One hundred years ago, in the spring of 1842, while most citizens were concerned about impending war with Mexico over Texas and with the Oregon controversy, when political strife engendered by the Tyler administration seemed closer to home, our government was taking first formal notice of China, through the offices of the United States Navy.
American business interests were already fairly prevalent in the Orient, carried there a half century and more before in New England sailing vessels. A consulate had early been established at Canton, but there were no treaty rights or understandings as such. Concern was felt for such interests. The Opium War had broken out and word in Washington was of brewing trouble.
Seeking swift retribution for losses due to the war, the British were blockading off Hongkong and had attacked several other ports of China. Our nationals and their property were equally threatened but, time and distance intervening, accurate knowledge of the situation, or of steps required, was completely wanting in the United States.
Commodore Lawrence Kearney,1 dispatched to the scene in the Constellation with the Boston accompanying, arrived off Macao in March. The war was over save for formalities, but he saw in the ensuing peace a chance to advance American interests. With a forthright quality, which seems to have characterized navy diplomats from pirate-infested Tripoli to Nazi- harassed Vichy, he first put our own outposts of trade in order by terminating further participation in opium smuggling by a minority of his countrymen.
At the same time, he cultivated both British and Chinese friendship, being so successful in this course of dealing that, while Viceroy Ke, the Emperor’s representative, was telling him to set his own indemnity figures for Hongkong merchants, Queen Victoria’s commissioners were keeping him posted on the progress of their own negotiations.
Indeed, when the latter obtained the treaty which was to put Hongkong under the English rule for a hundred years and grant uninterrupted trade in the principal ports of China, he immediately obtained copies and forwarded them home. Meanwhile he urgently pressed for equal trading privileges for Americans and to this Ke acceded, apparently desiring to complete the agreement to such effect directly with the American naval commander.
Kearney demurred to this, feeling the remainder of the affair should be left to other officials of his government, and, having laid the foundations for the treaty later made through Caleb Cushing, he sailed for home.
Nor was his entire mission complete. On calling at Honolulu, he learned that King Kamehameha III had ceded his Sandwich Islands kingdom to the British. Despite his friendly relations with England during the preceding months in China, Kearney apprehended unfortunate results for the United States from such action and immediately set about persuading the Hawaiian monarch to reconsider the matter. His obvious success ended this unforeseen interlude and he continued his voyage.
Thus, through two strokes, one planned and the other unintended, both requiring initiative and assumption of responsibility, were highly important twin objectives attained in Pacific waters, before gold was discovered in California or wagon trains labored over the plains and Rockies to settle our west coast. That the significance of each act is appreciated in 1942 is undoubted.
For the patient and smart foresight exhibited by Kearney, together with the enterprise of his countrymen, both before and after his time, as well as a certain highmindedness which has marked our dealings in the Orient, should serve as added background to the fight which we are now waging in this scene of world conflict. No amount of occasional bungling and lack of established policy in such affairs detracts from its importance.
Lord Cornwallis was hardly divested of his sword at Yorktown when Salem ships were trading for tea and silk and household ornaments as well in the pungent ports of the East Indies, at Whampoa, Amoy or Ning-po. Certain financial weaknesses of the British East India Company may have accounted for Yankee success in competition with that monopoly and the one enjoyed by the Dutch; but compete our ancestors did from 1785 down through the days of fast clipper ships until the Civil War and maritime neglect ended a rather glorious period.
That the withdrawal of the charter of the East India Company and dominance by the British government itself of China trade, as evidenced by the cession of Hongkong, was met by the treaty of Commodore Kearney was in no small way responsible for this, at least in its later years. So, too, the manner in which it was accomplished lent prestige in Oriental opinion long surviving the diminishing American trade in the final years of the last century.
Likewise American influence was strong in Hawaii some years before Kearney’s visit there. It was in 1820 that the first group of New England missionaries arrived to set up what has since become that hierarchy of family and business acumen, and unwittingly create a modem little empire of sugar cane and pineapple, now also the chief bastion of defense for our western coast. In passing it might be mentioned that, some opinion to the contrary, the very fact of the economic wealth of Hawaii may well have added to its military strength. The territory is at least not merely an armed appendage and its return in monetary as well as other contribution cannot be gainsaid.
Distance, strange customs, unfamiliar peoples and religions, racial mixtures of island aboriginals and descendants of ancient civilizations, as well as varying tides of American interests have long combined to make problems arising in and on the other side of the Pacific among the most complex. That this is true for those well grounded in such matters is only an indication of the reasons why Far Eastern questions have, at times, been sadly mishandled by those charged with this portion of national policy.
It further emphasizes the simple directness of Kearney which cannot be explained away entirely on the ground of less involved times and methods. The success which attended his mission should, if for no other reason, be remembered today for that very quality.
Naturally our real participation in Pacific affairs came neither with the Opium War and consequent treaty rights, nor with the annexation of Hawaii, nor in the Philippines in 1898. Nor did it come with attempts to forestall Japanese expansion before and after World War I, nor with the Kellogg-Briand Pact. For a people so imbued with hereditary trading instincts and the concomitant doctrine of freedom of the seas, this interest commenced and continued because of a consuming desire to gain commerce and markets and to spread democracy and Christianity alike.
Preoccupied as we have been with myriad domestic matters and closer relationships with European peoples, Oriental affairs have ever aroused only sporadic general attention, but the events of today must be looked upon as the culmination of a hundred years and more. Pearl Harbor and Manila in 1941-42 have served to bring the entire thing home to every American, as the Panay incident of a few years before had given a momentary and somewhat overlooked warning.
At the same time, there are those who date our real entrance in the Far East with the taking of the Philippines. They point to the necessity of the Caribbean Sea for continental defense and argue that, had the Spanish-American War ended upon its original note of Cuban liberation, we could have well foregone this distant step, as well as the annexation of Hawaii, thus avoiding such proximity to muddied and ill-charted Oriental waters.
There is only partial truth in such belief. Located so close to China, returning to us in trade but a small part of the expense attendant upon teaching and giving the art of self-government to the inhabitants, it does seem incongruous that we should not have long ago either abandoned the Philippines or seen to it that the life line extending to them was better controlled.
For better or worse, and the latter seems presently indicated, the entire question of these islands is inescapable, regardless of what it represents in American foreign relations ; but it may seem a less bitter potion if it is recalled as only one phase of the entire Pacific story.
In the complete and broad picture of our dealings in the Far East, Commodore Kearney’s accomplishments more truly represent a definite part of progress at its best, being so strongly delineated that we may now appreciate his mission as bringing about two things, of nearly equal weight:
(1) It insured for this country top ranking opportunity in the Orient, after many years of monopoly by Europeans, and, by its very nature, exalted American prestige throughout the East, this latter a thing of no mean importance in lands where “face” is more than lightly esteemed.
(2) It established the basis for new, distant frontiers, all later to be acquired as bulwarks for defense, not only of freedom of action upon Eastern seas, but also in the final analysis, of the United States itself. Lest any believe this an exaggeration, the implications of the advent of the airplane to the field of sea warfare need only be mentioned.
With regard to the first point, those who cite figures to show the relatively slight importance, to our total wealth and income, of the trade with the Far East, especially that with China herself or the Philippines, ought to recall several other considerations. By no means the least of these is that commerce with any portion of the globe is not severable.
Furthermore, so long as any part of our mercantile dealings and the less pecuniary interests of education, religion, or medical assistance has any chance of success, we may expect Americans to engage in such pursuits, and at any comer of the world. It may not bring complacency at home, but it would be surprising if these propensities of our forefathers should become retrograde in a modern world. To quote Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” “that which we are, we are.”
In this day of manufacturing consumption of raw materials, unless we are to remain static, the sea must be kept free for traffic in all parts of the Orient, as well as the rest of the world, where such are to be found. Any encroachment thereupon has speedy and sharp results in every American household as all have learned in recent weeks. Deprivation of automobile tires is only one of hundreds of such repercussions.
All of these thoughts are merely suggested by such anniversaries as those of the Navy’s cruise under Kearney. No assiduous examination of the whole story is here intended, but every step of the story, inept blunders as well as cheering accomplishments, can well be pondered, and certainly must be in the days of rebuilding which shall some day come.
At present it is sufficient to remember that commerce and other relationships have been going on between the Americas and lands across the Pacific ever since the days of 1585, when the first silver-laden Manila galleon sailed on the northeast trades from Acapulco to the Philippines, there to exchange her cargo for the desired products and riches of the Far East. Those voyages continued down through 1815, the ships making them having been one of the most fabulously sought prizes of the sea. Their routes overlapped the New England traders of post-Revolutionary days and missed by a scant fifty years the inauguration of steamer schedules from San Francisco to Honolulu, Kanagawa, and Hongkong.
Nor is there room for doubt that this same trade will emerge again in augmented fashion with a return of peace. Indeed, if the war’s end brings to the United States anything like the merchant marine revival predicted by many, together with greater networks of ocean airlines, our many-sided interests on the other side of the world should proportionately exceed anything heretofore seen. All of which suggests the tremendous responsibilities to be assumed by the United States in the matter not only of a fair and just peace for those people whose lands have been attacked, but also for insurance of those equal opportunities by which every nation concerned may benefit.
Such was Kearney’s aim in a rather smaller way, and the sequel of his voyage bears recalling in this regard. After Cushing took the treaty home for ratification, it was returned to China for exchange by Commodore James Biddle of the Navy, the civil officer originally entrusted with the task having fallen ill. It was on Biddle’s way back from this duty that he stopped at Yedo Bay on July 19, 1846, to attempt an opening up of Japan. Someone has referred to the visit as a “knocking on the Japanese door” which was later opened by Commodore Matthew Perry.
To say that Japan profited so well by the growth of this commercial acquaintance that she finally came near blasting all our interests and connections in the Orient is, perhaps, beside the point now. But it bears striking proof that added wisdom, increased strength, and constant purpose in transpacific matters might have been a forceful preventive. It also serves as an answer to those who advocated lucrative Japanese trade at the expense of other interests.
International intercourse, whether it concerns dollars, goods, or foreign missions can never be limited, it seems, by whim or strict rules; and it requires adequate and well-prepared defenses as the only insurance against violent interruption. Regardless of how trite the statement may be, the efficient gundecks of the Constellation and Boston played no small part in Kearney’s friendly relations with Viceroy Ke and the British, the latter probably not unmindful of what the cannon of the former vessel might accomplish.
No pretense is here made that Kearney, or anyone else of his day, was so endowed with vision as to conjure up the time when outlying bases, many thousand miles at sea, even just off the coasts of possible hostile states, might play an important part in our continental defense. Nor is it supposed that he viewed Hawaii in such sense, although to do so would have been less imaginative.
At the same time, he was perfectly conscious of the high significance of confident action and inculcation of respect for the Flag in maintaining free commerce and free seas. With that knowledge he certainly laid firm foundations upon which his countrymen were later to build, or have the chance to build, the outposts which faster surface craft, speed of communication, and the airplane have made absolutely essential to national security.
Timely preservation of Hawaii as such a base has already reaped benefits now impossible to measure. Debatable as is every hypothetical question, strong belief is held by experts that had we not now possessed those islands, a third of the way toward Japan, her attack would have come directly at the shores of California, or at Panama, or in both places. For this reason alone, it would be difficult to find a better example of the result of intelligent, immediate, and responsible action.
Allowed a continuance of vacillating policy, Kamehameha might finally have done one or another of innumerable things. Loss of control of these islands to any foreign power would have ever been detrimental. With the air arm of sea power in the ascendancy, their possession by the Navy is hardly less important than that of similar base sites in the Caribbean area.
This view of the Pacific region naturally presupposes acceptance of certain basic theories of international viewpoint. It was, perhaps, Admiral A. T. Mahan, of the U. S. Navy, who first clearly pointed out that a nation either progresses or declines in wealth, power, and integrity—that it can never remain static. Accused by many of pure imperialism, this was his belief, based upon a thoroughgoing appraisal of the history of nations. Appreciable and sincere doubt has been cast upon this and similar doctrine ever since the formation of the republic.
Regardless of the pendulum swings of popular feeling and governmental policy in this connection, present and future speeds of communication and transportation place an ever increasing emphasis upon economic interdependence of nations. Mahan’s views are apparently borne out in a world at peace; certainly in one at war. “Isolation” cannot be subjective from a national point of view. It must be forever objective, depending not upon governmental desire or policy, but rather upon actions taken by other countries.
In this light, it would be hard to compare the value of the twin results of Kearney’s mission. Very possibly the sound basis for trade treaties in the Orient and preservation for American control of mid-Pacific islands supplement each other in importance. The need for sea control through possession of or influence over near-by lands and islands is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than by our failure to consistently emulate his enterprise.
That our present situation in the Pacific would be far different had we possessed or controlled the former German islands is axiomatic. The present is no time for recrimination, but the award to Japan of the Marianas, Caroline, and Marshall groups as the result of World War I secret understandings and treaty-granted “mandates” based thereupon has been a long-felt disappointment.
Recollection that Woodrow Wilson, who strongly opposed further southward encroachments of Japan, argued against this with every insistence is not enough. It may smack of hindsight to suggest that serious threats of force then, when the Navy was comparatively very powerful, would have obviated severe losses now. At least the entire lesson should bear fruit in future dealings with that section of the world. Nor is it amiss to point to Kearney’s performance as an apt pattern.
That there should have been a background of diplomacy, bordering on statecraft, in the sailor of 1842 was no strange thing. Without benefit of cable or wireless instructions were as slow as the sailing ship herself, and entire scenes were usually- changed upon arrival. Although his experience had not been broad along such lines, Kearney had the example and training of a self-reliant service behind him.
Indeed it would have been difficult for him to escape the influence of those several officers whose lives and deeds still inspire the Navy. His enlistment as a midshipman at 18 years dated from 1807, and his first service was under Commodore John Rodgers and in the Constitution and President. In the Enterprise, and later along the South Carolina coast, he naturally fought in the War of 1812, a lieutenant in its closing months. After that conflict, he warred against pirates in the West Indies and Gulf waters.
When Greek pirates endangered commerce in the Levant, Kearney found himself given command of the light sloop Warren, of 18 guns, and dispatched to the scene. The manner in which he broke up their strongholds and captured their vessels is credited with dispersal of these marauders of an otherwise peaceful world. Some years of shore duty and advancement to captaincy preceded his hoisting the broad pennant and leadership of the mission which took him to Canton and Honolulu.
Taking the story by and large, with strength and weakness in years past and the infinite gains which may inure in the future, Lawrence Kearney’s name and actions can well serve as a high example for his successors in the service as well as for the American people again face to face with terrific tasks in the Pacific.
And it seems indeed one of those fitting coincidences of fate that, within a few weeks of Pearl Harbor, a destroyer of the United States Navy bearing his name should have acquitted herself with distinction and strength of shipbuilding in another, colder sea, in later, more serious times.
What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction in action is the sense of discipline. This includes respect for and confidence in his chiefs; confidence in his comrades and fear of their reproaches and retaliation if he abandons them in danger; his desire to go where others do without trembling more than they; in a word, the whole of esprit de corps. Organization only can produce these characteristics. Four men equal a lion.—Du PiCQ, Battle Studies.
1. The name seems to have been spelled with and without the final “e.” Its spelling here conforms to its appearance in Navy Lists as printed in American State Papers, Naval Affairs, and correspondence of his therein appearing at page 1116. Appleton’s Encyclopedia of American Biography omits the final “e” as did the Navy Department in naming the U.S.S. Kearny, conforming to the spelling of the name of his equally distinguished relative, General Philip Kearny.