All the Great Prizes

by John Taliaferro

  By August, though, the time to act on China appeared more propitious, if not urgent. Jacob Schurman, president of Cornell University, had returned to the United States after touring the Philippines and the Far East at the behest of President McKinley and warned that China was on the verge of being divided and devoured. “[N]ow that Russia has taken Manchuria,” Schurman declared, “it will try to encroach gradually on some or all of the other eighteen provinces of China.” Accordingly, he continued, it was critical that China “maintain its independent position” and that “its doors should be kept open.” China’s future, he repeated, was “the one overshadowing question” facing American foreign policy.

  On the same day that Schurman spoke out on China and Russian aggression there, the Russian government issued a ukase, or proclamation, pledging that Dairen, its trading center on the Liao-tung Peninsula, would operate as a “free port.” Hay and Rockhill took this announcement to mean that perhaps the door to China might yet be open. And recognizing the influence that Schurman, a highly respected educator and an avowed anti-imperialist, had on the president and the American public, they agreed that now was as opportune a moment as any to play their hand.

  Prompted by Rockhill, Hippisley prepared a memorandum enumerating the points on which the powers might feasibly concur. Rockhill urged that any agreement ought to go beyond concerns of trade to ensure the integrity of China. Hippisley was more realistic. “Of course, if the independence and integrity of China can be safeguarded, too, let that be accomplished,” he replied to Rockhill. For the time being, he recommended that they keep their proposals to “the irreducible minimum.”

  All of the points in Hippisley’s memo hinged on the premise that Russia, Germany, France, Britain, and Japan, having already established their separate spheres, tacitly accepted the legitimacy of the others. The challenge, then, was how to respect a country’s tangible investments, such as mining and railroad concessions, while keeping the spheres open to trade. Hippisley wanted the powers to agree that all ports within the spheres be declared “free,” by which he meant equitable: the proprietary nation of one sphere would not charge higher tariffs, duties, harbor dues, or railway charges to other nations doing business in that sphere. It was a modest proposal, to be sure, but at least it stood a chance. Certainly nothing like it had been tried before.

  Hay read Hippisley’s memo and liked its commonsense approach. He promptly asked Rockhill to put together his own memorandum, distilling all the current wisdom on the Open Door. Citing Beresford, Colquhoun, but not Hippisley, Rockhill iterated that spheres of influence “must be accepted as existing facts,” and he endorsed (still without attribution) Hippisley’s proposal on free ports. “Such understandings with the various Powers,” Rockhill wrote, “would secure an open market throughout China for our trade on terms of equality with all other foreigners, and would further remove dangerous sources of irritation and possible conflict between the contending powers.” He stopped short, however, of making a case for the integrity of China, suggesting simply that the Open Door “has the advantage of insuring to the United States the appreciation of the Chinese Government, who could see in it a strong desire to arrest the disintegration of the Empire and would greatly add to our prestige and influence in Peking.”

  Although British advice had shaped Rockhill and Hay’s thinking, the Americans still did not wish to appear in lockstep with British interests in China. Concern for the Irish and German vote was part of the reason, as Rockhill had underscored. Additionally, the United States did not feel quite so strident toward Russia as did Beresford, Hippisley, and their countrymen. Furthermore, Hay believed that the other powers would be much more receptive to an Open Door if they knew that they were all equals and not up against an Anglo-American alliance. When all was said and done, Hay and Rockhill wanted it to be an American policy in China.

  After delivering his memorandum to Hay, Rockhill sent an apologetic note to Hippisley, explaining why he had incorporated Hippisley’s ideas without giving him credit: “As the memo will have to be submitted to the President I thought it better that it should seem as if coming from one alone. . . . If coming from you it would require additional explanations. I have, and shall again whenever I can, show that I am but your mouthpiece.” In the end, he never quite did give attribution where it was due.

  A week later, Rockhill drew up what would forever be known as the first Open Door note, echoing Hippisley’s guidelines almost exactly. First, each power was asked to pledge that it would “in no way interfere with any treaty port or any vested interest within any so-called ‘sphere of interest’ [a term Rockhill preferred to “influence”] or leased territory it may have in China.” Second, Chinese tariffs would apply “to all merchandise landed or shipped to all such ports as are within said ‘sphere of interest’ (unless they be ‘free ports’), no matter to what nationality it may belong.” And a third leveled the commercial playing field even further: the powers would levy “no higher harbor dues on vessels of another nationality frequenting any other port in such ‘sphere’ than shall be levied on vessels of its own nationality, and no higher railroad charges over lines built, controlled, or operated within its ‘sphere’ on merchandise belonging to citizens or subjects of other nationalities transported through such ‘sphere’ than shall be levied on similar merchandise belonging to its own nationals transported over equal distance.”

  Nowhere did the note mention an “open door” in so many words. Nor did it pay lip service to the integrity of China. Yet for a document so narrow in focus, so accommodating in tone, the impact of the Open Door note on China and international relations, not to mention the legacy of John Hay, would prove to be colossal.

  Alvey Adee sent identical versions to Britain, Germany, and Russia on September 6, and soon thereafter to Japan, France, and Italy. In the meantime, Hay went back to New Hampshire to resume his vacation.

  SURROUNDED ONCE MORE BY the green solitude of the Fells, he took stock of what he had accomplished in recent months. In a letter to Charles Dick, chairman of the Republican Party in Ohio, he shrugged off charges circulated by Democrats that a secret alliance existed between the United States and Great Britain. He proudly acknowledged that “our relations with England are more friendly and more satisfactory than they have ever been,” but quickly added, “It is a poor starved heart that has room for only one friend.”

  He also refuted suggestions that the administration had embraced imperialism. “[W]e took up arms to redress wrongs already too long endured, without a thought in any mind of conquest or aggression,” he explained to Dick. “But no one can control the issue of war. Porto Rico and the Philippines are ours, and the destinies of Cuba are for the moment entrusted to our care. It is not permitted us to shirk the vast responsibilities thus imposed upon us, without exhibiting a nerveless pusillanimity which would bring upon us not only the scorn of the world, but what is far worse, our own self-contempt. But as we did not seek these acquisitions—which came to us through the irresistible logic of war—we are not striving anywhere to acquire territory, or extend our power by conquest.”

  Finally, undoubtedly thinking about the Open Door notes, which were even then being circulated abroad, he declared: “The whole world knows we are not covetous of land; not a chancery in Europe sees in us an interested rival in their schemes of acquisition. What is ours we shall hold; what is not ours we do not seek. But in the field of trade and commerce we shall be the keen competitors of the richest and greatest powers, and they need no warning to be assured that in that struggle, we shall bring the sweat to our brows.”

  HAY STAYED AT THE Fells until the end of September. “The hills are now wrapped in color like flame,” he wrote Henry White. “We have thousands of maples which give the dash of scarlet that makes the picture perfect.” With his usual misgivings, he returned to Washington and then went off on a two-week tour of the Midwest with the president. And still there were no firm answers from the powers on the Open Door.

&nb
sp; On October 11, war broke out in South Africa, as the British sought to gain control of the gold-rich Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State. Officially the United States remained neutral, but privately Hay told Henry White, “I hope . . . that England will make quick work of Uncle Paul”—referring to Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal. “Sooner or later, her influence must be dominant there, and the sooner the better.” His wish did not come true; within days the Boers, armed with state-of-the-art German guns, gamely took the offensive, besieging the British garrisons of Kimberley, Mafeking, and Ladysmith. Perhaps there was no secret Anglo-American alliance, as Hay insisted, but there existed plenty of grounds for commiseration. In the Philippines, the United States had its hands full with Aguinaldo’s guerrillas, who, like the Boers, were fighting for independence with unexpected tenacity.

  At last the powers addressed the Open Door. Japan and Italy assented with no prodding; the other four required considerably more coaxing. None wished to precede the others, and none would come forward if the others refused. Britain finally acquiesced, once the United States made clear that military ports—Weihaiwai and Kowloon for the British, Port Arthur for the Russians—did not count as “leased territory.” France quibbled over railroad rates but then came around. Germany was initially worried about being caught between England on one side and Russia and France on the other but then accepted the terms provided “all other powers do so.” That left Russia.

  Hay well knew that without Russia, by far the most aggressive of the powers in China, the Open Door would dissolve. To make sure this did not happen, he and Rockhill went to work on the Russian ambassador in Washington, Count Arturo Paul Nicolas Cassini. At the same time, the American ambassador in St. Petersburg, a railroad tycoon and amateur archeologist with the storybook name Charlemagne Tower, was given the more prickly task of winning over the recalcitrant foreign minister, Count Nikolai Muraviev. Muraviev, backed by the even more skeptical Russian finance minister Sergei Witte, presented a list of objections: they suspected that the Open Door notes were a conspiracy to block Russian ambitions in Manchuria; they complained that the terms “free ports,” “treaty ports,” and “spheres of interest” were confusing; and they balked at the stipulation on railroad rates. Mostly, they just wanted to keep the advantages they already had.

  Hay expected Cassini would be more amenable. An urbane diplomat who had once lived in China, now spent summers in Newport, and kept a kennel of borzois in Washington, Cassini conversed comfortably with Hay and Rockhill in French, the language of international diplomacy. Nor did it hurt that Cassini lived not far from the Hays, on I Street; Cassini’s daughter, Marguerite, and Helen Hay were dear friends.

  But for all his cosmopolitan congeniality, Cassini would not budge. “I get profoundly discouraged,” Hay told Henry White, “with the infernal cussedness of the little politicians who have the power to tip over the best bucket of milk I can fill with a year’s work. Just now it is Cassini who seems likely to spoil all my ‘open door’ labor.”

  Finally, it was time to call the Russians’ bluff. Hay had Rockhill inform Cassini in no uncertain terms that further delay on Russia’s part would be “misinterpreted by the people [of the United States] and would be extremely prejudicial to the friendly relations between the two nations.”

  Hay also exhorted Charlemagne Tower to keep pressing Muraviev. After several frank conversations, the foreign minister did not actually blink, but he lowered his gaze just enough. Muraviev reckoned there was nothing in the terms of the agreement that warranted risking Russia’s friendship with America or isolating Russia from the other powers. Begrudgingly, lukewarmly, he communicated to Tower his general compliance with the Open Door, “upon condition that a similar declaration shall be made by other powers having interests in China.” As for its caveats on tariffs and railroad rates, Russia was willing to let these slide, knowing that the Open Door was fundamentally pliable and ultimately unenforceable—and that Washington would settle for anything other than a categorical no.

  Hay made the most of it. “We got all that could be screwed out of the Bear,” he wrote Adams, “and our cue is to insist that we got everything.” Without holding a strong hand himself, he had won every card. When at last all the players had been heard from, he sent a circular to his foreign ministers in London, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Paris, Rome, and Tokyo, directing them to inform their governments that “all the various powers having leased territory or so-called ‘spheres of interest’ in the Chinese Empire” had accepted the terms of the Open Door and that the United States now regarded their assent as “final and definitive.”

  THERE WAS ONE COUNTRY left out of the Open Door negotiations and final entente, however, and that was China. At a time when strict exclusion laws closed the United States to nearly all Chinese, the United States and the other powers gave little or no thought to how China might feel about the proliferation of foreigners in its midst. Wu T’ing-fang, the Chinese minister in Washington, was not aware of the existence of the Open Door note until he read about it in the newspaper. Hay belatedly wrote Wu a letter that offered no apology and asked for only token cooperation. “I sincerely hope that in this effort of ours to secure an equitable share of the commerce of China,” he informed the minister politely but emphatically, “that no arrangements will be entered into by the Government of the Emperor which shall be to the disadvantage of American commerce.”

  In treating the Chinese government as an ineffectual afterthought, Hay revealed the underlying dynamic—and, for that matter, prejudice—of the Open Door. Heretofore the powers had done business with China based on their own separate treaties; their respective spheres of influence had no substantive connection to one another. It was as if all the powers boarded at the same rooming house, eating from a common kitchen, barely speaking to one another, and paying separate checks. The Open Door established a semi-formal diners’ club whose members now set the menu, agreed not to eat off one another’s plates, and ignored the landlord, so long as the lights stayed on and the meals kept coming. The assumption, of course, was that the landlord would profit by this cooperation and therefore ought to be grateful for the business the powers brought him. How enlightening—civilizing!—for China to have such diverse guests under one roof. And no matter what, the new arrangement surely beat the alternative: a shoving match, with the furniture broken up and the boarders locking themselves in their rooms. If this analogy did not translate perfectly into Chinese, it made enough sense to the powers that they adopted Hay’s ground rules.

  The consensus—among the powers, anyway—was that the benefits of the Open Door exceeded the limitations, although, in the final accounting, nobody gave up less and gained more than the United States. Following the Spanish-American War, Americans were still trying to come to terms with their new accessions, and they did not necessarily welcome the stigma of international land-grabber. Part of the genius of the Open Door was that it dispelled charges of imperialism, or so the administration averred. The United States had made a point of not demanding its own sphere of influence and, in doing so, secured commercial access to all of China’s treaty ports, with very few military or administrative obligations to worry about. The Open Door boosted America’s ongoing economic expansion in the Far East—and justified cession of the Philippines. But, on its face, it was an anti-imperialistic doctrine or, at any rate, post-colonialistic. Along the way, John Hay had prevented the dismemberment of China—although this was not one of the aims articulated in the notes he sent to the powers.

  Perhaps the greatest benefit of the Open Door had little to do with China directly. Just as the United States possessed no sphere of influence in China, its status as a power was also inchoate. Too often America had followed Britain’s example on the world stage. Now, without establishing—indeed, by determinedly avoiding—entangling alliances, the United States commanded a position of preeminence, not so much by military might or even by economic vigor, but by the sheer intelligence and per
suasiveness of its diplomacy. And John Hay, who had not coined the term “Open Door,” who could not fairly claim authorship of the Open Door note, and who honestly had no grandiose expectations for it, other than as a commercial expedient, emerged after only one year as secretary of state as a deft and forceful fulcrum, an arbiter of world events, independent but coalescent, respected and heeded by all nations.

  To be sure, the Open Door policy had its share of critics, beginning with those who found it ironic that the United States had barred its own doors, at home and in the Philippines. Other cynics were quick to point out that the Open Door would splinter the moment one of the powers decided to ignore the rules. “If, for example,” posed the Independent, “Russia should, when her great eastern railroad is completed, formally annex Manchuria, and apply thereto her present laws of commerce, with free trade on the Russian side and a prohibitive tariff on foreign trade, what would the United States do? Would she resist by force?” (The answer was no, she would not, but Japan soon would, fighting Russia over Manchuria in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05.)

  By and large, though, public reaction to the Open Door transaction was congratulatory. The Philadelphia Press predicted that the Open Door would be for the newly arrived twentieth century what the Monroe Doctrine was in the just-ending nineteenth. The Times of London was sure that the Open Door was more than diplomatic confection. The United States, The Times vouched, “is the last Power in the world to have gone to the trouble of getting paper assurances and then to allow them to remain paper assurances only. If she has got them she has got them because she means them to be observed.”