An earlier version of this article, which the Tactical Notebook will publish in two parts, appeared in the first (cloth-bound) edition of Daniel Marston and Carter Malkasian, Counterinsurgency in Modern Warfare (Oxford: Osprey, 2008).
Very interesting to read about imperial Germany making itself unpopular in the western hemisphere. Previously my list of self-inflicted wounds of the Kaiserreich's foreign policy only had Agadir and an unfortunate Daily Telegraph interview.
German assertiveness in the Caribbean in pursuit of a place in the sun, versus the relative restraint of the established British and French, seems like a missing piece of the puzzle in explaining why Germany had such diplomatic difficulty with the US during the First World War even before its unrestricted submarine warfare campaigns.
The relation of the Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua sounds similar to the (fictional) frictional relationship between Costa Guana and the coastal province of Sulaco in Joseph Conrad's (excellent) Nostromo (1904). Current writers see Sulaco (with a valuable silver mine) as an analog to Panama, with American interests supporting separatism from an analog to Colombia. But the Nicaraguan case seems at least as likely. For one thing, a silver mine is not all that much like a canal. For another, Sulaco, like the Mosquito Coast, has a European presence. (If you haven't read Nostromo, I recommend it. It touches on many things of interest to the proprietor of this Substack.)
Very interesting to read about imperial Germany making itself unpopular in the western hemisphere. Previously my list of self-inflicted wounds of the Kaiserreich's foreign policy only had Agadir and an unfortunate Daily Telegraph interview.
German assertiveness in the Caribbean in pursuit of a place in the sun, versus the relative restraint of the established British and French, seems like a missing piece of the puzzle in explaining why Germany had such diplomatic difficulty with the US during the First World War even before its unrestricted submarine warfare campaigns.
The relation of the Mosquito Coast to Nicaragua sounds similar to the (fictional) frictional relationship between Costa Guana and the coastal province of Sulaco in Joseph Conrad's (excellent) Nostromo (1904). Current writers see Sulaco (with a valuable silver mine) as an analog to Panama, with American interests supporting separatism from an analog to Colombia. But the Nicaraguan case seems at least as likely. For one thing, a silver mine is not all that much like a canal. For another, Sulaco, like the Mosquito Coast, has a European presence. (If you haven't read Nostromo, I recommend it. It touches on many things of interest to the proprietor of this Substack.)