13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The Partnership that wasn't, September 14, 2008
This review is from: The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners (Hardcover)
David Fromkin is one of my favorite historians. After a stint as an expert in International Relations, who wrote on the subject (
The Independence of Nations), Fromkin settled down as a historian, particularly of the various crises surrounding the First World War. Fromkin's best work is without question his 1989 opus
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East. A well researched and detailed study of the emergence of the modern Middle East, it is an example of everything history should be. Even his weaker historical works, such as
The Way of the World: From the Dawn of Civilizations to the Eve of the Twenty-first Century and
Kosovo Crossing: American Ideals Meet Reality On The Balkan Battlefields, are illuminating and well written.
Fromkin's last work, 2004's
Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?, was one of his better books. Although it was based primarily on secondary sources, it distilled a mass of scholarship to offer a lucid and intelligent account of the Great War's outbreak.
Fromkin's new book "The King and the Cowboy" can be seen as a prequel of sorts to "Europe's Last Summer". Most of the latter book is a detailed account of the immediate origins of the 1914 crisis. In "The King and the Cowboy", Fromkin traces the emerging of the war coalitions as Germany's power in the continent rose, leading its neighbors to align against it.
Unfortunately, "The King and the Cowboy" is the weakest of the six Fromkin books I have read. Like "Europe's Last Summer", it is based almost entirely on secondary sources. Unlike "Summer", it neither summarizes the findings of a vast literature for a popular audience, nor advances a challenging thesis. All that the book offers is a triple biography of Edward the seventh, King of England, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany, and Theodore Roosevelt, and a problematic - and razor thin - thesis trying to tie them together.
The beginning is agreeable enough; Fromkin offers a biography of Edward the VII, who was born as Albert Edward, and was known to everyone as "Bertie". Fromkin juxtaposes Edward's life with that of his nephew, Wilhelm ("Willy"). Contrasting them makes sense, as their antagonistic personal relations - Willy had hated Edward - mirrored the relations between their countries, which grew further and further apart. Unfortunately, Fromkin never really delves beneath the skin of his characters, and we are left unable to understand Willy's hatred of his uncle. Bertie's feelings towards his cousin remain equally mysterious. Fromkin's discussion of the political realities of the 19th century is quite interesting, but unfortunately all too brief - Fromkin's focus is on the sexual escapades of Willy and Bertie - which, beyond informing us who that the shenanigans of the British Royal family did not start with Prince Charles and Princess D, do not tell us much.
Nonetheless, the biographies of Edward and Wilhelm at least connect to each other. Why Fromkin decided to cram American president's Theodore Roosevelt's life into the same book is a mystery to me. The subtitle declares Roosevelt ("Teddy") and Edward to have been "secret partners" - so secret was their partnership that they didn't know they had one. Fromkin brings no evidence that Edward and Roosevelt saw themselves as partners, thought about each other in friendly terms, or even thought much about each other. As far as I can tell, they have never met.
So what is the link? Apparently, Roosevelt and Edward cooperated in aligning the United States with Great Britain and the latter with France, in a grand coalition against Germany. Fromkin also gives Roosevelt a lot of credit for the conference in Algeciras in which Germany tried unsuccessfully to split France from its European allies. Edward is also, rather inexplicably, given much credit for the joining together of Great Britain and France.
This strikes me as wrong on all accounts. The relationship between the United States and Great Britain grew warmer before Roosevelt rose to power; His Secretary of State, John Hay, started the process while serving in President McKinley's cabinet (see Warren Zimmermann's
First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power, a far better account of Roosevelt and of the British-American rapprochement)
Was the successful (that is, pro-French) outcome Algeciras conference Roosevelt's handiwork? I think not. Germany's statesmen felt that they could ply France's allies away from it by pointing out France's violation of its treaty obligation in Morocco. But Morocco, as Roosevelt informed Wilhelm, was simply not important enough to effect anyone's strategic calculations (p. 198). And the strategic calculus of the early twentieth century was very simple. Germany was a rising and aggressive power; if it was not already Europe's most powerful state, it would be so soon. Fearing its aggression, its neighbors hang together desperately. Nothing France could have done in Morocco, an insignificant country, was worth splitting away from it.
Did Edward VII play a large part in Britain's foreign policy? Again, I doubt it. Fromkin does argue that "the actions of monarchs still had an impact [in the 1900s]" (p. 218), but the only way in which Edward seemed to have influenced British policy was by getting his friends appointed to high rank in the Foreign office. This is not an achievement to slight, but Fromkin does not offer evidence that Edward's men were more pro-French than the rest of Britain's diplomats. Again, it seems that the rise of Germany, and especially Germany's construction of a great fleet, pushed Britain into France's arms. Fromkin also argues that Edward's speech in Paris wooed the French; But surely the French, having lost Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia in the last war were positively disposed towards the United Kingdom - the enemy of their enemy - anyway.
I found Fromkin's thesis of a "partnership" between Edward VII and Theodore Roosevelt far fetched, and his research far from satisfactory. Ultimately, only Fromkin's usual graceful writing salvages this otherwise hopeless book.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I think the author meant "Playboy and the Cowboy", October 12, 2008
This review is from: The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners (Hardcover)
I am not too familiar with this author but I found this book to be highly superficial in nature. The book is 259 pages long including the index but it really doesn't get to the crux of the subject matter until page 184. There is a chapter of that and then we are back to the superficial set of biographies. Until we get page 184, we are treated with lightweight biographies of Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm and Theodore Roosevelt. None of the biographical entries are noteworthy or insightful to anyone who are familiar to these figures. Of course, a pure novice of history would gained something by reading these lightweight introductory material. The element of this book is the Algecira Conference of 1906 and like the rest of the material, it also got a pretty lightweight treatment geared toward the super novice level of readers. This was a pretty complex conference but the author gave an easy to read and not too detail account. I am not really convince that there was a real partnership involved here, just a opportunity to keep Germany out of that region that benefit both the British Empire and the United States.
One of the previous reviewers wrote glowing terms of this author's previous work but felt disappointed by this book. I haven't read any of this author's previous books and I don't think I'll make it a priority to do so after reading this weak effort.
I would recommended this book only if you know totally nothing about the lives of Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm and Theodore Roosevelt since their biographies appears to weight more then the actual conference itself.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat Superficial, October 8, 2008
This review is from: The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners (Hardcover)
This book's subject has the potential to be a really fascinating study of the pre-World War I diplomatic maneuvers that led to the close Anglo-American relationship that has now lasted for a century. Unfortunately, David Fromkin has not given the material the close scrutiny and examination required. He has relied on secondary sources, quoting from them extensively, so that in some chapters he almost appears to be paraphrasing them.
King Edward VII's diplomatic efforts deserve study. He played a major role in the Anglo-French rappprochement in the first decade of the twentieth century, and also assisted in helping Britain establish a better relationship with Russia. His was more of a social role, however, the real work was done by the professional diplomats. Theodore Roosevelt, similarly, deserves more credit than he gets for his diplomatic efforts. He was far more than the swashbuckling Rough Rider of legend.
Unfortunately, Fromkin's superficial treatment does neither man justice and actually perpetuates some of the stereotypes of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was a far more subtle ruler than his reputation (admittedly self-inflicted) admits. Fromkin also makes a number of small but noticeable errors of fact: King Charles I was not a Roman Catholic, Victoria became Queen in June 1837 but wasn't crowned until a year later, and while Victoria definitely had living great-grandchildren in 1930, that is hardly worthy of notice. (Some of her great-grandchildren were still alive in the 1980s!)
Fromkin's books on the Middle East are scholarly and worthy. This work, along with his last book on the outbreak of World War I, both suffer from a lack of scholarly rigor.
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