James Bradley makes that charge in his book, The Imperial Cruise...
...the book's actual subject is the 1905 boat trip to the Far East Teddy Roosevelt sent his Secretary of War Taft and daughter Alice (for cover) on; the primary purpose of that trip, Bradley exposes, was Roosevelt and Taft making a treaty which was totally unconstitutional (all US treatys must be approved by the Senate) and, Bradley claims, the occurrances during that trip led directly to the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost to the Japanese a little less than 40 years later during WWII.
The filler of the book consists primarily of what Bradley calls the "Aryan Christian" ideology of the majority of Americans and Brits then and their "westward to the sun" push for empire...
...so the author includes his take on the British assaults on China, the Opium Wars, and how 20-year old Victoria, just 2 years the Queen, agreed to continue the opium trade the Chinese had outlawed in their own country by working with others to establish the Pearl River Delta's floating opium warehouses. During this time Britain also snagged other prizes, including Hong Kong. Bradley makes it clear in claiming that China, once so fabulously rich in silver, was practically drained dry by the British and that Her Majesty reigned over the opium trade, thus making her the biggest drug dealer in history.
Bradley also rats-out some of the Queen's most prosperous opium dealers...
...like Franklin Delano Rooosevelt's granfather Warren (FDR and Teddy were 5th cousins); the Cabot family of Boston, who endowed Harvard with so much of their opium money; Abiel Low, a New York boy who made it big in the opium trade of the Pearl River Delta, bankrolled the first cable across the Atlantic, and has Columbia University's most famous landmark - Low Memorial Library - named for him. Princeton's first big benefactor, John Green, sold opium with FDR's granddad in the Delta; John Murray Forbes of Boston (yes, those Forbes) financed the career of Ralph Waldo Emerson and bankrolled the Bell Telephone Company from his opium profits; Thomas Perkins funded America's first commercial railroad from his opium-dealing proceeds, and the biggest American opium dealers of them all: the Russell family, one of whose members founded Yale's infamous Skull & Bones society.
The author's father, John, was the Navy corpsman with the 5 Marines who famously raised the Stripes & Stars on Mt. Suribachi; James wrote Flags of Our Fathers in 2000 (his first book) in tribute to those 6 Americans...
...his second book, Flyboys: A True Tale of Courage (2003), tells the story of 9 surviving airmen shot down by the Japanese after air-raiding Chichi Jima; 8 of them were captured, executed and - yes - eaten, the 9th was rescuced and eventually became the 41st President.
The Imperial Cruise is James Bradley's third NYT best-selling book (2009); I found it fascinating and a brave effort...
...and it made me finally sure that the carving of Theodore Roosevelt - the 26th President of the United States of America - needs to be totally wiped-off of the face of Mt. Rushmore.
...the book's actual subject is the 1905 boat trip to the Far East Teddy Roosevelt sent his Secretary of War Taft and daughter Alice (for cover) on; the primary purpose of that trip, Bradley exposes, was Roosevelt and Taft making a treaty which was totally unconstitutional (all US treatys must be approved by the Senate) and, Bradley claims, the occurrances during that trip led directly to the hundreds of thousands of American lives lost to the Japanese a little less than 40 years later during WWII.
The filler of the book consists primarily of what Bradley calls the "Aryan Christian" ideology of the majority of Americans and Brits then and their "westward to the sun" push for empire...
...so the author includes his take on the British assaults on China, the Opium Wars, and how 20-year old Victoria, just 2 years the Queen, agreed to continue the opium trade the Chinese had outlawed in their own country by working with others to establish the Pearl River Delta's floating opium warehouses. During this time Britain also snagged other prizes, including Hong Kong. Bradley makes it clear in claiming that China, once so fabulously rich in silver, was practically drained dry by the British and that Her Majesty reigned over the opium trade, thus making her the biggest drug dealer in history.
Bradley also rats-out some of the Queen's most prosperous opium dealers...
...like Franklin Delano Rooosevelt's granfather Warren (FDR and Teddy were 5th cousins); the Cabot family of Boston, who endowed Harvard with so much of their opium money; Abiel Low, a New York boy who made it big in the opium trade of the Pearl River Delta, bankrolled the first cable across the Atlantic, and has Columbia University's most famous landmark - Low Memorial Library - named for him. Princeton's first big benefactor, John Green, sold opium with FDR's granddad in the Delta; John Murray Forbes of Boston (yes, those Forbes) financed the career of Ralph Waldo Emerson and bankrolled the Bell Telephone Company from his opium profits; Thomas Perkins funded America's first commercial railroad from his opium-dealing proceeds, and the biggest American opium dealers of them all: the Russell family, one of whose members founded Yale's infamous Skull & Bones society.
The author's father, John, was the Navy corpsman with the 5 Marines who famously raised the Stripes & Stars on Mt. Suribachi; James wrote Flags of Our Fathers in 2000 (his first book) in tribute to those 6 Americans...
...his second book, Flyboys: A True Tale of Courage (2003), tells the story of 9 surviving airmen shot down by the Japanese after air-raiding Chichi Jima; 8 of them were captured, executed and - yes - eaten, the 9th was rescuced and eventually became the 41st President.
The Imperial Cruise is James Bradley's third NYT best-selling book (2009); I found it fascinating and a brave effort...
...and it made me finally sure that the carving of Theodore Roosevelt - the 26th President of the United States of America - needs to be totally wiped-off of the face of Mt. Rushmore.
