American businessmen and strategists were responding to a challenge. In the 1890s, Germany, Russia, Britain, France, and Japan had all appropriated more Chinese territory. From the south to Manchuria, China was being carved up. “All of Europe is seizing China,” warned Henry Cabot Lodge, a senator from Massachusetts who represented New England’s textile magnates. “If we do not establish ourselves in the East, that vast trade, from which we must draw our future prosperity … will be practically closed to us forever.” Lodge and others demanded that America stop the partition of China.
