Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (Yale Historical Publications)

Rating:
Summary: surprisingly stupid
Review: I bought this book out of my interest in foreign policy. I was very surprised by the stupidity of the title. Well, once you read it it just becomes more stupid. Its amazing that it was published and that this lady ever got a contract and a PHD. This probably shows how useless and pointless current historical debates are. Don't buy it!!

Rating:
Summary: Taken a Bit Too Far
Review: Kristin L. Hoganson's Fighting for American Manhood does an interesting job of walking the thin line between gender definitions, interpretations of discourse and traditional explanations of behavior in two fields that have been difficult for many newer historians to break into, international relations and military history. Although primarily a work explaining American motives in the first, Hoganson does bring some new insights on the latter to light. The work is a somewhat successful attempt to synthesize the various answers historians have previously put forward to the question, "Why did the United States go to war in 1898?" Hoganson suggests that by understanding the very real phenomenon of cultural perceptions of "manliness," and how these perceptions affected the nation as a whole and those in power in particular, we may reach a more well defined answer.
Acknowledging the validity of many of the previous explanations put forward by historians, Hoganson weaves many of them together. For example, while acknowledging that annexationist aspirations were relevant to the political actors of the day, she points out that many of the underlying reasons for these aspirations may be ascribed to gender fears. Politicians wanted to appear "manly," and there was no better way to appear this way to the voting populace than to adapt a "jingo" platform. With a similar stroke she places explanations revolving around Social Darwinists in a broader picture by illustrating that at the root of many of the fears of social degeneracy and racial competition were definitions and discourse which is clearly painted with gender based pigments. In these areas Hoganson hits her stride and in large part succeeds in redefining the scope of our understanding to include gender.
She does not, however, hit the mark in a few areas. Primarily because it appears that she never really aimed in that direction. Specifically, her treatment of the economic and strategic explanations for the Spanish-American War appear to be missing. While she does make a series of valid observations about the gender biases of several of the key actors in these areas, these observations are not relevant as causation. Naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan was almost certainly extremely gender biased, and in all likelyhood was also a racist, but neither of these were central to his reasoning. As evidence that the strategists carried little weight she points to the fact that the Army was not expanded in conjunction with the massive naval expansion of the period. One is left wondering why naval officers and supporters would have pushed for a large army when their whole theory of geostrategic influence and security rested not upon the occupation of land, but on the domination of sea lanes. Many of the same problems apply when she addresses economic factors. Overall, her dismissal of geostrategic and economic factors rests primarily upon a loose scaffold of secondary sources and the very real gender biases of the primary actors.
This is a moderate work of synthesis that potentially serves as the starting point for a new generation of interpretation. Hoganson has met her goal, she set out to lay a new cornerstone for the interpretation of American imperialism at the turn of the century and she has largely succeeded. Gender is a valid lens through which we may view many of the factors contributing to the American imperialist experiments. What now remains is for Hoganson or others to follow this up with a valid and in-depth gender based analysis of the factors she dismissed or glossed over, military and economic.

Rating:
Summary: An insightful twist to American Imperialism
Review: This book has offered a very insightful twist to understanding American foreign policy and congressional thought during the Spanish-American and Phillipian-American wars. Hoganson has given a nice view of how manliness and the fear of losing it contributed to war ideas and how the rise of women's suffrage movements pushed a male dominated political cirle into thoughts of war in order to maintain their manhood. Very well written and her sources are extensive and flawless.