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The President's determined foreign policy pronouncement focused attention upon both the lack of unanimity in business circles and a surprising capacity for independent American action in international finance. For historians, the Venezuelan Message is a challenge inviting efforts to probe the depth and longevity of cleavage between public policy sentiment in the financial and industrial-mercantile sectors of the economy.

HE PANIC OF 1893, which soon turned into a full scale depression, had many well-known effects on the American domestic scene. Less well known is the influence it exerted on the making of American foreign policy during the second Cleveland Administration. Secretary of State Walter Quintin Gresham had learned from his service as a Federal Judge to fear economic depressions, for he knew that they led to bitter laborcapital relations. He saw in the business decline which followed the 1893 panic "symptoms of revolution."1 Gresham was able to use his position as formulator of American foreign policy to combat these symptoms. The Brazilian Revolution, which broke out in September, 1893, became one of the new Secretary's most difficult problems. Though it has since faded in importance in American diplomatic history, at the time this rebellion was front page news. Mrs. Gresham later recalled in the biography of her husband that "we heard much about it at the time," and "almost daily the Brazilian minister, Salvador de Mendonga called at our apartments. "2 The United States was particularly interested in the Brazilian situation because it had signed a reciprocity agreement with the newly-formed Brazilian Republic on February 5, 1891. This agreement became "the most important application of reciprocity which actually took place under the McKinley tariff.' '3 The treaty had, however, received a bad recep

This is a most important volume of seventeen essays,* each written by an important scholar in the field. Largely bibliographical in nature, the essays cover American-East Asian relations from the earliest meetings through the 1960s. The approach is largely chronological, but important topical essays include Robert S. Schwantes’ “America and Japan,” (although this is limited chronologically), and Peter W. Stanley's “The Forgotten Philippines, 1790–1946.”

Perhaps the best single sentence defining the Constitution was, appropriately, penned by the "father" of the document in 1792. In such "charters of liberty" as the Constitution, James Madison wrote, "every word ... decides a question between power and liberty." He hoped that "being republicans," Americans would be "anxious to establish the efficacy of popular charters, in defending liberty against power, and power against licentiousness." Some one hundred eighty years later, while writing one of the few extended analyses of the relationship between the Constitution and foreign policy, Louis Henkin noted that in one critical area Madison's insight had been tragically neglected. No greater power existed than the American, and specifically the president's, ability to destroy all civilization, but books "that deal with the Constitution say little about American foreign relations," Henkin lamented, and those dealing with foreign policy have "roundly ignored" the "controlling relevance of the Constitution."' In truth, the neglect of the connection between foreign affairs and constitutional principles is relatively new. From the time of the Federalist, whose opening essays stressed the foreign policy problems that threatened the new nation's liberties and security, and of the 1792-1793 Hamilton-Madison debate over the president's powers in the global arena, through the bitter "imperialist" versus "anti-imperialist" confrontations of 1898-1900, Americans argued over appropriate foreign policy while keeping the Constitution closely in view, and they fought over constitutional principles with acute awareness of their effect on international affairs. By World War II, however, the debate had dramatically changed. Scholars led by Edward S. Corwin repeatedly raised the danger of conducting foreign policy without due regard for constitutional restraints, but Congress, the courts, and, above all, the executive ignored the warnings. In the top secret National Security Council document NSC 68 of April 1950, which became the blueprint for United States policy thereafter, the Truman administration argued that "the integrity of our system will not be

THE policy that Grover Cleveland's second administration formulated in the Venezuelan controversy of I895-I896 was a direct answer to British encroachments on United States interests in Latin America. Political and business leaders believed these American interests to be economic, strategic, and political. The economic influence on the shaping of Cleveland's policy in this dispute has not received sufficient attention. After the I893 depression paralyzed the domestic economy, United States attention focused increasingly on Latin America; indeed, it is significant that the controversy occurred during the depths of that business crisis. American interests, both economic and strategic, were threatened during the I893-I895 period by ominous British moves in Brazil, Nicaragua, the disputed area in Venezuela itself, and the small island of Trinidad off the Brazilian coast. During the same years Germany and France menaced United States advantages in Brazil and the Caribbean. Gravely concerned, the State Department finally forced a showdown struggle on the issue of the Venezuelan boundary. By successfully limiting British claims in this incident, the United States won explicit recognition of its dominant position in the Western Hemisphere. This essay attempts to trace two developments: that international dangers motivated the Cleveland administration in formulating its Venezuelan policy; that the economic crisis arising out of the i893 depression provided the context and played an important role in this policy formulation. ITis is not to say that the economic influence was the only motivating force, but that this factor, relatively overlooked by previous writers on the subject, greatly shaped the thinking of both the Cleveland administration and key segments of American society. Five considerations should serve to establish the validity of this interpretation: timing played a key role in that the year I895 witnessed a convergence of forces which brought the United States into the controversy (after the argument had simmered over half a century) and led it to assert control over the nations of the Western Hemisphere; the Cleveland administration

O objetivo do artigo é analisar a condução da política externa estadunidense com a China, entre 1890 e 1909, tomando como referencial a interpretação historiográfica dos autores revisionistas William Appleman Williams e Walter LaFeber. Propõe-se que o “anticolonialismo imperial” engendrado pelos Estados Unidos no processo de disputa pela abertura do mercado chinês está na origem dos conflitos com as tradicionais potências imperialistas. O trabalho explora, portanto, a tese historiográfica revisionista segundo a qual a política externa norte-americana radicada nos princípios da “Open Door Policy” é fundamental para a compreensão de antagonismos que contribuíram para a Guerra Fria. Abstract The aim of the article is to analyze the conduct of US foreign policy with China between 1890 and 1909, taking as reference the historiographical interpretation of the revisionist authors William Appleman Williams and Walter LaFeber. It is proposed that the "imperial anticolonialism" engendered by the United States in the process of dispute over the opening of the Chinese market is at the origin of conflicts with the traditional imperialist powers. The paper thus explores the revisionist historiographical thesis that US foreign policy rooted in the principles of the Open Door Policy is fundamental to understanding the antagonisms that contributed to the Cold War. Resumen El objetivo del artículo es analizar la conducción de la política exterior estadounidense con China, entre 1890 y 1909, tomando como referencial la interpretación historiográfica de los autores revisionistas William Appleman Williams y Walter LaFeber. Se propone que el "anticolonialismo imperial" engendrado por Estados Unidos en el proceso de disputa por la apertura del mercado chino es el origen de los conflictos con las tradicionales potencias imperialistas. El trabajo explora, por lo tanto, la tesis historiográfica revisionista según la cual la política exterior norteamericana radicada en los principios de la "Open Door Policy" es fundamental para la comprensión de antagonismos que contribuyeron a la Guerra Fría