marshall, Caroline and North Solomon Islands, German Samoa, Northern New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, and has treaty rights in the Shantung Peninsula of China.  In Africa, it has colonized Togoland, Cameroon, German Southwest Africa (Namibia) and German East Africa (Tanganyika).  Chancellor Bernhard von Bulow’s attempt to expand Germany’s influence in Africa in 1905 gave rise to the First Moroccan Crisis.  War with France was narrowly averted with the convening of the Algeciras Conference, which resulted in a treaty confirming Morocco’s formal independence while recognizing the primacy of French interests in the country.  The present German Chancellor is Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, who succeeded von Bulow in 1909.
 

Prime Minister Joseph Caillaux

In the forty years since its humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War, France has staged an impressive recovery to become once again a major economic and military power.  Under the Third Republic it has had frequent changes of government.  Its current Prime Minister, Joseph Caillaux, has held that position only since June 27.  One feature of French political life, however, has remained unchanged: hostility toward Germany focused on the loss in the war of most of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine.  In 1892, France entered into an alliance with Russia aimed at countering Germany’s growing power in Europe and the threat posed by Germany’s Triple Alliance with Austria-Hungary and Italy.  In 1904 France joined Great Britain in the Entente Cordiale, which became the Triple Entente with an Anglo-Russian agreement in 1907.

Prime Minister Herbert Asquith

Great Britain, though concerned at all times with the maintenance of its world-wide empire, has been consumed in recent months by domestic issues.  King Edward VII died last year, and on June 22 his son was crowned King George V.  Parliament’s main interest throughout this period has been the Parliament Bill, a proposed constitutional reform to abolish the veto power of the House of Lords.  The proposal was triggered by the Lords’ rejection of Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George’s “People’s Budget” in 1909.  Two parliamentary elections in 1910 failed to result in any significant change in the Liberal Party’s narrow control of the House of Commons.  On August 10 of this year the reform legislation finally passed after the new king agreed to use his power if necessary to create enough Liberal peers to outvote the Conservatives in the House of Lords.  Now another issue has come to the fore.  In order to maintain his governing coalition in the House of Commons and get his parliamentary reform passed, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith promised the Irish Party that he would introduce and support an Irish Home Rule Bill.  That promise has now come due.  Ireland’s struggle for home rule, frustrated for over a century, may finally bear fruit.

The Gunboat Panther in Agadir

The biggest international story of the year has been the Agadir crisis, which has once again brought Germany and France to the brink of war over Morocco.  The crisis was triggered on July 1 by the unannounced arrival of a German gunboat, the Panther, at Agadir, a port on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, in apparent violation of the Algeciras Treaty.  The Panther’s visit represents another attempt by Germany to increase its influence in Africa at the expense of France.  Of perhaps greater importance, however, is its intended effect on the Anglo-French Entente.  In moving on Morocco, Germany hoped that Great Britain, which has no political ambitions in the North African sultanate, would pressure France to back down, or perhaps simply leave France to fend for itself, in either case weakening the Entente.  As the crisis has evolved, however, Great Britain has made it clear that it stands firmly behind France.

Pyotr Stolypin

Russia, like France, has shown remarkable resilience in recovering its international prestige following a devastating loss in a war.  In Russia’s case, it is the recent (1905) Russo-Japanese War, which checked Russia’s ambitions in the Far East.  Now Russia has shifted its attention to the Balkans, where it supports the attempts of Slavic nationalities to assert their independence against a weakening Ottoman Empire and an expansionist Austria-Hungary, and to Persia, where its 1907 agreement with Great Britain includes an agreement to share spheres of influence.  Russia’s political leadership, however, is in turmoil.  Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin was shot in the presence of the Tsar on September 14 and died four days later.  Little is known of the policies of his successor, former Finance Minister Vladimir Kokovtsov.  Liberal elements in Russia are hopeful that the new prime minister will institute needed reforms.

Ibrahim Hakki Pasha

The inability of the Ottoman Empire (Turkey) to defend its vast territory has drawn Italy into the contest for empire.  On September 27, Italy issued an ultimatum demanding that Turkey agree to Italian occupation of the North African provinces of Tripolitania, Fezzan and Cyrenaica (Libya).  When the Ottoman government in Constantinople rejected the ultimatum, Italy declared war on September 29.  The fall of the Turkish government followed swiftly, with Mehmed Said Pasha, head of the Young Turk Party, replacing Ibrahim Hakki Pasha as Grand Vizier.

The Great Powers in the Balkans

Austria-Hungary sparked a major international crisis three years ago when it annexed another former province of the Ottoman Empire, Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Austria-Hungary had occupied and administered the Balkan province since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin, but its outright incorporation into the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1908 was bitterly resented by the province’s large and restive Serb population.  The annexation was opposed by France, Russia, Great Britain and Italy, and seriously worsened Austria-Hungary’s relations with Russia and Serbia.  In May of this year, Serbian Army officers formed a secret society called the Black Hand, dedicated to the creation of a “Greater Serbia,” by violence if necessary.  Serb nationalism and anger at Austria-Hungary, fueled by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina, are intense and show no sign of abating with the passage of time.

Sources and Recommended Reading:
Periodicals:
American Review of Reviews, October and November 1911
New York Times, September 1911
Kansas City Star, September 25 and 26, 1911
The Outlook, October 7, 1911
Books:
Lewis L. Gould, The William Howard Taft Presidency
Henry F. Pringle, The Life and Times of William Howard Taft
Edmund Morris, Colonel Roosevelt
Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought
Stephen Howarth, To Shining Sea, A History of the United States Navy 1775-1991