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We might express the thread of Conroy’s argument in twenty- first-century terms as something like this: an American narrative emerges concerning the Far East and the Pacific. It has some origins in Manifest Destiny. It comes to describe itself in terms of an American way, with freedom and democracy, fairness, and openness. It also has room for justified realism: dollar diplomacy and U.S. interests. The story America tells features a fairness and an effort to do the best for all; it fancies itself as creating a better world. Speaking in universal language, it spins out what we might call a master narrative—a new chapter in the story of the modern West.
Yet, through twenty-first-century eyes, we will see this story as a situated American narrative, in that it becomes relativized. Returning to Conroy’s ever-probing, dialogical voice, we find already the first step toward this relativization. This occurs when Conroy begins to introduce to us, through the examination mainly of diplomatic documents, another (previously marginalized) narrative: the Japanese. Conroy reveals that the Japanese, too, have their narrative; that we fit into theirs just as they fit into ours. We see this outcome in Conroy’s careful, empirical, documentary history work, a work that by taking the first step points us from the beginning toward further postmodern discoveries and negotiations. Japan is the first in the margins to be recognized. Let us imagine, in a preliminary way, some further steps.
So now, as the Japanese narrative comes to the center, we have what? We have Japanese-American dialogue, giving us not one logos but a dia-logos of negotiated plans for East Asia and the Pacific, including plans for how the story of East Asia and the Pacific will unravel. But what about China? “Still in the margins” is the answer. Telescoping forward to 2006 and beyond, we find China out of the margins. China as an actor in East Asia, as well as a Chinese narrative for East Asia, emerges.