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The Potential of Flight: U.S. Aviation and Pan-Americanism During the Early Twentieth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2019
Abstract
This article examines the formative years of flight in the United States and argues that Pan-Americanism served as a guiding ideology in the development of the nation's early aeronautic endeavors. With the advent of the airplane at the turn of the twentieth century, U.S. Pan-Americanists believed that aviation would provide a solution to the sociological and practical problems that hindered the development of international unity among the American republics. By physically transporting individuals, products, and cultural media rapidly across the hemisphere via the sky, aircraft would unite the peoples of Latin America and the United States and promote inter-American cooperation. To see the Pan-American potential of aircraft fulfilled, Pan-Americanists cooperated with private U.S. aviation organizations to expound the value of flight and to generate interest in aviation across the Western Hemisphere. Although a variety of Pan-American initiatives were successfully undertaken during the 1910s, the outbreak of the First World War hindered the movement and ultimately led to the transformation of aviation into a tool of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. By examining the origins of U.S. aviation through the lens of Pan-Americanism, this article seeks to reevaluate the pervading imperial narrative of the history of U.S. aviation in the Western Hemisphere.
Keywords
- Type
- Essays
- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 48 - 76
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2019
References
Notes
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112 Theron Lowel Brant, “Our War with Germany,” Flying, Sep. 1913, 13–15. War-scare and invasion literature was a common manifestation of the German Peril both before and during the First World War. Other examples include Hugh Johnson, “The Lamb Rampant,” Everybody's Magazine, Mar. 1908, 291–301; Hancock, H. Irving, The Invasion of the United States; Or, Uncle Sam's Boys at the Capture of Boston (Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altemus Company, 1916)Google Scholar.
113 Edward Marshall, “Day of Travel by Dirigible is Close at Hand,” Washington Evening Star, June 22, 1919.
114 “Developing the Practical Utility of Aviation in South America,” Pan American Union Bulletin, Nov. 1916, 619–31.
115 “Notes and Comment,” Hispanic American Historical Review 2:3 (Aug. 1919): 485Google Scholar.
116 Report of the Second Pan American Commercial Conference (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1919), 235–36Google Scholar.
117 Ibid., 236–38.
118 Air Service Journal, Dec. 7, 1918, 13.
119 “Viva el Aviador!” New York Times, June 20, 1920.
120 Newton, “Aviation Rivalry in Latin America,” 351.
121 “Secretary of War Baker Opens Second Pan-American Aeronautic Convention, Exposition and Contests by Wireless,” Aerial Age Weekly, May 5, 1919, 373.
122 Alan Hawley, “The Future of Aeronautics,” The Outlook, June 11, 1919, 247–48.
123 “Baker Greets Aero Meet by Wireless,” Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), May 1, 1919.
124 Robie, For the Greatest Achievement, 96–97.
125 “Second Pan American Aeronautic Convention,” Pan American Union Bulletin, Apr. 1919, 443; “Second Pan-American Aeronautic Convention,” Aerial Age Weekly, May 19, 1919, 479.
126 “Second Pan-American Aeronautic Convention Great Success,” Aerial Age Weekly, May 12, 1919, 427.
127 Report of American Aviation Mission, Jul. 19, 1919 enclosed in Winston Churchill to War Cabinet, Sep. 26, 1919, CAB 24/89/31, The National Archives, Kew, London, UK.
128 Minutes of the Meeting of the Show Committee, Jan. 31, 1919, box 297, Manufacturers Aircraft Association Records, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY [henceforth MAA Records]; Manufacturers Aircraft Association, Aircraft Year Book 1920 (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1920), 140–46Google Scholar.
129 Manufacturers Aircraft Association to Francisco Yanes, Feb. 19, 1920, box 80, MAA Records; and Franklin Adams to Samuel Bradley, Feb. 25, 1920, box 80, MAA Records.
130 John Barrett to Samuel Bradley, Mar. 4, 1920, box 80, MAA Records.
131 “Air Lines to Join Two Americas,” New York Sun and Herald, Mar. 8, 1920. Yanes was understandably irritated by the newspaper's decision to ignore his speech and was forced to ask the MAA to return his original paper copy in the absence of a press clipping.: See Francisco Yanes to Luther Bell, Mar. 10, 1920, box 80, MAA Records.
132 “Air Mail Routes,” Air Service Journal, Dec. 14, 1918, 1–2.
133 Fifth Annual Report of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics 1919 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920), 40Google Scholar.
134 C.W. Webster, “Aviation in South America,” Flying, Jan. 1920, 986–87.
135 “Aviation in the United States,” Pan American Union Bulletin, June 1919, 669–82.
136 Threlkeld, Megan, “The Pan American Conference of Women, 1922: Successful Suffragists Turn to International Relations,” Diplomatic History 31:5 (Nov. 2007): 801–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Report of the Delegation from the United States of America to the Sixth International Sanitary Conference (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1920)Google Scholar.
137 Inman, Samuel Guy, “Pan-American Unity in the Making,” Current History 18:6 (1923): 919–25Google Scholar.
138 On U.S. military interventions in Central America and the Caribbean under Wilson, Harding, and Coolidge, see Neagle, Michael, “US Policies Toward Latin America,” in A Companion to Woodrow Wilson, ed. Kennedy, Ross (New York: Wiley & Sons, 2013), 206–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loveman, Brian, No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 228Google Scholar; Grieb, Kenneth, The Latin American Policy of Warren G. Harding (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 1–13Google Scholar.