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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... young man , Clarke studied law and was admitted to the Pennsylvania bar , but found himself more and more drawn to the life of a journalist . While still practicing law , he began to edit two legal publications , Law Reports and the ...
... young press boy named Gallegher . The appearance of " Gallegher " in the August 1890 , issue of Scribner's Magazine made Davis , as Lubow remarks , " Byronically famous overnight , ” and he was soon publishing stories in many of the ...
... young heroine , scores of corrupt Latin American foes , stashes of gold , a coup , and a dra- matic climax . Readers responded , we can speculate , not only to the requisite ingredients of the romance , but to the tale's stirring ...
... young woman , Cecil originally turned down Davis ' pro- posal , but she relented and became his companion on many of his subsequent adventures : she traveled with him to South Africa in January 1900 , in order that he could report on ...
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