U.S. Enters The Great Game

Want to read an interesting history book? One that really sheds light on today’s world? Try “The First Great Triumph” by Warren Zimmermann. It tells the story of 5 men and what they did to put the United States into the race to replace Great Britain as the world’s dominant nation.

It is not a story of “triumph,” actually. It is a story of 5 men who saw that England was falling out of First Place, and did not want Germany, or Japan, China, Russia, or any other country, to have any more influence in the world than the United States did. The race was on, and it made no sense to the 5 individuals (Theodore Roosevelt, John Hay, Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Alfred Mahan) for the U.S. to opt out of the contest.

The context: By the late 1800s the British Empire was running out of gas. Its declining strength relative to other powers set off a worldwide contest to see who would take first place in The Great Game of geopolitics. After a hundred years of wars of all kinds that lasted about a hundred years, and killed about 80 million people, the United States came out in first place.

Zimmermann tells about the good and the bad of these 5 men and their times. It is a messy story for either the jingos or the anti-jingos. It is worth the 500 pages if you like this kind of story.