Soldiers of FortuneBroadview Press, 2006 M06 2 - 272 pages A romance of America’s nascent imperial power, Richard Harding Davis’s Soldiers of Fortune recounts the adventures of Robert Clay, a mining engineer and sometime mercenary, and Hope Langham, the daughter of a wealthy American industrialist, as they become caught up in a coup in Olancho, a fictional Latin American republic. When the coup, organized by corrupt politicians and generals, threatens the American-owned Valencia Mining Company, Clay organizes his workers and the handful of Americans visiting the mine into a counter-coup force. Written on the eve of the Spanish-American War, Soldiers of Fortune casts the young American as the dashing, hypermasculine hero of the new military and economic. A huge best-seller, the novel did its part to push the nation into war against Spain, and stands as one of the most important texts in the literature of American imperialism. The appendices, which bring together primary materials by writers and politicians such as Rebecca Harding Davis, Theodore Roosevelt, Jose Martí, Mark Twain, Herbert Spencer, and others, address such issues as social Darwinism, masculinity, and ideas of Anglo-American superiority. |
From inside the book
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... interests and power . The Spanish , he makes clear , have gone too far , have exerted their influence in the Caribbean for long enough . The US he insists , should respond with force , should push the tired colo- nial power out of the ...
... interest , was one of the most important books of its time ; it remains one of the most important novels in the canon of American imperial literature . Richard Harding Davis : Life , Works , and Critical Reception An overview of Davis ...
... interest in writing and literature clearly had a significant impact on his son's desire to become a journalist , and while Richard learned a great deal from his father , he had an especially close relationship with his mother , Rebecca ...
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