| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 105.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Kristin L. Hoganson. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. (Yale Historical Publications.) New Haven: Yale University Press. 1998. Pp. xii, 305. $30.00.

To the complex and indeed often conflicting interpretations of the wars of late nineteenth-century U.S. imperialism, Kristin L. Hoganson offers one more explanation, one that may well trump all the others and that, in the process, makes a compelling case for the reconfiguration of historiographical categories around which the literature on 1898 has formed. In a thoughtful, well-researched, and convincingly argued study, Hoganson examines the gender formulations from which American political leaders—all men—derived their moral bearings and developed their political beliefs. Late nineteenth-century domestic politics fused with foreign policy to serve as the stage whereon male players acted out carefully scripted gender roles, central to which was the practice of manliness. 1

The manifestations assumed many forms, of course, for the proposition of manliness was dynamic and organic and constantly in flux. It suggested a measure of worth and a standard of conduct and, in the hands of clever manipulators, served as a powerful means of coercion. The imperial project, Hoganson suggests, which in this instance meant war first against the Spanish in 1898 and later against the Filipinos in 1899, was driven principally by males concerned about their status as men. Manly character implied a specific set of behaviors and beliefs dealing with the nature of political power, which carried to its logical conclusion could not but influence the terms by which U.S. leaders took measure of the place of the United States in the emerging world order. . . .

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