Tonight, while reading, I came across a word that I've never heard before (I dont know if all of you have--maybe it's just me). But the word is antijingoist (pg. 646, used to describe Cleveland during the Cuban revolts against Spanish rule).
The formal definition of a jingoist is "a person who thinks that their country is always right and who are in favor of aggressive acts against other countries", which means that an antijingoist would be a person who is opposed to aggressive acts against other countries.
In this case, I assume antijingoist would describe the fact that Cleveland did not want to interfere after General Weyler put many Cubans in concentration camps in which the conditions were so bad that many died. Even though the American public was outraged and demanded action, Cleveland did not want to act because it would mean mobilizing the army.
However, I was still curious about this word--so I did further research on the etymology. Turns out that the British first sung this word ("by jingo") in a pub song around the time of Russo-Turkish war (1877) where it had been used instead of the term "by Jesus". This probably suggests that the jingoists thought of nationalism as a religion, meaning that they practiced an extreme version of nationalism. Very interesting to see that this word's meaning has not been changed throughout the years and still mainly remains a derogatory term.
Any other people that you can think of in US history that are obviously jingoist or antijingoist?
Audrey, this is a really interesting post; I hadn't really thought much about the word although I didn't recognize it either. I feel Cleveland's antijingoism was pretty consistent, as evidenced by his withdrawal of the treaty to annex Hawaii. From the two chapters we've read this unit, I think I would categorize Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan (Influence of Sea Power upon History), McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and John Hay as jingoists and Richard Olney and William Jennings Bryan as antijingoists.
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