早稲田国際教養AO, The Year 1812 -partly rewritten-

解答のポイント

主題　２００年前のヨーロッパと新大陸の状況及びアメリカのカナダ侵略２００周年

 

問題文訳　以下のヨーロッパとアメリカ大陸における１８１２年（ちょうど２００年前）の出来事のリストを見て、下の問いに答えてください。

 

リストをぱっとみて分かること　

先ずリストの年が１８１２年すなわち１９世紀初頭であることから、リストアップされた出来事は世界史では帝国主義の時代の出来事であることが分かる。

次にざっと大きな出来事を拾ってみると、戦争と大災害に関する記述が多いことが分かる。

更にもう少しよく見ると、学校で習った世界史の基礎知識に照らして違和感のある記述があることが分かる。すなわち、７月１１日のアメリカのカナダ侵略の記録である。

通常の世界史の知識では、帝国主義はヨーロッパの大国（このリストではイギリスとフランス）の歴史であって、アメリカは自由民主主義の擁護者として帝国主義反対の立場をとり、第１次・第２次世界大戦、冷戦時代を経て現在までこの主義を貫いていることになっているので、”US invades Canada”の記述はこの通念に合わない。平たく言えば、「アメリカがカナダを侵略したなんて歴史の教科書に載っていなかった気がする。」ということだ。

この記述に基づくと、アメリカは当時、イギリスやフランス同様、自国に攻撃を仕掛けていない他国に攻め入るという帝国主義行動をとっていたことになる。

 

問１　リストによれば以下の各記述は正しいでしょうか、間違っているでしょうか？

説明省略

 

問２　アメリカ合衆国が国力と科学技術の点において当時成長発展しつつあったということを示すのはどの出来事でしょうか？少なくとも二つの出来事を選び、それらについて解答欄に提供された箇所に英語で述べてください。

 

説明省略

 

問３　あなたの意見では、２００年前のリストのどの出来事が現代社会に最も大きな影響を与えていると思いますか？理由は何ですか？解答欄に提供された箇所に英語で答えてください。

 

考え方

　１）「現代社会に最も大きな影響を与えている出来事」なので、現代社会の特徴につながりのある事項を探してみる。

　　例　現代社会の特徴のひとつに、「アメリカの戦争と拡大」がある。現代のアメリカは、他国を併合することはないが、アメリカを攻撃していない国を攻撃し、アメリカの政治・経済活動に有利な状況を確保するということを繰り返している。(例：ベトナム戦争、イラク戦争など)　この起源になるような動きがリストにないか探してみる。

 

　２）歴史的背景と他の問いも参考にしてみる。

　例　（上記リストをぱっと見てわかることで述べたことと重複するが、）このリストは帝国主義時代の欧米の出来事であり、その中に、「アメリカのカナダ侵略」という歴史的事実が含まれている。さらに、この問３に至るまでの問いについて考えてみると、問１の選択肢e 「１８１２年の戦いはカナダを巻き込んだ。」は、アメリカが６月１８日にイギリスに宣戦布告した３週間後の７月１１日にはイギリス統治下のカナダに侵略戦争を仕掛けたことを示し、問２ではアメリカの成長発展を示唆する出来事が少なくとも２件以上リストにあることを示している。

 

１）と２）から、当時発展しつつあったアメリカの帝国主義的傾向に着目して”Jul 11^th  US invades Canada”（7月11日　アメリカ、カナダを侵略）を取り上げ、カナダ侵略失敗後のアメリカのメキシコ・太平洋方面への進出、さらに第1次世界大戦後、世界最強の国となってから現代まで、自由民主主義の導入と抱き合わせに自由貿易とアメリカ優位の経済圏拡大を武力によって推し進めてきた歴史を中心に解答してみる。

 

Ideas and Expressions

I think the US invasion into Canada on July 11 has had the greatest influence on the modern society. This event, though failed, can be called the first step toward the imperialistic behavior of today’s America.

The US expansion into Mexico and the Pacific area, to Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan, for example, occurred a few decades after this event. The United States won half of Mexico in 1848 after a bloody war, forced Japan to agree to unequal treaties by threatening them with warships in 1853, and annexed Hawaii, after the pineapple plantation company Dole had established itself there, in 1898. In the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), thousands of Filipino died, which was severely condemned by Mark Twain. During WWI, US posed a neutral stance till the last minute, taking the stand against the imperialism, but actually it kept supporting the British Empire from the beginning.

After replacing Britain to become the most powerful country in the world, United States has acted and still acting as an empire by waging wars against countries that did not attack it but that are located in the area of geopolitical importance or have a lot of resources crucial to its economic development. For example, the Pentagon Paper revealed that the United States intentionally expanded Vietnam War by bombing unrelated areas in Vietnam and its neighboring countries during the Cold War. Also, it is now clear with enough evidence that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 for oil, fabricating a lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These wars left Vietnam and Iraq with not only huge death tolls but also deformed newborns supposedly as a result of the US use of defoliant and depleted uranium in bombs respectively.

The purchase of Louisiana could be significant in terms of doubling the US territory and bordering Mexico, which gave chances for the US to provoke the country. However, the size and position does not have to do with aggressiveness of a country. A large country bordering another country like Canada has been pacific in diplomacy, and a small island country like Japan was very aggressive in the past. Attacking by force a country which is not aggressive shows the country’s militaristic tendency. The invasion of Canada shows that the US was no less imperialistic than European powers in those days. By invading Canada in 1812, the US government officially crossed the line between a country of “freedom and democracy” and a system to increase and keep its sphere of influence sometimes by force at the expense of life and the environment, and marched toward the southwest and the Pacific area to make today’s geopolitical map.

 

 

 

 

For Reference:

Excerpts from A People’s History of the United States

 

Chapter 8

We Take Nothing by conquest, Thank God

… Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase had doubled the territory of the United States, extending it to the Rocky Mountains. To the south west was Mexico, which had won its independence in a revolutionary war against Spain in 1821. Mexico was then an even larger country than it is now, since it included what are now Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and part of Colorado. After agitation, and aid from the United States, Texas broke off from Mexico in 1836 and declared itself the “Lone Star Republic.” In 1845, the U.S. Congress brought it into the Union as a state.

  In the White House now was James Polk, a Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to his secretary of the navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition of California….

  …..

  Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation. Taylor’s army marched in parallel columns across the open prairie, scouts far ahead and on the flanks, a train of supplies following. Then, along a narrow road, through a belt of thick chaparral, they arrived, March 28, 1846, in cultivated fields and thatched-roof huts hurriedly abandoned by the Mexican occupants, who had fled across the river to the city of Matamoros. Taylor set up camp, began construction of a fort, and implanted his cannons facing the white houses of Matamoros, whose inhabitants stared curiously at the sight of an army on the banks of a quiet river.

…..

The Mexicans had fired the first shot, But they had done what the American government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even before those first incidents:

I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors…. We have not one particle of right to be here….. It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses…. My heart is not in this business… but, as a military man, I am bound to execute orders.

  On May 9, before news of any battles, Polk was suggesting to his cabinet a declaration of war. ….

……

  Accompanying all this aggressiveness was the idea that the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and democracy to more people. This was intermingled with ideas of racial superiority, longings for the beautiful lands of New Mexico and California, and thoughts of commercial enterprise across the Pacific. The New York Herald said, in 1847: The universal Yankee nation can regenerate and disenthrall the people of Mexico in a few years; and we believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”

  ….

The American Anti-Slavery Society, on the other hand, said the war was “waged solely for the detestable and horrible purpose of extending and perpetuating American slavery throughout the vast territory of Mexico.” …..

  ….

  It is impossible to know the extent of popular support of the war. But there is evidence that many organized working men opposed the war. There were demonstrations of Irish workers in New York, Boston, and Lowell against the annexation of Texas. In May, when the war against Mexico began, New York workingmen called a meeting to oppose the war, and many Irish workers came. The meeting called the war a plot by slave owners and asked for the withdrawal of American troops from disputed territory.

  ….

  Meanwhile, by land and by sea, Anglo-American forces were moving into California. A young naval officer, after the long voyage around the southern cape of South America, and up the coast to Monterey in California, wrote in his diary:

Asia… will be brought to our very doors. Population will flow into the fertile regions of California. The resources of the entire country…will be developed….. The public lands lying along the route〔of railroads〕will be changed from deserts into gardens, and a large population will be settled….

….

  Mexico surrendered. There were calls among Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande; New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million, which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that “we take nothing by conquest…. Thank God.”

 

 

Chapter 12

The Empire and the People

Theodore Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: “In strict confidence … I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”

  The year of the massacre at Wounded Knee, 1890, it was officially declared by the Bureau of the Census that the internal frontier was closed. The profit system, with its natural tendency for expansion, had already begun to look overseas. The severe depression that began in 1893 strengthened an idea developing within the political and financial elite of the country: that overseas markets for American foods might relieve the problem of under consumption at home and prevent the economic crises that in the 1800s brought class war.

  ….

  Expansion overseas was not a new idea. Even before the war against Mexico carried the United States to the Pacific, the Monroe Doctrine looked south ward into and beyond the Caribbean. Issued in 1823 when the countries of Latin America were winning independence from Spanish control, it made plain to European nations that the United States considered Latin America is sphere of influence. Not long after, some American began thinking into the Pacific: of Hawaii, Japan, and the great markets of China.

  There was more than thinking. A State Department list of 1962 (presented to a Senate committee to cite precedents for the use of armed force against Cuba) shows 103 interventions in the affairs of other countries between 1798 and 1895. A sampling form the listed, with the exact description given by the State Departments:

  1852-53・Argentina

Marines were landed and maintained in Buenos Aires to protect American interests during a revolution.

1853・Nicaragua

To protect American lives and interests during political disturbances.

1853-54・Japan

The “Opening of Japan” and the Perry Expedition.〔The State Department does not give details, but this involved the use of warships to force Japan to open its ports to the United States.〕

1853-54・Ryukyu and Bonin Islands

Commodore Perry on three visits before going to Japan and while waiting for a reply from Japan made a naval demonstration, landing marines twice, and secured a coaling concession from the ruler of Naha on Okinawa. He also demonstrated in the Bonin Islands. All to secure facilities for commerce.

1854・Nicaragua

San Juan del Norte 〔Greytown was destroyed to avenge an insult to the American Minister to Nicaragua.〕

1855・Uruguay

U.S. and European naval forces landed to protect American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo.

1859・China

For the protection of American interests in Shanghai.

1860・Angola, Portuguese West Africa

To protect American lives and property at Kissembo when the natives became troublesome.

1893・Hawaii

Ostensibly to protect American lives and property; actually to promote a provisional government under Sanford B. Dole. This action was disavowed by the United States.

1894・Nicaragua

To protect American interests at Blufields following a revolution.

 

Thus, by the 1890s, there had been much experience in overseas probes and interventions. The ideology of expansion was widespread in the upper circles of military men, politicians, businessmen－and even among some of the leaders of farmers’ movements who thought foreign markets would help them.

 

  ….Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts wrote in a magazine article:

   For the sake of our commercial supremacy in the Pacific we should control the Hawaiian islands…and when the Nicaraguan canal is built, the island of Cuba…will become a necessity…. The great nations are rapidly absorbing for their future expansion and their present defense all the waste places of the earth. It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race. As one of the great nations of the world the United States must not fall out of the line of march.