Theodore Roosevelt is one of the most popular presidents in U.S. history. His performance is frequently ranked high and he enjoys enduring bipartisan appeal. In addition to his attempts at trust busting, he is commonly remembered for his big-stick imperialism and his environmental policies. These latter two aspects of his presidency are mostly understood as initiatives in discrete areas of foreign and domestic policies. In his most recent book, Australian historian Ian Tyrell challenges such neat compartmentalization and links Roosevelt's environmentalism to nation and empire building through the analytical concept of conservation. This historiographically marginalized concept, Tyrell argues, not only guided much of Roosevelt's political thought on nation, empire, civilization, and globalization, but also underwrote and focused the Progressive Era's reform agendas.
In twelve deeply researched, nuanced, and eloquent chapters, Tyrell charts the contours of the Progressive Era's environmental discourses and explores in great detail how concerns about waste, resource depletion, environmental degradation, public health, and landscape preservation informed conservation initiatives during the administration of America's twenty-sixth president. He situates Roosevelt at the center of a group of like-minded individuals—most important, Gifford Pinchot, with whom Theodore Roosevelt shared his expansive vision of conservation. Their efforts were complemented by a wide range of specialists such as geologists, engineers, zoologists, economists, and public health experts whose transnational activities and exchanges as part of a global epistemic community helped internationalize the American discourse on conservation.
Roosevelt emerges as a president with broad perspectives for the American nation–state, its imperial ambitions, and increasing global integration. His overall concept of interlocking conservation initiatives went beyond the mere creation of national parks and wildlife reserves and encompassed a highly political understanding of the natural environment. Through conservation, Roosevelt hoped to contain and reverse trends that could endanger a strong nation–state: from soil erosion to fossil fuel depletion to declining birth rates and the disappearance of a rural way of life. A powerful state was to serve as guardian of the “natural” foundations of the nation to ensure the long-term viability of the American polity.
Tyrell's book underlines how Theodore Roosevelt utilized the alarmist discourse on the environmental limits of industrial modernity to advance the extension of a powerful federal government. He initiated seven conservation commissions and conferences, most important the Conference of Governors; the Inland Waterways Commission; and the National Conservation Commission, which prepared the nation's first inventory of natural resources. In addition, Roosevelt supported reformist interest groups such as the American Civic Association and the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society. In conjunction with congressional allies, he facilitated the development of a strong U.S. Forest Service and steadily enlarged the responsibilities of government bureaucracy for the management of natural resources, often by executive fiat. In all of those endeavors, he utilized his rapport with the press to shape public discussions and drew on his celebrity status to advance the cause of conservation.
Crisis of the Wasteful Nation makes three contributions to our understanding of the Roosevelt presidency and Progressive Era America. First, it coherently integrates conservation into the broader contexts of nation-building, empire, and globalization and convincingly demonstrates how this environmental concept served Roosevelt and his reform allies as the basis for their geopolitical agenda. Such notions of conservation resonate with contemporary understandings of national, energy, and environmental security.
Second, the book underlines how deeply embedded Progressive Era conservation discourses and policies were in global knowledge exchanges and transfers. Over the last twenty-five years or so, Ian Tyrell has consistently expanded our understanding of the transnational dimension of Progressive Era America. His work has immeasurably enriched an entire research field, in many respects defined it. This study on conservation further advances our knowledge about the importance of reference cultures in the early twentieth century and the mechanics of intercultural transfers. The book provides much texture to understanding the actual workings of transnational exchanges.
Finally, the study makes sophisticated contributions to the discussion of the American empire. It highlights multiple linkages between the U.S. settler empire and its overseas colonies, between nation-building and the U.S. colonial project, and between the American settler empire and the global, civilizing role of settler empires more generally. It challenges the common view that the search for markets and open door access was a major impetus behind the acquisition of colonies after 1898 and suggests that economic nationalism and the neo-mercantilist resource potential of colonies were of greater importance.
Less clear is how Theodore Roosevelt's often hyperbolic nationalism and dislike for cosmopolitanism (somewhat ironic, considering his upbringing, international outlooks and travels, and his international networks of friends and associates) connects to or reconciles with his vision of conservation as an essential component of globalization. In other words, how does his premodern vulgar nationalism square with his modern, sophisticated, long-term perspective on global integration and interdependency? His understanding of the global arena could have, of course, been a mere extension of the national. In such a perspective, Roosevelt's efforts at global cooperation would be little more than tools to shrewdly advance the national interests and hegemonic ambitions of the United States.
This tension between national and global continues to haunt much of the political debates on conservation. The book is a sobering reminder of the longevity of some of the issues we are confronted with today, such as the impact of economic prosperity on conservation, debates over intergenerational responsibility, lack of binding international agreements, and the struggle over resource depletion and access to raw materials. While Tyrell rightfully suggests that Americans have not repudiated Roosevelt's conservationist legacy, they might have departed from a view that integrated environmental security with global leadership. As a consequence, they are no longer the driver but the driven, or, all too often, the roadblock in those conversations.
