Transimperial Manhood: Theodore Roosevelt and Gendered Politics in US-Japanese Relations

The gender ideology of no other US president has elicited as much scholarly fascination as that of Theodore Roosevelt. Historians have closely analyzed his transformation from sickly child to big stick-wielding outdoorsman, highlighting how his overbearing father, frontier experience, and the societal transformations of the Gilded Age shaped an idiosyncratic gendered worldview that guided his political decisions.1 Neil Cogan even argues that manhood was Roosevelt’s central political organizing principle, linking progressivism and global power concerns over civilizational struggle within a common gendered vision.2 So far, this literature has treated this vision as a domestic construct rooted in US socialization and projected outward through political actions. Such a reading overlooks the realities of the United States in which Roosevelt came into political maturity: an ascending empire embedded in global networks of shared imperial knowledge, culture, and practice. An avid reader and passionate traveler, Roosevelt actively and enthusiastically participated in this global system. How did it impact his gendered formation? What does this tell us about the role of gendered knowledge circulation in shaping imperial diplomatic culture?