1 “‘I Can Be More Presidential than Any President.’ Read Trump's Ohio Rally Speech,” Time, July 26, 2017. President Trump repeated his praise for President McKinley in his March 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech, saying: “And McKinley, prior to being president, he was very strong on protecting our assets, protecting our country.” “Remarks by President Trump at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference,” Mar. 2, 2019, www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-2019-conservative-political-action-conference (accessed Jan. 6, 2020). These positive evaluations of McKinley's record fit with those of Karl Rove, the Republican strategist, as conveyed in Rove, Karl, The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015)Google Scholar.

2 For a recent review of McKinley scholarship, see Rauchway, Eric, “William McKinley and Us,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 4 (July 2005): 235–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Kaplan, Edward S. and Ryley, Thomas W., Prelude to Trade Wars: American Tariff Policy, 1890–1922 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994), 4, 12Google Scholar. McKinley was among the Republicans who lost their seats in the 1892 election, but redistricting played a role in that outcome. Morgan, H. Wayne, William McKinley and His America (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1963), 149Google Scholar.

4 Gates, John M., “War-Related Deaths in the Philippines, 1898–1902,” Pacific Historical Review 53 (Aug. 1984): 367–78CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5 The rural Midwest produced more overseas missionaries than any other region of the United States by the early twentieth century. Hunter, Jane, The Gospel of Gentility: American Women Missionaries in Turn-of-the-Century China (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 28Google Scholar.

6 There was a two-year gap in his service: the Sixty-Third Congress (1913–15). In 1921, William Brown McKinley took up a seat in the U.S. Senate, which he held until his death in 1926.

7 As William Cronon put it in a New York Times interview, the word “heartland” describes “a deep set of beliefs about places that somehow authentically stand for America.” In this usage, the term “heartland” does the political work of defining who is authentically from the middle—“who represents the core.” Cronon cited in Emily Badger and Kevin Quealy, “Where Is America's Heartland? Pick Your Map,” New York Times, Jan. 3, 2017.

8 Williams, William Appleman, The Roots of the Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (New York: Random House, 1969)Google Scholar. Agricultural and foreign relations history have been coming together recently in a variety of revealing ways. For a few examples, see Olssen, Tore C., Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the U.S. and Mexican Countryside (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017)Google Scholar; McVety, Amanda Kay, The Rinderpest Campaigns: A Virus, Its Vaccines, and Global Development in the Twentieth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cullather, Nick, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013)Google Scholar; Colby, Jason M., The Business of Empire: United Fruit, Race, and U.S. Expansion in Central America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Soluri, John, Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras and the United States (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005)Google Scholar. On midwestern senators’ support for the peace treaty with Spain, see Carleton, William G., “Isolationism and the Middle West,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 33 (Dec. 1946): 377–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 This violence was evidenced by the land itself, which yielded artifacts to cultivators and grave desecrators long after removal policies had forced many Indigenous peoples to relocate. On digging up graves, see Brigham, William B., “The Grand Kickapoo Village and Associated Fort in the Illinois Wilderness,” in Indian Mounds and Villages in Illinois, Bulletin No. 2, Illinois Archaeological Survey Inc., 1960 (reprint: Urbana: University of Illinois, 1982), 91–100Google Scholar. Williams does mention in passing that from 1880 to 1890, the United States engaged in Indian wars in the trans-Missouri West, but settler colonialism generally serves as the implicit backstory to his account rather than a topic of analysis, Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire, 246. In some cases, free black pioneers obtained land. See Cox, Anna-Lisa, The Bone and Sinew of the Land: America's Forgotten Black Pioneers and the Struggle for Equality (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2018)Google Scholar.

10 See for example Lurie, Nancy Oestreich, Wisconsin Indians (Madison: The Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 1969; revised and expanded edition 2002), 34–37Google Scholar; Anderson, Gary Clayton, Ethnic Cleansing and the Indian: The Crime that Should Haunt America (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 331–34Google Scholar. On the loss of tribal status and survivance on marginal lands, see Sleeper-Smith, Susan, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounter in the Western Great Lakes (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001)Google Scholar. On soil depletion resulting from being stuck on small parcels of land, see Clifton, James A., The Prairie People: Continuity and Change in Potawatomi Indian Culture, 1665–1965 (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1977), 424Google Scholar. On the diverse urban community created by American Indians in Chicago in this time period and their political activism, see LaPier, Rosalyn R. and Beck, David R. M., City Indian: Native American Activism in Chicago, 1893–1934 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 “Homeseeker's Excursions,” Prairie Farmer, Sept. 20, 1890, 605.

12 “Big Four,” Champaign Daily Gazette, Dec. 8, 1899. In 1892 an estimated 3,000 people left central Illinois for “the cheaper lands of the west.” Tenants were especially likely to emigrate as rents rose. Destler, Chester McArthur, “Agricultural Readjustment and Agrarian Unrest in Illinois, 1880–1896,” Agricultural History 21 (Apr. 1947): 104–16, 112Google Scholar.

13 “The People's Domain,” Prairie Farmer, Feb. 4, 1871.

14 Hoganson, Kristin, “Struggles for Place and Space: Kickapoo Traces from the Midwest to Mexico,” in Transnational Indians in the North American West, eds. Confer, Clarissa, Marak, Andrae, and Tuennerman, Laura (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2015), 210–25Google Scholar. See also Schulze, Jeffrey M., Are We Not Foreigners Here? Indigenous Nationalism in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018)Google ScholarPubMed.

15 Wolman, Paul, Most Favored Nation: The Republican Revisionists and U.S. Tariff Policy, 1897–1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), xii, 1Google Scholar. McKinley's favored path to tariff reductions was reciprocity treaties. Gould, Lewis L., The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1980), 244–45Google Scholar. On McKinley's aspiration for control of world markets, see LaFeber, Walter, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), 332Google Scholar. On the larger picture of the struggle between trade liberalization and protectionism in McKinley's time, see Palen, Marc-William, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846–1896 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 On woolens, see “Bargains at Willis, “Champaign Daily Gazette, Dec. 9, 1899, 4; “Linens! – Linens!” Urbana Daily Courier, Feb. 16, 1904.

17 “Our Local Food Supplies,” Champaign Daily Gazette, Dec. 26, 1899.

18 “When You Buy for the Bedroom,” Urbana Courier, Apr. 6, 1910; “Champaign Girl Taken Ill,” Urbana Courier, Sept. 20, 1903.

19 J., “Champaign County,” Prairie Farmer, Jan. 20, 1877.

20 Bogue, Allan G., From Prairie to Corn Belt: Farming on the Illinois and Iowa Prairies in the Nineteenth Century (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1994), 135Google Scholar.

21 Cyril G. Hopkins to Professor S.A. Hoover, July 13, 1901, letterbook 1, box 1, June 4, 1901–Dec. 2, 1902, Agriculture Experimental Station Letterbooks, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Archives (hereafter UIUC Archives), Urbana, IL. On congressional seed distribution, see Cooke, Kathy, “‘Who Wants White Carrots?’: Congressional Seed Distribution, 1862 to 1923,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 17 (July 2018): 475–500CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Briggs and Bros. Quarterly Illustrated Floral Work (Chicago: Briggs and Bros., 1876), 64, 67–69, 78Google Scholar.

23 Moskowitz, Marina, “The Limits of Globalization? The Horticultural Trades in Postbellum America,” in Food and Globalization: Consumption, Markets and Politics in the Modern World, eds. Nützenadel, Alexander and Trentmann, Frank (New York: Berg, 2008), 57–74, esp. 68Google Scholar; Pauly, Philip J., Fruits and Plains: The Horticultural Transformation of America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007)Google Scholar.

24 Hyland, Howard L., “History of U.S. Plant Introduction,” Environmental Review 2, no. 4 (1977): 26–33, 28Google Scholar; Harris, Amanda, Fruits of Eden: David Fairchild and America's Plant Hunters (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2015)Google Scholar; Stone, Daniel, The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats (New York: Dutton, 2018)Google Scholar; Fullilove, Courtney, The Profit of the Earth: The Global Seeds of American Agriculture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 “President M'Kinley,” Farmer and Breeder for the Farm Home 12 (Dec. 1899): 1Google Scholar.

26 Robertson, L. S., “The Importance of Leguminous Crops to Agriculture,” The Illinois Agriculturist 3 (1899): 25–33, 26–27Google Scholar, UIUC Archives.

27 Ibid., 25–33, 27.

28 Cushman, Gregory T., Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gates, Paul W., The Farmer's Age: Agriculture 1815–1860, vol. 3, in eds. David, Henry et al. , The Economic History of the United States (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1960; reprinted 1989), 327Google Scholar; Stoll, Steven, Larding the Lean Earth: Soil and Society in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), 187–90, 193–94Google Scholar.

29 On German cultures, see E. Davenport to A. S. Draper, May 5, 1897, folder: Eugene Davenport, box 3, President Andrew S. Draper, Faculty Correspondence, UIUC Archives.

30 Weaver, Marion M., History of Tile Drainage (in America Prior to 1900) (Waterloo, NY: M. M. Weaver, 1964), 58, 227Google Scholar; Roger Andrew Winsor, Artificial Drainage of East Central Illinois, 1820–1920 (PhD diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 1975), 175.

31 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, 78.

32 Evans, Sterling, Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, 1880–1950 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2007), xi, 7Google Scholar. On the Bengali origins of jute, used for packaging grains, bacon, and other goods, see Ali, Tariq Omar, A Local History of Global Capital: Jute and Peasant Life in the Bengal Delta (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 White, Sam, “From Globalized Pig Breeds to Capitalist Pigs: A Study in Animal Cultures and Evolutionary History,” Environmental History 16 (Jan. 2011): 96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnson, Benj. F., “More about the Hog, and its History,” Illinois Farmer 5 (Jan. 1860): 2–3Google Scholar; Fraser, W. J., “History of the Berkshire Swine,” in Berkshire Year Book and Breeding Herds, 1896 (Springfield, IL: American Berkshire Association, 1896), 49–50Google Scholar. On Britain as the prime source of breeding stock for the western corn belt, see Hudson, John C., Making the Corn Belt: A Geographical History of Middle-Western Agriculture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 145Google Scholar.

34 Derry, Margaret, Ontario's Cattle Kingdom: Purebred Breeders and Their World, 1870–1920 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001), 20–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 “List of Awards at the Illinois State Fair for 1875,” in ed. Fisher, S. D., Transactions of the Department of Agriculture of the State of Illinois (Springfield, IL: State Journal Book 1876), 25–65, 41–43Google Scholar.

36 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, 121.

37 On Italian bees, see Francis, L. C., “The Successful Bee-Keeper,” Transactions of the Department of Agriculture of the State of Illinois, with Reports from County Agricultural Boards, for the Year 1872, 2 (1873): 205–7Google Scholar.

38 McCracken, D. W., “The Outlook for the Swine Breeders of Illinois,” in ed. Mills, Charles F., Annual Report Illinois Farmer's Institute (Springfield, IL: Ed. F. Hartmann State Printer, 1896): 75–76Google Scholar.

39 Agnew, John, The United States in the World-Economy: A Regional Geography (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 53Google Scholar. On ruined European peasants and emigration, see also Schlebecker, John T., “The World Metropolis and the History of American Agriculture,” Journal of Economic History 20 (June 1960): 187–208; 202–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Leubke, Frederick C., Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War I (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974), 29Google Scholar.

40 Salamon, Sonya, Prairie Patrimony: Family, Farming, and Community in the Midwest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992), 19Google Scholar.

41 Billington, Ray Allen, “The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism,” Political Science Quarterly 60 (Mar. 1945): 44–64, 52–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Stewart, J. R., A Standard History of Champaign County Illinois, vol. 2 (Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Co., 1918), 553Google Scholar.

43 McKinley quoted in Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley, 31.

44 “Markets for American Products,” Bradstreet's 23 (Sept. 7, 1895): 573. W. H. Thomas, “A Missouri Farmer Argues,” Prairie Farmer, Dec. 6, 1890, 769; Elder, William, The American Farmer's Markets at Home and Abroad (Philadelphia: Ringwalt & Brown, 1870), 3Google Scholar; Dodge, J. R., “Report of the Statistician,” Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1886 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887), 359–458, esp. 440Google Scholar. H. W. Mumford, “Beef Production in the Argentine,” The Breeder's Gazette, Dec. 16, 1908, 1,221–22. In Illinois, receipts from the wheat crop from 1881 to 1896 did not surpass the costs of production. Destler, “Agricultural Readjustment and Agrarian Unrest in Illinois,” 104–16, esp. 105.

45 Thomas, “A Missouri Farmer Argues,” 777.

46 Bogue, From Prairie to Corn Belt, 282; “Foreign Restrictions,” Prairie Farmer, Nov. 28, 1885, 774; Gates, Paul W., Agriculture and the Civil War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1965), 184Google Scholar.

47 See for example W. H. Thomas, “A Missouri Farmer Argues,” 769. On defining European powers as enemies, see Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire, 237.

48 “State Agricultural Associations,” Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, vol. 1, 1853–1854 (Springfield, IL: Lanphier & Walker, 1855), 10–33, esp. 27–28Google Scholar. On the transatlantic dimensions of agrarian cooperative politics, see Rodgers, Daniel T., Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998), 318–66Google Scholar.

49 Mount, J. A., “Economics in Agriculture,” Annual Report of the Illinois Farmers’ Institute (1898) (Springfield, IL, 1898), 155–66Google Scholar.

50 “New Professors at University of Illinois,” Farmer and Breeder for the Farm Home 11 (Aug. 1899): 1Google Scholar; Hunt, Thomas F., “George Espy Morrow,” The Illinois Agriculturalist 5 (1901): 1–15, esp. 13Google Scholar; Moores, Richard Gordon, Fields of Rich Toil: The Development of the University of Illinois College of Agriculture (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 96, 135, 152, 155, 156Google Scholar.

51 Grindley, H. S., “The Science of Agriculture,” Illinois Agriculturist 2 (1898): 50–53Google Scholar.

52 Solberg, Winton U., The University of Illinois, 1867–1894: An Intellectual and Cultural History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1968), 98, 156, 267Google Scholar.

53 Colman, Norman J., “Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture,” Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture, 1886 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887), 7–45Google Scholar.

54 See for example Fornari, Harry, Bread Upon the Waters: A History of United States Grain Exports (Nashville, TN: Aurora Publishers, 1973)Google Scholar; Surface, Frank M., The Grain Trade During the World War (New York: Macmillan, 1928), 16, 17, 216Google Scholar; Frederick Dolman, “How the Navy Is Fed,” The English Illustrated Magazine, Oct. 1900, 8–17, esp. 11, British Periodicals, Proquest; Report from the Select Committee on Public Departments (Purchases, &c.), London, 1873, 449, Parliamentary Papers Online, ProQuest; Report of the Committee Appointed by the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty to Inquire into the System of Purchase and Contract in the Navy, London, 1887, 48, Parliamentary Papers Online, ProQuest; McFall, Robert James, The World's Meat (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1927), 135, 514Google Scholar.

55 Marc Palen has shown how efforts to use reciprocity to gain market access in Latin America worried British exporters who feared exclusion from Latin American markets, thereby contributing to the imperial federation movement. Yet such rivalries between the United States and Britain did not foreclose cooperation around the world, stemming from feelings of racially and civilizationally based solidarity. Palen, Marc-William, “Protection, Federation and Union: The Global Impact of the McKinley Tariff Upon the British Empire, 1890-94,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 38, no. 3 (2010): 395–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 Briggs and Bros. Quarterly Illustrated Floral Work, 64, 67–69, 78; on tomatoes more generally, on origins in western South America and domestication in Mesoamerica, see Smith, Andrew F., The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture, and Cookery (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 14–15Google Scholar.

57 Allen, A. B., “On the Origin, Breeding, and Management of Berkshire Swine,” Transactions of the Department of Agriculture of the State of Illinois (for the year 1876) (Springfield, IL: D. W. Lusk State Printer, 1878), 208–20, esp. 210Google Scholar; “Berkshire Breeders,” Prairie Farmer, Jan. 24, 1885, 52. On transimperial histories, see Hoganson, Kristin L. and Sexton, Jay, eds., Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History Into Transimperial Terrain (Durham: Duke University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Year Book American Berkshire Association, 1894 (Springfield: American Berkshire Association, 1894), 6Google Scholar; “International Live Stock Exposition,” American Swineherd, Nov. 1908, 6.

59 The status of these animals was sometimes indicated by aristocratic names, such as Duke of Bedford and Baron Booth of Lancaster. See “List of Awards at the Seventeenth Annual Exhibition,” Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society vol. 8 (Springfield: Illinois Journal Printing Office, 1871), 28–57, esp. 28Google Scholar.

60 Sterzel, Fredrik, The Inter-Parliamentary Union (Stockholm: Norstedt & Söner, 1968), 9, 26–27Google Scholar. The members in 1912 were Australia, Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Liberia, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Rumania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States. Inter-Parliamentary Bureau, The Inter-Parliamentary Union: Its Work and Its Organisation (Geneva: Inter-Parliamentary Bureau, 1948), 18–19Google Scholar.

61 “Hon. W. B. M'Kinley Is at ‘Home, Sweet Home,’” Urbana Courier, Oct. 3, 1905.

62 “Writes from Philippines,” Urbana Courier, Feb. 17, 1909. See also, for example, “Miss Clendenin Becomes Bride,” Urbana Courier, June 17, 1909; “Hinman in Philippines,” Urbana Courier, Dec. 15, 1909; “Gets Place in Philippines,” Urbana Courier, Mar. 30, 1911.

63 “Danville Boy Is a Veteran,” Urbana Courier, June 20, 1903; “University News,” Urbana Courier, Nov. 8, 1906; “Joseph Prestine Home,” Urbana Courier, Dec. 14, 1906; “Urbana Boy Is Home from Army,” Urbana Courier, July 12, 1915. Not all soldiers made it home. See “Mother Lives in Urbana,” Urbana Courier, Mar. 11, 1903. On Philippine veterans stationed at the Chanute Air Base, see “Squadron D,” Air Puffs, Nov. 30, 1918, 1; Snyder, Thomas S., Chanute Field: The Hum of the Motor Replaced the Song of the Reaper, 1917–1921 (Paxton, IL: Chanute Technical Training Center: History Office, 1975), 57Google Scholar.

64 “Foreign Student's Career,” Daily Illini (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign student newspaper), May 24, 1907; “Cosmopolitan Club,” Daily Illini, Feb. 26, 1907; “Filipinos Entertain with Program of Native Stunts,” Daily Illini, Apr. 6, 1909. Some of these students also questioned the superiority of American-style scientific agriculture. W. S. Woo from Shanghai, China, worked on a classmate's farm one year, finding that the long days, arduous labor, lack of bathroom facilities, and home life did not testify well to American agricultural practice. W. S. Woo, “On an American Farm,” Bloomington, Illinois Bulletin, Apr. 27, 1912, folder: Agriculture—College, box 2 clipping file, 1912–1919, President Edmund J. James Papers, UIUC Archives; “Ninety-Two Foreign Students at University,” Urbana Daily Courier, Jan. 12, 1911.

65 On McKinley's move away from economic independence toward lowering tariff barriers through reciprocity as a means to advance U.S. economic expansion and an interdependent world economy, see Terrill, Tom E., The Tariff, Politics, and American Foreign Policy 1874–1901 (Westport, CT.: Greenwood Press, 1973), 12Google Scholar.

66 As Williams put it, “The farmers who were quasi-colonials in the domestic economy thus became anticolonial imperialists in foreign affairs as a strategy of becoming equals at home.” Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire, 25.