The Pugnacious Presidents: White House Warriors on Parade by Thomas A. BaileyReview by: Richard W. LeopoldThe American Historical Review, Vol. 86, No. 5 (Dec., 1981), pp. 1140-1141Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1858636 .

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1140 Reviews of Books

New York: Oxford University Press. 1981. Pp. xxv, 356. $19.95.

George M. Fredrickson's attempt to make a histori- cal comparison between South Africa and the United States is an exercise much akin to a com- parison between apples and pineapples or between horses and cows. The feasibility of the enterprise cannot obscure the intrinsic incongruity, and even- tually the contrasts outweigh the commonalties. In- deed, the author makes this admission with embar- rassing regularity throughout White Supremacy. And despite its readability, this is a very unsatisfactory book. It adds very little to the general histories of ei- ther South Africa or the United States. It contrib- utes only marginally to an understanding of the genesis of race relations. And it violates the most fundamental concept of comparative history. These are, admittedly, strong indictments against a work by a distinguished American historian-especially when the work is presented to the public garnished with the most glowing encomiums from a galaxy of equally distinguished professors-but they can be easily substantiated.

Basically Fredrickson takes a linear view of the historical development of both South African and United States societies. The analytical narrative be- gins in 1600, with "settlement and subjugation" in both regions, examines the rise of "racial slavery in the South and the Cape," describes the develop- ment of "race mixture and the color line," political conflicts between the separate emergent states, and the expansion of patterns of racial discrimiination with its ensuing conflicts. It concludes with a dis- cussion of "segregation in South Africa and the South," which, congruent with the tenor of the pre- ceding chapters, confesses that "despite some super- ficial similiarities, therefore, the differences between Jim Crow and 'native segregation' or 'separate de- velopment' are too great, in terms both of under- lying structures and patterns of historical develop- ment, to sustain an elaborate comparison" (p. 250). Supporting the chronology is a list of important dates in the histories of the two states. The bibliog- raphy is informed and up-to-date. While the major outlines of the narrated histories of both the United States South and South Africa are acceptable, there is ample room for basic differences. Debatable points include the relationship between slave- holding and apartheid (p. 238) and the assertions that America is the "world's richest nation" (p. 5); that "miscegenation is likely to be especially exten- sive where the predominant relationship is between master and slave" (p. 95); that Africans were en- slaved because of "their cultural and legal vulnera- bility" (p. 70); that Edward Long was a "Jamaican physician" (p. 142); that humanitarianism was a major factor in British slave emancipation (p. 186);

that the Morant Bay (Jamaica) Rebellion affected English thinking on black civil rights; that South Africans were less guilty of racism than of "intense ethnocentrism" (p. 194); and that in the South "workers were segregated without being treated dif- ferently by employers" (p. 215).

The introduction trying to explain why the phrase "white supremacy" is preferable to "racism" reveals more sophistry than sophistication. Essen- tially, what the author says is that since no one today will admit to being a racist, then the term must be discarded in preference of the "relatively neutral" phrase "white supremacy." On this basis, it is disconcerting at best and deliberately insulting at worst to note the frequency with which the au- thor employs "Negro" and "Negroid" as synonyms for black. The opposite of white surely is nonwhite or black. In addition, maudlin attempts to preach against the "notion that white Americans have a kind of moral superiority over white South Afri- cans" (p. 247) is more histrionics than history.

The fatal flaw in this book, however, is that it completely fails to establish the comparability of the two cases studied. No hard figures are given for populations and groups, nor any relationship of man to land. The human ecology is never clearly or forcefully drawn. Even the concept of "free col- oreds" or miscegenation is hazy. Fredrickson ap- pears uncertain at times whether he should com- pare the amorphous South African nonwhite group legally designated as "coloreds" with the North American nonwhites as a whole, the Afro-Ameri- cans, or the American Indians. He seems unaware of the somatic norm variations between Africans and Asians. And he apparently is not convinced that systadial comparisons offer greater efficacy than synchronic comparisons. Altogether then this book is neither a rewarding nor a pleasurable read- ing experience.

FRANKLIN W. KNIGHT

Johns Hopkins University

THOMAS A. BAILEY. The Pugnacious Presidents: White House Warriors on Parade. New York: Free Press. 1980. Pp. ix, 504. $17.95.

This latest work of an eminent historian, who, by his own count, has published about twenty books, twenty revisions, and more than a score of articles, is not the product of extensive research. It analyzes each president's militancy or pugnacity in dealing with foreign nations but with digressions into do- mestic disturbances. There is an undocumented chapter, rarely exceeding seventeen pages, for each incumbent and a fortieth called "Pugnacity in Per- spective." A bibliography averages three titles, mostly biographies, for each man. The author has

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United States 1141

reread the compilations of presidential papers and has drawn upon his own Presidential Greatness (1966), his perennially popular textbook on American dip- lomatic history, and a sixty-two page House com- mittee print of 1970 entitled Background Information on the Use of United States Armed Forces in Foreign Coun- tries.

The style is vintage Bailey with such captions as "The Tussle with Tripoli," "Madisonian Mud- dlings," and "The Fulfillment of Fillmore." He can- not resist writing that in 1905 the Japanese began to run out "of men and yen" and seemed to be "get- ting too big for their kimonos" or that in the U-2 in- cident the Americans "had stooped to snoop; they had lied, denied, and defied" (pp. 33, 49, 165, 328- 29, 427).

Despite the claim that the book will demolish myths and surprise readers, specialists will find little new. They may disagree with overly condensed treatments (Polk and the notice on the Oregon Treaty) or with interpretations (Wilson's diplo- macy), but the chief flaw is an inability to define and measure pugnacity. Can one distinguish "be- tween aggressive pugnacity and defensive bellico- sity" and then conclude that "Lincoln's bellicosity was defensively aggressive" (p. 205)? The author ar- gues that the United States acted as a world power long before the supposedly watershed year of 1898, citing both the constant use of the navy to protect American citizens in distant lands and presidential references to the nation as a great power. But when he notes that there were eight warships in Asian wa- ters during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, he fails to say that the president and the secretary of state each insisted that that war imperiled no basic policy of the republic. Surprisingly, he never men- tions the War Powers Act, passed over Nixon's veto and called into question under Ford. There are over a dozen wrong dates and typographical errors and more factual mistakes than one would expect from so careful a scholar. Guam is not a South Pacific is- land. Wilson's brain was not fogged with sleep on April 21, 1914, when he ordered the seizure of the custom house at Veracruz. Bryan did not favor an arms embargo in 1915. The Kellogg pact did not "outlaw" war. Eisenhower's statement about the outcome of an election in Vietnam referred to a contest between Ho Chi Minh and Bao Dai, not be- tween Ho and Ngo Dinh Diem.

RICHARD W. LEOPOLD

Northwestern University

ARTHUR A. STEIN. The Nation At War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1980. Pp. xii, 151. $12.95.

This book, by a political scientist at UCLA, brings the analytical techniques of the social sciences to

bear on questions frequently (and often sloppily) addressed by historians: do wars increase or de- crease domestic cohesion, concentration, and in- equality?

Arthur A. Stein sets out four hypotheses. Social cohesion in war, he postulates, increases as a func- tion of the strength of the external threat and de- creases as a function of the depth and duration of mobilization. Concentration of production increases to the extent that wartime mobilization exceeds the peacetime full production capacity of the economy. Inequality is lessened as a function of the mobiliza- tion process.

Following good social science procedures, Stein next seeks the relevant empirical data to test these propositions. Least satisfying is his treatment of the factor of threat, where he relies heavily on histo- rians' retrospective appraisals of the actual danger to national security in a given war, rather than at- tempting to assess contemporary perceptions of such danger. Many of his data series are predict- ably, though judiciously, chosen. The extent of mo- bilization, for example, is measured by examining increases in military personnel. Other empirical measures are more ingeniously conceived, as in Stein's discussion of labor participation rates (on the theory that labor income is more evenly distrib- uted than other forms of income) to demonstrate decreasing income inequality in wartime.

Stein's conclusions produce few surprises. His evi- dence tends to confirm his first two hypotheses about threat and cohesion, to confirm with some qualifications his third hypothesis about concentra- tion, and to confirm rather strongly his fourth hy- pothesis about inequality. The blandness of these results is often matched by observations of bone-rat- tling banality along the way. "[T]he attack on Pearl Harbor confirmed the existence of a threat to the United States," the author pronounces, an item he deems sufficiently remarkable that it must be ital- icized (p. 32).

There is rigor and imagination in Stein's analysis, but in the end he does not appreciably advance our historical understanding of war's effects. (This may be in part because he appears to have systematically ignored most of the standard historical literature on the topic.) One might even ask if he has posed the most significant questions about the domestic con- sequences of war, or only those questions most sus- ceptible to quantifiable answers. Readers of this book receive no instruction about war's effects on social and political values, or on the distribution of social power, and receive precious little enlighten- ment about the permanency of the wartime effects that are demonstrated.

No sense of historical texture or context informs these pages. To reduce the different effects on social cohesion produced by World War II and Vietnam

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