Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

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Overview

Written by a master storyteller, Tycoon’s War is the remarkable account of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of the capitalist versus the idealist, money versus ambition, and a monumental clash of egos that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans. This incredible true story—impeccably researched and never before told in full—is packed with greed, intrigue, and some of the most hair-raising battle scenes ever written.

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Tycoon's War: How Cornelius Vanderbilt Invaded a Country to Overthrow America's Most Famous Military Adventurer

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Overview

Written by a master storyteller, Tycoon’s War is the remarkable account of an epic imperialist duel—a violent battle of the capitalist versus the idealist, money versus ambition, and a monumental clash of egos that resulted in the deaths of thousands of Americans. This incredible true story—impeccably researched and never before told in full—is packed with greed, intrigue, and some of the most hair-raising battle scenes ever written.

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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal

Dando-Collins (Caesar's Legion ) recounts the conflict between tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt and adventurer William Walker over the control of Nicaragua from 1855 to 1857. Walker, with mercenary support, entered Nicaragua's civil war in 1855 on the side of the Democratico forces against the Legitimistas. Historians have seen the Tennessee native as wishing to reintroduce slavery to Nicaragua and encourage settlement by American Southerners. Dando-Collins claims that Walker initially acted out of personal ambition, seeking to emulate Sam Houston of Texas. Only after he was elected president of Nicaragua in 1856 did he turn to slaving-holding interests to support colonization and to bring in African labor. Dando-Collins's basis for his defense of Walker? That he came from a family hostile to slavery and there is no record that he supported the practice of slavery himself. Even if the paper trail is not there, Walker's willingness to reintroduce and thus expand slavery demonstrates tolerance for the institution and/or unscrupulous desire for power. His actions put him into conflict with Vanderbilt, who controlled a major portion of shipping routes that used Nicaragua as overland transit between the Atlantic and Pacific. After the Democratico government seized his company's assets, Vanderbilt, with the tacit encouragement of the U.S. government, supplied Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador with money for arms to depose Walker in 1857. While Dando-Collins presents the story readably, his questionable historical interpretation limits his book's value. Only for academic collections seeking comprehensive coverage.-Stephen Hupp. West Virginia Univ. Lib., Parkersburg

Kirkus Reviews
Absorbing tale of a conflict in 19th-century Central America sparked by two men with rather different ideas about Manifest Destiny. Australian historian Dando-Collins (Blood of the Caesars: How the Murder of Germanicus Led to the Fall of Rome, 2008, etc.) has written what in some measure qualifies as a dual biography of William Walker and Cornelius Vanderbilt, focusing on the circumstances that made them enemies and ended in Walker's violent death at age 36. When the book opens in 1849, Vanderbilt, who rose from poverty to become perhaps the wealthiest person in the United States, was 55 years old. He was determined to control shipping routes between America's East and West coasts, which would include winning transit rights across such Central American nations as Nicaragua and Panama. An 1849 meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John M. Clayton seemed to assure Vanderbilt the exclusive right to negotiate with the Nicaraguan government to build a canal there. None of the negotiators, however, foresaw the entrance of William Walker to rewrite their cozy scenario. Reared in Nashville, Tenn., Walker learned Greek and Latin by age 12, attended universities in the United States and Europe, earned degrees in medicine and law, then worked in New Orleans as a crusading journalist. Through a series of unlikely circumstances, the fearless Walker became an adventurer determined to spread North American influence throughout Central America. He arrived in Nicaragua in 1855 at the head of a group of mercenaries he had hired and trained; in 1856, he became the civil war-torn nation's president. When he began interfering with Vanderbilt's business plans, the tycoon decided to fight Walker with competingmercenaries. Four bloody years later, Vanderbilt had prevailed, and Walker died in front of a Honduran firing squad. Dando-Collins juggles disparate elements to maintain cohesion in a convoluted history of military campaigns, changes in governments, complicated business transactions and bizarre backdoor diplomatic dealings.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780306818561
  • Publisher: Da Capo Press
  • Publication date: 9/22/2009
  • Edition description: First Trade Paper Edition
  • Pages: 400
  • Sales rank: 591,469
  • Product dimensions: 6.00 (w) x 8.90 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Stephen Dando-Collins is an Australian-born historian who has written a number of fiction and nonfiction books, including Caesar’s Legion and Standing Bear Is a Person. He lives in Tasmania.

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Table of Contents

Maps

Introduction 1

1 Gun-Barrel Diplomacy 16

2 Down, but Not Out 29

3 Enter the Colonel 46

4 Landing Behind Enemy Lines 55

5 The Battle of Rivas 65

6 Victory at La Virgen 84

7 Walker's Secret Plan 99

8 Taking Granada 108

9 The Walker Way 117

10 Closing In on the Prize 136

11 On a Collision Course 145

12 Blindsiding Vanderbilt 151

13 The Gathering Storm 162

14 Going to War with Walker 172

15 The Battle of Santa Rosa 179

16 Courts-Martial and Firing Squads 186

17 A Killing or Two 193

18 The Second Battle of Rivas 205

19 President Walker 221

20 Battles on All Fronts 236

21 New Battlegrounds 250

22 Wheeling and Dealing 262

23 Here Was Granada 275

24 Closing Nicaragua's Back Door 284

25 Operation San Juan 295

26 To the Victor, the Spoils 309

27 The Surrender 324

Epilogue 329

The Protagonists' Motives 341

Bibliography 343

Notes 347

Index 359

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  • Anonymous

    Posted December 6, 2011

    An excellent book from a master historian

    Cornelius Vanderbilt, when he died, was the richest man in America. By some accounts, he was worth more than the US Treasury at the time of his death. His name lives on in the annals of great businessmen who, as a ruthless competitor, refused to ever back down from a challenge. However, there is one part of his story that has always intrigued me. Why did he endow Vanderbilt University in Nashville, a city which he never visited in his life? In his newest book, Stephen Dando-Collins provides a likely theory.Dando-Collins, famous for his books about Caesar and early Roman history, tackles the epic battles between Vanderbilt and the adventurer William Walker, a Nashville born man who took over Nicaragua in the 1850s. At the time, Vanderbilt was trying to control the flow of goods and people through Nicaragua which, before the Panama Canal was completed, was the quickest way to and from California by ship. Walker, invited to help the Nicaraguan rebels, ends up installing himself as president of the country, supported by a mercenary army. However, he cuts a deal with Vanderbilt's competitors, driving the businessman to fund armies to remove Walker from power.While there are some ambiguities to this tale (Walker's support for slavery, for instance), Dando-Collins approaches it with aplomb. His style, as always, is engaging and entertaining, while also being very informative. The descriptions of the battles, above all else, are nearly spot on. One can almost smell the gunpowder. In the end, Dando-Collins puts forth the theory that Vanderbilt endowded the university that bears his name because, even after William Walker's death, he couldn't accept that Nashville loved Walker more than himself. To that end, when approached about donating charitable funds to found a college, his only demands were that it be placed in Nashville and bear his name. Until the bitter end, Vanderbilt could not and would not give up the fight.

    1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

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