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The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners

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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.

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.

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.

I found this book to be a most interesting piece of history, a glimpse into the minds and actions of two underrated personages, telling both the good and the bad about them. When reading the book in a dentist's reception room, I was a little taken aback by a fellow paient, upon seeing the title, commented: "Oh, I didn't know they were gay!" Go figure.

I agree with the previous reviewer that the book was a bit superficial. However, I picked up the book knowing almost nothing about TR and Edward VII and therefore enjoyed it immensely. The book is an easy, fascinating read. I have a much better understanding of the politics and personalities that led to WWI.

I wholeheartedly recommend the fascinating The King and The Cowboy, which is about the largely unknown partnership and friendship between King Edward the Seventh of England and Teddy Roosevelt . One, a hard drinking playboy, the other a drinking cowboy, they had very little in common. But through David Fromkin's engaging and hard to put down chapters, we find that what the two men did share was their own unique rebellion against how they were raised. Through their rebellions they were each able, at a crucial stage of world politics, to create a partnership of diplomacy that was able to avert, at least for a little while, all-out world war.

Edward VII used his knowledge of and personal relationships with everyone who was anyone in European politics (he'd parties hard with them all and talked and most importantly, listened to them all) to use diplomacy, instead of royal marriages, to push liberal constitutional monarchy through Europe. Teddy broke out of the isolationism of United States politics to take a strong and reasoned (this from the man of Kettle Hill!) approach as mediator and deal maker between Germany and France over territorial tensions in North Africa (and underlying Europe).

There are more chapters in the book about the English side of things during the 1800s and into the twentieth century. I found each and every one fascinating. Fromkin writes easily and well about the tenacity of young Victoria to reach and hold onto her royal power, her love for Albert and her eventual sharing of power with him, their plan to spread constitutional monarchy throughout Europe by virtue of marrying their strictly educated offspring to other royals. Their plan did not work out but that is where Edward VII ("Bertie" for most of his life until Victoria died and he finally became King of England) stepped in. The chapters about Bertie's ill-suited education and his break-out from Victorian conventions into quite a wild life, are absolute page-turners. In fact, I only stopped to examine (scratching my head) the photo of the specially designed and upholstered chair for effective commingling with one or two women at once, built to accommodate Bertie's growing girth and libido. Then I continued on, reading gluttonously through the chapters..

Teddy Roosevelt' s upbringing is also explored, most of it well-known but interesting nonetheless. His initial love of war and his belief that to be a real man one had to do combat fell away after the Spanish American war . He matured into a more reasoned (for him) approach to political tensions at home and abroad.

The disparities between the two men were huge. Edward had mistresses literally throughout the world (and the dessert crepes suzette we owe to just one of them) whereas Teddy was a firm believer in "marriage, family, and monogamy." The King and the Cowboy presents the interesting story of how these two reached a partnership and forged a friendship not just between themselves but most importantly, between their two countries, one that holds strong today. What is fundamentally fascinating and wholly instructive for our current world situation is that England and the U.S. used diplomacy and concrete words of peace to avert war, instead of using war to foster vague notions of democracy and eventual peace. World War One and its horrors are not a testament to the failure of their diplomacy but the proof of how important diplomacy is, and how very hard we should work as a nation and a world to get it done right.

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It is books like this one of Professor Fromkin's that keeps me reading and leaves hope that even in the present political culture, in which our nation is being overrun by Pygmy politicians, something good can still happen. This author writes with such clarity and with such precision, and single-mindedness of purpose that one can almost hear him thinking. The reader knows instinctively where he is headed because his delicate prose always shows seamlessly the road straight ahead. And yet we are surprised when we arrive there.

This gem of a little book about two of history's oddest couple, alone would have made Professor Fromkin recognized both a superb writer and a first tier historian and political scientist, indeed a classic. That is, if it had not been for one of his earlier books: "The Independence of Nations," which had already done that for him. Anyone who has not yet read that book cannot claim to be a bona fide 21st Century political scientist. For the knowledge conveyed within its covers is indispensable to understanding what a nation state is in the present international environment.

With the disappointing "non-leadership" of our current "pre-award Nobel prize winning President," Americans can certainly relate to why politicians should always be held to lower rather than to higher standards and expectations. At least that way the disappointment is not nearly so great, or so painful. The same state of affairs can be said to have existed during the period of the two unlikely protagonists of this book. One a crazed immature sex fiend and drunkard; while the other an equally immature dreamer left the world agape when they were both thrust onto the world stage unprepared. No one expected much of either of them, yet their friendship proved indispensable for their time.

Here the author's delicate research uncovers, and his clear and precise prose reveals, what under normal circumstances would seem an uninteresting somewhat arcane topic: the friendship of two vastly different and vastly under-rated scions (and politicians to be) - Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the 7th -- who most thought were going nowhere and were going to get there very fast indeed. However, as this little book shows not only did they get there, but also that their little known friendship (that was implemented mostly through letters that continued to stay well under the radar), turned out in retrospect to have been like a silent earthquake that helped reshape the emerging global order. In particular, their unexpected collusion and meeting of the minds did so by denying Germany, under Emperor William II, the European hegemony that Germany thought at the time should have been its natural birthright.

In their friendship, we get to see close up and through the prism of two oddly different lives of two men "who would become kings," how the special relationship between Great Britain and the U.S. got started, and how it became as intimate and as important to world affairs as it did in the turbulent century that was to follow.

This is the way good history should be crafted. Read it and enjoy: Easily five Stars.

This is an easy-reading historical account of how two men brought the UK and the USA closer together, thereby cementing a long term relationship between the two countries and side-by-side concepts of democracy and war time/political allies. We have our own Teddy with his sexual puritanism and his values of family and monogamy, while conversely the author discusses King Berty's womanizing, complete with a dessert being involved in one of his dalliances and a special chair built for his lovemaking efforts. All the personal stuff and the European alliances make for fascinating reading, especially how it all led up to World War I, and how the sides in the war were decided (and the horrific loss of life for both armies in the trenches)...but through it all stood this firm friendship between Teddy and Berty. This was a book that was full of information, maybe not academic and dry, but boiling over in human relationships and with interesting characters, and how two men can have long term effects on nations. Read it!

Having read and enjoyed David Fromkin's "A Peace to End All Peace," I expected a well-researched, well-written, comprehensive study of two great individuals and their secret alliance. What we got instead was a brief, superficial, dual biography that never really tells us how and why T.R. and Bertie were ever "secret partners." (The author's account of the Algeciras Conference notwithstanding.) We are told about the King's well-known womanizing but misses the chance to compare it to Roosevelt's equally extreme sexual puritanism. (Here the American was more "Victorian" than Victoria's son.) Even worse, Mr. Fromkin makes errors that no self-respecting historian would ever make. Though a history of Anglo-American relations in the first decade of the 20th century would make a most interesting book, "The King and the Cowboy" is not that book.

On one hand I enjoyed reading about Edward VII, of whom I knew very little. Not sure why the author focused soooo much on Wilhelm II, but it was interesting. The part on TR was, well, basic. Very basic. Nothing new or original. The books biggest flaw is that the link btwn Edward and TR is loose, and the author really doesn't support the claim that they were "secret partners."