American Empire: A Global History

AMERICAN EMPIRE

AMERICA IN THE WORLD

Sven Beckert and Jeremi Suri, Series Editors

A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

AMERICAN EMPIRE

A GLOBAL HISTORY

A. G. HOPKINS

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

PRINCETON & OXFORD

COPYRIGHT © 2018 BY A. G. HOPKINS

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Fired at first sight with what the Muse imparts,

In fearless youth we tempt the height of arts,

While from the bounded level of our mind,

Short views we take, nor see the lengths behind;

But more advanced, behold with strange surprise

New distant scenes of endless science rise!

So pleased at first the towering Alps we try,

Mount o’er the vales, and seem to tread the sky,

The eternal snows appear already passed,

And the first clouds and mountains seem the last:

But, those attain’d, we tremble to survey

The growing labours of the lengthen’d way,

The increasing prospect tires our wandering eyes,

Hills peep o’er hills, and Alps on Alps arise!

—Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711)

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

PREFACE

This book arose from the conjunction of two decisions. The first, my own, brought me to the United States to take up a position at the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. The second, made by others then unknown, was the bombing of the Twin Towers, which occurred on the morning after my arrival. This event, subsequently known as 9/11, had minor as well as major consequences. My own response was among the smallest of the reverberations: I was drawn, like a pin to a magnet, toward the force that had brought down the Towers and riven the world. I then watched, with spectators across the globe, as the attack provoked a massive response. In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq. At that point, and still largely against my will, I put down the work I was engaged in and turned my attention to understanding Washington’s reaction to the first assault on its continental territory since 1812.

The inquiry took me far from my starting point, which was just as well because numerous commentators, who commanded far more knowledge than I did and could write at a speed I could not match, even with artificial propulsion, had plowed through the terrain long before an outsider could reach it. I had to become a fox, as in the fable popularized by Isaiah Berlin, who knows many things, before I could hope to become a hedgehog, who knows one important thing. As I contemplated the huge, impressive, and daunting library of research on the history of the United States, it became apparent that the only possibility I had of making a contribution to the subject was by looking at it from the outside in, instead of from the inside out, while also trying to absorb elements of the national story that fitted my purpose. The resulting study has brought together, in a wholly unpremeditated way, several decades of accumulated knowledge from three diverse fields of history. My interest in globalization has supplied the broad analytical context; my work on Western empires has suggested how imperial expansion transmitted globalizing impulses; my research on the indigenous history of former colonial states, especially those in Africa, has given me an awareness of how different the world looks when viewed from the other side of the frontier.

The dimensions of this endeavor are identified in the Prologue and examined in more detail in chapter 1. My remaining observation on the academic content of the project acknowledges the inherent difficulty that besets all works of synthesis: that of striking a satisfactory balance between generality and detail. George Eliot gave Edward Casaubon his big idea of finding the key to all mythologies, but knew that his procedure of sifting those mixed heaps of material, which were to be the doubtful illustration of principles still more doubtful, was irredeemably flawed. In his mercurial way, Oscar Wilde also urged writers to be bold and unconventional. He scorned timidity that held even the courage of other people’s ideas at bay, and mocked careless habits of accuracy that stifled imagination. His exhortation, however, was not accompanied by advice on the methodological discipline authors need if imagination is to serve understanding. In grappling with this problem, I have followed a conventional path in formulating a testable hypothesis, defining the terms accompanying it, and considering evidence that extends beyond simple, verifying examples. Nevertheless, the task of specifying and integrating the elements involved in the story remains a work in progress. I am neither a complete fox nor a fully formed hedgehog, but a hybrid whose capacity for further evolution has now reached its limit. If I have failed to be right about all the small things, I hope, nevertheless, to have added a degree of plausibility, and perhaps some illumination, to a few of the big ones. Truth, if it can be found, lies in another country.

My guides to the present country, the United States, have been patient, tolerant, and unreservedly generous with their knowledge. My former colleagues and associates at the University of Texas at Austin responded willingly to my appeals, even when I was no longer on site and able to exercise the power of proximity. George Forgie, Mark Metzler, Marc Palen, and James Vaughn, who took on large chunks of the manuscript dealing with the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, carried the heaviest burdens. But I owe a great deal, too, to the specialized expertise of Frank Guridy, Mark Lawrence, William Morgan, Bartholomew Sparrow, John Vurpillat, and Ben Brower. I am grateful to the College of Liberal Arts, which gave me a Faculty Research Grant in the spring of 2007, and to the College’s Institute of Historical Studies, which awarded me a fellowship in the fall of 2009. The leave granted for these two semesters enabled me to cut into, if not entirely through, some particularly dense problems of interpretation. The administrative staff in the Department of History were unfailingly helpful and, as is the way in Austin, always courteous in responding to requests that were often based on expectations imported from another continent.

My colleagues in Cambridge welcomed me to the American History seminar, which, under Gary Gerstle’s leadership, is a source of inspiration as well as information. Seth Archer, Nicholas Guyatt, Andrew Preston, and John Thompson were quickly enlisted to read segments of the manuscript. Their astute comments improved my drafts, even though they may have failed to dislodge all the entrenched positions that authors defend when they reach the final stages of composition. Pembroke College provided a haven for numerous informal discussions; the college Research Fund supported my travel and photocopying needs. Two indispensable experts, Tim Hardingham and Hans Megson, steered me through various incarnations of Windows, including the ultra-stressful experience of Windows 8, with calm authority and saved me, as well as my manuscript, from several impending disasters.

I diluted the demands made on close colleagues by exploiting scholars beyond the universities where I held appointments. Justin duRivage generously allowed me to read his important Ph.D. dissertation on the mid-eighteenth century; Max Edling wrote a publishable memorandum on my efforts to understand the period between the Revolution and the Civil War. William Clarence Smith and Richard Drayton made valuable comments on the chapters discussing the Philippines and the Caribbean, respectively. Ian Phimister kindly read the chapter on late nineteenth-century imperialism; Stephen Sawyer checked my treatment of continental Europe during the same period. Cary Fraser and Gerold Krozewski put their considerable knowledge of decolonization at my disposal. Michael Hunt engaged very willingly in extensive correspondence over the definition of empires and hegemony. If, between us, we have failed to wrestle the problem into submission, we can console ourselves that we are in good company.

Several of the maps that appear here have been constructed from obscure and scattered sources. I should like to express my gratitude to Larry Kessler and Carol MacLennan (Hawai‘i), César Ayala (Cuba and Puerto Rico), and William Clarence Smith (the Philippines) for their generosity in placing their specialized cartographical knowledge at my disposal.

Sven Beckert and Jeremi Suri, the editors of Princeton’s America in the World series, readily gave far more than formal support. Ben Tate, the acquiring editor, provided a winning combination of professional detachment and personal involvement. I am glad to have an opportunity to record my gratitude to all three for helping me to negotiate the final stages of what has become a large and demanding project. I also appreciate my good fortune in being in the safe hands of the production team at Princeton University Press. Their expertise improved my raw text; their experience smoothed the path to publication.

A different expression of gratitude must be extended to the doctors who have seen me through what Byron called one of the joltings of life’s hackney coach. Dr. Scott Shappell, cancer researcher, poet, novelist, and voracious correspondent, was as generous in helping me to comprehend my condition as he was unstinting in responding to everyone who approached him. He retained his commitment to others until shortly before his death from ALS (known in Britain as Motor Neurone Disease) in 2015 at the age of fifty-two. I benefited from the diagnostic expertise of Dr. John Williamson in Austin, and from the surgical skills of the remarkable team at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, where Professor Joseph Smith, a man for all seasons if ever there was one, somehow managed to appear unhurried in the face of a schedule that would cause others to buckle at the sight of it, while also giving freely of his time to work in Africa. In Cambridge, Dr. Simon Russell dispensed radiotherapy in a spirit of informed cheerfulness that, so far, has kept my instinctive pessimism on the defensive.

Finally, I must thank my wife, Wendy, for her unwavering support in the face of countless revisions of my supposedly realistic writing schedule. Golf widows have no idea how lucky they are. The responsibility for the contents of this book is entirely mine; the credit for making it a better book than it would otherwise have been, and for enabling me to complete it, goes to everyone mentioned here, as well as to the numerous scholars whose contributions are cited in the pages that follow.

Cambridge

July 7, 2017

AMERICAN EMPIRE

PROLOGUE

LESSONS OF LIBERATION

IRAQ, 1915–1921

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide—

Never while the bars of sunset hold.

But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:

When the storm is ended shall we find How softly but

how softly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

—Rudyard Kipling, Mesopotamia, 1917¹

I underestimated the influence of the nationalists.²

—Sir Arnold Wilson, Acting Civil Commissioner

for Mesopotamia, 1918–1920

Major-General Sir Charles Vere Ferrers Townshend had good reason to wonder at the sudden change of fortune that returned him to Kut-al-Amara so soon after he had left it. Townshend, known as Lucky for his exploits in India, had arrived in Basra as commander of the Sixth Division of the Indian Army in April 1915. He was an innovative and energetic member of the military caste that had supported Britain’s expansion overseas since the eighteenth century: his distinguished ancestor, Field Marshall George Townshend, had carved a notable career out of the great wars of that period.³ Townshend himself had risen high in imperial service, aimed to climb higher, and was confident that his new posting would give him the opportunity to do so.⁴ Opportunity knocked because British strategists judged that the Ottoman Empire, which had unexpectedly joined the Central Powers in 1914, was likely to fall apart, open the way for further Russian expansion, jeopardize Britain’s interests in the region, and threaten its lines of communication with India and East Asia. Townshend’s mandate was to clear the region of Turkish forces, encourage an Arab revolt against Ottoman rule, and secure the new oil fields.⁵ There was an additional, sub-imperialist agenda. Townshend’s expeditionary force was directed by General Sir John Nixon, the Senior Commander of the British Indian Army, who took his orders from the Viceroy.⁶ As seen from New Delhi, the opportunity that beckoned was the chance of taking direct control of Mesopotamia.⁷

In June, after early successes against lightly defended positions, the Sixth Division began to move north.⁸ On September 29, Townshend occupied Kut, a small town in a loop on the River Tigris, some 180 miles north of Basra.⁹ His inclination was to halt at that point, but his superior, General Nixon, ordered him to continue the advance with the aim of taking Baghdad, which was about 100 miles farther north.¹⁰ Leadership was already in question when luck ran out. Townshend never needed the detailed instructions he had drawn up in anticipation of street fighting in Baghdad.¹¹ Between November 22 and 24, he lost one-third of his force at the fierce battle of Ctesiphen, 20 miles south of Baghdad, and was obliged to retreat to Kut with his 9,000 remaining combat troops. He was pursued and then surrounded by units of the Turkish Sixth Army under the experienced and wily command of Field Marshall Baron Wilhelm von der Goltz.¹²

The siege of Kut, which began on December 5, 1915 and ended five months later, on April 29 the following year, was one of the longest endured by a modern British army; the surrender that followed was regarded as the most humiliating in British military history since Cornwallis capitulated at Yorktown in 1781.¹³ There was no pressing need to hold Kut, which had little strategic importance; the more important town of Nasiriya on the Euphrates had already been occupied and the waterways south to Basra secured.¹⁴ The loss of Kut immediately following the disaster at Gallipoli, however, would have further damaged Britain’s prestige at a critical point in the wider conflict engulfing the European powers.¹⁵ Accordingly, Kut had to be relieved to save faces and reputations. Initially, Townshend believed that reinforcements from the south would quickly lift the siege. Once he realized that relief was going to be delayed, he proposed to break out from Kut and withdraw toward Basra, where support was available.¹⁶ Nixon, however, ordered him to hold the town while a relief expedition was assembled. Since Townshend could not get out, he dug in. The task of rescuing Townshend and his troops became joined to the larger purpose of upholding Britain’s standing as a great power.¹⁷ The outcome depended on whether a relief force could cut through the Turkish cordon before supplies of food and munitions were exhausted.

Three determined attempts were made to relieve Kut in January, March, and April 1916, with increasing numbers of both troops and casualties. The conditions facing the relief forces were appalling: the rainy season had turned the terrain into mud; provisions were limited; medical support was largely absent.¹⁸ Captain Robert Palmer, who participated in two of the attempts, wrote home in January as follows:

All the same, we were rather gloomy that night. Our line had made no progress that we could hear of; we had had heavy losses (none in our battalion), and there seemed no prospect of dislodging the enemy. Their front was so wide we could not get round them, and frontal attacks on trenches are desperate affairs here if your artillery is paralysed by mirages. The troops who have come from France say that in this respect this action has been more trying than either Neuve Chapelle or Ypres, because, as they say, it is like advancing over a billiard-table all the way.¹⁹

Palmer also took part in the last attempt to break through the Turkish positions in April, when the losses were so heavy that even the Indian soldiers, who had borne so much so stoically, began to waver:

That evening … D. Coy. had to find a firing party to shoot a havildar, a lance-naik and a sepoy for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Thank goodness North and not I was detailed for it. They helped dig their own graves and were very brave about it. They lay down in the graves to be shot.

This was Palmer’s last letter. A few days later, on April 21, he was killed while leading an attack on Turkish trenches. Palmer was twenty-seven years old and had volunteered for military service at the outbreak of the war. He was the son of Lord Selborne, one of the most prominent political figures in Britain.²⁰

Townshend’s position in Kut deteriorated with each successive failure to recapture the town.²¹ In the early stages, assaults had to be beaten back by hand-to-hand combat.²² Later, when the siege became fully effective, rations had to be divided into ever smaller portions and supplemented with horse meat.²³ By March, malnutrition and disease had reduced the effectiveness of the defenders and depleted their morale. There were instances among the Indian troops of desertions and of soldiers inflicting wounds on themselves in the hope of avoiding further combat. Townshend’s communications began to convey signs of emotional strain, and he confessed that besieged, one is in a constant state of nerves, be your head as cool as an ice box. All watch you and hope for news.²⁴

The news, when it came, extinguished hope: it confirmed that the final attempt to relieve Kut had failed. A few days later, on April 29, Townshend surrendered unconditionally to Khalil Pasha, the new commander of the Turkish army, and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner in Constantinople.²⁵ The British force had sustained 10,000 casualties between the advance on Baghdad and the surrender at Kut; a further 23,000 men were killed or wounded in the effort to relieve the town.²⁶ Thirteen thousand soldiers and noncombatant auxiliaries were sent into captivity: more than half died on the long, debilitating march north or in Turkish labor camps. Townshend reemerged in 1918, but the public mood, like his luck, soon turned against him.²⁷ He died in 1924, having lost his confidence, his ambition, and his reputation.²⁸

The disaster at Kut led to the appointment of a new commander, General Sir Stanley Maude (nicknamed Systematic Joe), who was assigned a massive force of 150,000 troops and given six months to prepare a new offensive.²⁹ This was to be the mother of all surges. Maude began his advance in December 1916, recaptured Kut in February 1917, and took Baghdad, the great prize, in March. Having occupied Baghdad, Maude continued his methodical progress and was halted only by his death (from cholera) in November 1917, by which time he had annexed large swaths of territory north and east of the city.³⁰ In the following year, General Sir William Marshall, Maude’s successor, extended Britain’s control to Mosul, 200 miles north of Baghdad.³¹ By then, the Indian Army had 420,000 troops in Mesopotamia.³²

A week after capturing Baghdad, Maude issued a proclamation containing a phrase that was to become familiar to observers of the invasion of Iraq in 2003: our Armies do not come into your Cities and Lands as Conquerors, or enemies, but as Liberators.³³ It was then left to Lieutenant Colonel Arnold Wilson, the civil commissioner in Mesopotamia, to confront the eternal conundrum of emerging empire: how to extract legitimacy from the barrel of a gun. Under Wilson’s direction, the British imposed a form of direct rule that aroused even more discontent than had the Ottoman administration it replaced.³⁴ In May 1920, Britain’s decision to govern Iraq under the mandate of the League of Nations added widespread militancy to the opposition. Forces generated by political interests, religious leaders, and economic hardship united in calling for independence. The immovable object, in the shape of the autocratic Wilson, known locally as the Despot of Mespot, stood firm. The result was an uprising that lasted for eight months, took thousands of lives, and cost an estimated £50 million.³⁵

Although the insurgents (as they were called) were suppressed, Wilson was finally obliged to shift his stance.³⁶ What T. E. Lawrence described as a disgrace to our imperial record prompted a change of policy.³⁷ Britain’s ambitions were scaled down. Administrative order took precedence over political progress; frugality trumped development. In 1921, the British assembled a loose coalition of notables, clerics, officers, and bureaucrats from the old regime and imported a descendant of the family of the Prophet Muhammad to preside, under British tutelage, as the first king of Iraq.³⁸ In this way, the new state began its inauspicious journey into a future of instability, revolution, and authoritarianism—accompanied and sometimes instigated by periodic foreign intervention. What Maude had called the tyranny of strangers was to endure.³⁹

* * *

It may seem counterintuitive to begin a book entitled American Empire by recounting a relatively obscure episode in the history of the British Empire. Townshend himself could scarcely have predicted that his failed expedition would be exhumed, anatomized, and cited in commentaries dealing with America’s invasion of Iraq at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Yet, history is rediscovered when the international order is deranged. As novel events strain the explanatory power of customary approaches, commentators whose interest lies in contemporary affairs turn to the past to trace the roots of present discontents. The trauma of nine eleven may not have changed the world, as was claimed at the time, but it undoubtedly galvanized American foreign policy, prompted far-reaching reappraisals of the role of the United States in upholding or disturbing the world order, and generated a now voluminous genre of empire studies.

In this way, the humiliating end to Townshend’s career came to be seen as a parable of the rise and fall of empires. The moral of the story, however, was contested. To some observers, the siege of Kut captured more than the Sixth Division. It caught the British Empire at its highest point, which was also the moment when irreversible decline set in and the baton was handed to a new and more vigorous custodian of Western civilization: the United States. From this perspective, Townshend was a prisoner of cyclical forces that were powerful enough to raise up and bring down even the greatest states. The events of 1915, like those that were to follow in 2003, could have only one outcome. All Chinese dynasties eventually lost their mandate from heaven; the Greeks taught that hubris preceded nemesis; Ibn Khaldun charted phases of growth, expansion, and decay; Giambattista Vico identified three repetitive ages; Arnold Toynbee’s theory of the rise and fall of civilizations made him a celebrity in the United States.⁴⁰ Modern declinists continue to take the pulse of the nation at moments of gloom, and reaffirm that the end is nigh.

Other commentators recoiled from an implacable pessimism that foreclosed on the future. In their view, the United States was the legitimate descendant of the British Empire. Townshend’s fate signaled the transfer of global responsibilities from an elderly relative to its youthful successor. Political theorists in the United States provided arguments to support the claim that the world needed a dominant leader, a hegemon, to prevent international anarchy. J. A. Hobson had already anticipated the proposition. Political philosophers in many ages, he observed, speculated on an empire as the only feasible security for peace, a hierarchy of States conforming on the larger scale to the feudal order within a single State.⁴¹ Moreover, the lessons of history could now be learned: by combining the transforming capacity of advanced technology with the penetrating insights of modern social science, a superpower could disarm dissidents, spread progress throughout the world, and avoid decline. Viewed from this encouraging position, the United States stood at the summit of a process of linear development that had its origins in the optimism of the Enlightenment. Hegel and Marx, in their very different ways, believed that dialectical forces would carry society to higher levels of achievement. For Henry Maine, progress entailed a shift from status to contract. Herbert Spencer linked social development to evolutionary individualism. Talcott Parsons knew how to convert traditional into modern societies. The triumphalism of the 1990s produced the end of history.⁴² Optimists are publicists for swelling national prestige.

In this unexpected way, a consideration of the siege of Kut suggests an agenda that includes many of the key issues in the history of empires. More particularly, the episode and the interpretations placed on it after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 point to the value of placing the United States in a context that is far wider than its national borders. One way of attaining this objective is by inserting the national epic into a global, and specifically imperial, context. Globalization and empires were interlinked throughout the three centuries covered by this study. Empires were both assertive innovators and agents of globalization. Impulses of expansion and contraction moved in unison; chains of cause and consequence ran in both directions. The three principal phases of globalization identified in this study underwent transformative crises at the end of the eighteenth century, the close of the nineteenth century, and in the mid-twentieth century. Each phase had a profound influence on the fortunes and trajectory of empires. Each transition was accomplished through a dialectical process that altered political and economic structures of empire and shifted the geographical distribution of imperial rule. A global view changes the questions asked of some of the central themes in the history of the United States. The answers it provides should engage the interests of two different sets of specialists: historians of the United States and historians of empire.

The history that emerges from these different phases of imperial globalization offers an alternative reading of some familiar applications of the term empire. The history of Britain’s mainland colonies in North America before 1783 can be recast to show how the impulses transmitted by proto-globalization first supported then undermined the imperial expansion promoted by the military-fiscal state. The years between 1783 and 1945, which historians identify primarily as the story of the growth of the nation and its quest for liberty and democracy, can also be drawn into the domain of imperial history. At present, imperialism and empire make only limited appearances, typically in studies of continental expansion and seemingly aberrant episodes, such as the war with Spain in 1898. If the nineteenth century is viewed as a protracted exercise in decolonization, however, the period down to the Civil War can be understood as a search for autonomy, during which the United States remained subject to Britain’s informal influence. The years between the Civil War and the Spanish-American War can then be reformulated to emphasize the conjoint processes of nation-building, industrialization, the achievement of substantive independence, and the foundation of an overseas empire.

War with Spain inaugurated a new phase in the history of American empire. The United States became a colonial power in the Pacific and Caribbean; its record in delivering its version of the Western civilizing mission is now available for inspection. Yet, the study of U.S. colonial rule between 1898 and decolonization after World War II is one of the most neglected topics in the historiography of the United States and presents research prospects for a new generation of historians. The process of decolonization in the mid-twentieth century was joined to changes in the character of globalization that have shaped the supranational, multiethnic world of today. This new phase, it is argued here, was incompatible with the creation or maintenance of territorial empires. Yet, it is after 1945 that the term American Empire makes its final appearance in studies describing the informal and indirect power the United States exercised during the second half of the twentieth century. This apparent paradox is explored at the close of this study, which assesses the limits of U.S. power in an age of postcolonial globalization.

By setting the period as a whole in the context of the Western empires in general and the British example in particular, it is possible to discern common trends in what is otherwise often regarded as a separate national story. The American Revolution can be seen as an extension to the outer provinces of a crisis that was descending on Europe’s military-fiscal states in the late eighteenth century. The period after 1783 was not so much a story of the rise of liberty and democracy as a struggle between conservatives and reformers over the shape of the post-revolutionary state that reflected similar conflicts in Europe after 1815. The process of building a national-industrial state after 1865 echoed developments in Europe, including their extension into militant imperialism. An examination of the period of colonial rule that followed shows that, after 1898, the insular empire acquired by the United States experienced the same methods of rule as the other Western empires, felt the same oscillations of fortune, and came to an end at the same time, and for the same reasons.

The emphasis on commonalities is not intended to diminish the distinctiveness of the United States. Obvious differences need to be built into the story, though without incorporating the notion of exceptionalism. Nevertheless, the embedded faculty that Veblen referred to as trained incapacity makes it hard for observers to view the world from more than one confined standpoint.⁴³ Propositions that seem robust, even illuminating, when considered within a national or other specialized context may appear misleading or threadbare when tested in an international or a global setting. One of the principal lessons of liberation is that apparent similarities may disguise profound contextual differences. The message from Kut is that the failure to appreciate the fundamental shift in the conditions in which power is now exercised, and the changing nature of power itself, has had immense consequences for order—and disorder—in the world.

The claims made here are confined by the nature of the discipline as well as by the limits of the author. Historical understanding proceeds incrementally. Epiphanies are awaited but rarely arrive. Furthermore, the theme of the book is one facet of U.S. history and not its totality. Even with these qualifications, the subject is still huge and the hazards formidable. Accordingly, ambitious assertions need to be balanced by an admission of the likelihood of error and, beyond that, of the prospect of failure that attends any attempt to reinterpret large-scale historical developments. This being the case, it is as well to acknowledge that if even Odysseus, who could shoot an arrow through holes in a row of axe-heads, required magical assistance to complete his epic journey, lesser voyagers, who lack skill in archery and ready access to the gods, need to be aware that they may be betting hope against probability.⁴⁴

CHAPTER 1

THREE CRISES AND AN OUTCOME

THE CHOICE AMONG ALTERNATIVES

Every generation gets the history it needs. Fashions come and go; some reappear, suitably restyled, long after their original incarnation has been forgotten. The historiographical record indicates that previous trends have boomed for a decade or so before subsiding. The branch of the subject that deals with imperial and global history illustrates the oscillations of the last half century with particular clarity. Modernization theory, which was profoundly ahistorical, gave way to the dependency thesis, which tempted social scientists to embrace the past with unguarded passion. Marxism corrected the over-flexible radicalism of the dependency thesis by reasserting the paramountcy of production over exchange. Postmodernism inverted the prevailing hierarchy of causes by elevating the ideal over the material. Today, historians have resurrected the totalizing project and are busily globalizing continents, empires, and islands.

The changing mood of the profession obliges scholars to find their place among shifting priorities. If they fail to move with the times, they risk being trapped, as Marxists used to say, in an outdated problematic. If they follow fashion, they are in danger of losing their individuality. Those who buy stock at the outset do well. Those who join when the market is at its peak suffer in the collapse that follows. Each fashion appeals because it offers a seemingly comprehensive response to a pressing current issue. Each ends when it is laid low by contrary evidence or is beaten into submission by incessant repetition. After the event, it becomes clear that the issue of the day was not, after all, the riddle of the ages.

The ability to anticipate the next phase of historical studies would greatly ease the difficulty of choosing priorities. Unfortunately, past performance, as financial advisors are obliged to say, does not guarantee future returns.¹ Nevertheless, historians can still use their knowledge of previous and current priorities to help configure their work. It would be unwise, for example, to assign globalization a central place in the interpretation advanced in the present book without recognizing that the term now has a prominent, indeed almost mandatory, place in publications written by historians.² Similarly, empire studies have enjoyed a revival that has been stimulated by the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the further rise of the United States, which commentators regard as the superpower of the day, notwithstanding the sudden appearance of China.³ Accordingly, there is now a danger of repeating a message that has already been received. Once the boredom threshold is crossed, the latest approach becomes redundant. There is a risk, too, of being caught handling an outdated problematic when the mood of the moment changes. If hostility toward globalization gathers momentum, scholars may shift their attention to alternatives, such as nation-states. At this point, however, it is necessary to keep a steady hand, recalling, with Oscar Wilde, that it is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.⁴

Appearances to the contrary, however, the current problematic has not yet passed its sell-by date. Although the global turn has attracted the attention of scholars, it has made only a limited impression on the curriculum, which remains resolutely national.⁵ Moreover, publications that respond to the demands of fashion often have more appeal than substance. Some authors have inserted global in the titles of books and articles to achieve topicality and add theoretical weight to otherwise orthodox empirical narratives. Others have raised the term to macro-levels that are superficial rather than insightful. As yet, few historians have connected their work to the relevant analytical literature in ways that command the attention of other social scientists.

Despite these weaknesses, which are common to all historiographical trends, there have also been significant advances. Pioneering work during the last decade has established a powerful case for enlarging standard treatments of U.S. history by supplying it with an international context.⁶ Research on the non-Western world has shown that globalization had multicentered origins, and was not simply another long chapter in the story of the Rise of the West. Similarly, the realization that globalization can create heterogeneity as well as homogeneity has had the dual effect of showing how localities contributed to global processes and how supranational influences shaped diverse national histories.⁷ Other work has opened routes to the past that have yet to be explored. One key question is whether the history of globalization is the record of a process that has grown larger with the passage of time without fundamentally changing its character, or whether it is more accurate to see it as the evolution of different types in successive sequences.⁸ The latter position provides the overarching context for the interpretation advanced in this study, which identifies three phases of globalization and explores the dialectical interactions that transformed them.

The renaissance of empire studies has also left some central questions unresolved. Historians have wrestled with the problem of defining an empire for so long that it is unlikely they will ever agree on a formula that commands majority assent. Contributions to the literature by other commentators have now widened the application of the term to the extent that exchanges are often at cross-purposes. Comparisons are particularly vulnerable to definitional differences. If the term empire is used in a very broad sense to refer to great states that exercised extensive international powers, numerous comparisons can be made through time and across space. However, if the characteristics of the units chosen for comparison differ in their essentials, conclusions about commonalities are likely to be invalid. If the definition is narrowed to suit a particular purpose, potential comparators may fail to qualify, and the resulting study treats singularities without also being able to identify similarities. The definition adopted here, and discussed later in this chapter, tries to steer a course between these pitfalls. The hypothesis that empires were globalizing forces provides a basis for establishing their common purpose. The argument that globalization has passed through different historical phases anchors the process in time and suggests how the history of the United States can be joined to the history of Western Europe, and indeed the world.

The current interest in globalization has had the unanticipated benefit of allowing economic history to re-enter the discussion of key historical issues. Postmodernism and the linguistic turn gave historians a new and welcome focus on cultural influences but also reduced their interest in the material world. Today, there is a renewed awareness of the relevance of economic history, but a shortage of practitioners.⁹ By reintegrating economic themes, the present book hopes to alert a new generation of researchers to the prospects for contributing to aspects of the past that have been neglected in recent decades. This is not to say that economics should be regarded as the predominant cause of great historical events, as specialists can easily assume. As conceived here, globalization is a process that also incorporates political, social, and cultural change. This comprehensive approach to the subject underlies the interpretation of the present study and the chronology derived from it.

A consideration of empires as transmitters of globalizing impulses reveals a further dimension of the past that recent versions of imperial history have yet to incorporate, namely indigenous perspectives on the intrusive Western world.¹⁰ With the rise of Area Studies in the 1960s, the old-style imperial history with its focus on white settlers and rulers gave way to new priorities, which concentrated on recovering the indigenous history of parts of the world that had recently gained political independence. Although this work has continued its remarkable advance, it has done so principally by creating separate regional specialisms. The new imperial history, on the other hand, has tended to take a centrist view of empire-building, while exploring topics such as the expansion of the Anglo-world, the creation of racial stereotypes, and the formation of gender roles. The position taken here seeks to integrate the standpoint of the recipients of colonial rule. It will become apparent that the story is not simply one of challenge and response but of interactions among interests that were drawn together by the absorptive power of global processes. Globalizing impulses were multicentered. Islands, including those colonized by the United States, were not merely backwaters serving as minor recipients of much larger influences, but cosmopolitan centers that connected entire continents with flows of goods, people, and ideas.¹¹ They were both turnstiles and manufacturers of globalization. What entered was often processed and altered before it exited. This degree of creativity ought not to be surprising. Borderlands and islands are typically more fluid and often more innovative than established centers, where hierarchy predominates and controls are more readily exercised.

This study combines global, imperial, and insular approaches to compose a history of the United States that builds on, but also differs from, those currently on offer, principally by describing a view from the outside in, rather than, as is more usual, from the inside out.¹² As large claims readily confound those who make them, it is wise to take insurance against the possibility of misfortune. One exclusion clause covers the scope of the book, which does not deal with the totality of U.S. history but with those features judged to be most pertinent to empire-building and decolonization. Accordingly, domestic politics feature principally at the federal level in the nineteenth century, when external influences, especially those from Britain, made themselves felt, but only to a limited extent in the twentieth century, when the United States had gained full control of its own affairs. Other important themes, such as Native American history and the history of borderlands, appear only in relation to issues that directly pertain to the subject examined in this study. Fortunately, these topics and others not mentioned here are being given the prominence they deserve in new accounts of the national story.

A further limit concerns the recipients of U.S. imperialism. The empire considered here is the insular empire acquired after 1898. In 1940, the U.S. Bureau of the Census listed thirteen inhabited overseas territories, which, with Alaska, had a population of 18,883,023.¹³ The great majority were islands in the Pacific and Caribbean. Almost 99 percent of the total population was located in the Philippines (16,356,000), Puerto Rico (1,869, 255), and Hawai‘i (423,330). These three islands, together with Cuba, form the basis of the U.S. territorial empire considered here. Cuba, which had a population of 4,291,100 in 1940, has been included as an example of a protectorate. The Open Door and dollar diplomacy are not explored in detail, though they undoubtedly merit further examination. One problem arises from the amorphous character of informal influence and the difficulty of tracking it geographically and chronologically. A more prosaic obstacle is that the space required to treat the subject adequately would turn a large study into a forbidding one. On the other hand, the restricted treatment of this theme in the early twentieth century has allowed room for a discussion of U.S. power in the world after 1945, when the debate on informal empire and hegemony imposes itself in a manner that is so weighty as to be unavoidable.

MAP 1.1. The U.S. Insular Empire.

BEYOND THE NATIONAL IDEOLOGY OF AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM¹⁴

The emphasis placed here on the global setting requires a reappraisal of the strong national tradition that has long formed the basis of historical studies in the United States, as it has in other independent states. National traditions of historical study arose in the nineteenth century to accompany (and legitimate) new nation-states, and they remain entrenched today in programs of research and teaching throughout the world. The tradition has many admirable qualities that need to be preserved. However, it no longer reflects the world of the twenty-first century, which is shaped increasingly by supranational influences. The national bias can also produce distortions, which are expressed most evidently in the belief that what is distinctive is also exceptional rather than particular. The conviction that the United States had, and has, a unique providential mission has helped to form the character of American nationalism and the content of U.S. history. What the literature refers to as exceptionalism retains a strong grip on popular opinion and continues to influence foreign policy, as it has done since the nineteenth century.¹⁵

The persistence of a historiographical tradition that is still largely insular ensures that the case for American exceptionalism is largely self-referencing.¹⁶ The consequence is a failure to recognize that distinctiveness is a quality claimed by all countries. Some form of providentialism invariably accompanies states with large ambitions. A sense of mission produces a misplaced sense of uniqueness, which, when allied to material power, translates readily into assumptions of privilege and superiority.

Comparisons, as Marc Bloch pointed out in a classic essay, supply a more convincing means of testing historical arguments than do single case studies.¹⁷ The claim that a particular nation is exceptional is demonstrated, not by compiling self-descriptions of the nation in question, but by showing that other nations do not think of themselves in the same way. The common procedure, however, is to ignore competing claims as far as possible and, if challenged, to assert the principle of ideological supremacy.

Yet, Russia’s rulers have long attributed semi-divine status to the state and assumed that their purpose is to deliver a special message to the world.¹⁸ The French believe that they are the chosen guardians of a revolutionary, republican tradition. For the historian and patriot, Jules Michelet, the revolution that made France was itself a religion.¹⁹ The concept of l’exception française endowed la grande nation with the duty of carrying la mission civilisatrice to the rest of the world.²⁰ The poet and philosopher Paul Valéry considered that the French distinguish themselves by thinking they are universal.²¹ They were not alone in this belief, even if Valéry was unaware of the competition. Spanish writers have long discussed their version of excepcionalismo. Scholars have traced Japan’s sense of distinct cultural identity, Nihonjinron, to the eighteenth century, and discovered elements of it long before then. German theorists devised "den deutschen Sonderweg in the late nineteenth century to describe their own country’s special path to modernity.²² The British, unsurprisingly, had no doubt who had reached the summit of civilization first. Remember that you are an Englishman, Cecil Rhodes advised a young compatriot, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life."²³

It needs to be said at once that few professional historians, as opposed to members of the public, still subscribe to an undiluted notion of exceptionalism. As some historians have made progress in placing U.S. history in a comparative context, so others have amplified and qualified the founding national saga by exploring every conceivable sub-branch of the subject.²⁴ It should be acknowledged, too, that an alternative tradition, beginning with Charles Beard and the Progressives, has long challenged the assumption that the United States was an exceptional nation with a unique and unifying providential mission. Skeptics attacked the so-called consensus school, drew attention instead to internal conflicts, and viewed the United States as an expanding power from the outset, first across the continent and then overseas.²⁵ This perspective was highly influential in the 1960s, following the rise of the New Left and the Wisconsin School.²⁶ Stimulating new interpretations emphasized the continuous nature of expansion, and viewed the war with Spain in 1898 not as an aberration but as a systemic crisis of capitalism.²⁷ What followed, according to this interpretation, was not isolationism but informal expansion. A similar approach to the period after 1945 traced U.S. expansion to its culmination in the formation of an empire that, despite outward differences, shared with the European empires it was beginning to replace a desire for global domination.

Radical alternatives, however, have lost visibility since the 1970s and currently remain a minority taste among the present generation of young researchers. The last comprehensive synthesis of U.S. history written from a radical left position appeared in 1980.²⁸ Widespread criticism of its formulaic argument and numerous exaggerations has failed to dent its popularity or its sales, which currently stand at more than two million copies. Despite its manifold weaknesses, this lone work evidently offers successive generations of students a fresh and inspiring approach to U.S. history and meets a need that standard college texts cannot satisfy. The success of A People’s History is a comment less on the merits of the book than on current orthodoxy, which passes the tests of scholarship but is often safe rather than subversive.

This summary undoubtedly spreads injustice across a vast body of distinguished scholarship. Innovative studies of the highest quality address particular periods, episodes, and themes, but are scattered across an immense and constantly expanding literature. The global turn has yet to become a revolution. Important features of the established historiography remain in place. The result, which can be seen in mainstream texts and syntheses, is a qualified and highly cultivated version of original exceptionalist assumptions.²⁹ Writing in 1919, the distinguished historian Charles Andrews observed that the events and persons of the Revolutionary era have become in a measure sacrosanct, the objects of an almost idolatrous veneration.³⁰ What has been called founders’ chic remains a fashion for all seasons.³¹ Heavyweight biographies of the Founding Fathers, which adapt Carlyle’s notion of the hero to the needs of a republic, command an insatiable readership.³² A glance at the titles of authoritative studies of the nineteenth century shows that the theme of liberty and democracy, the presumed outcome of the Revolution, continues to captivate authors and their readership. Historians who chart the swelling role of the United States in international affairs in the twentieth century often find it hard to free themselves from the sense that an expansionist teleology is being fulfilled, even though they may also be critical of its consequences.

The exceptionalist tradition has had a strong influence on the definition and treatment of what is referred to here as the American Empire. Standard histories use the term to refer to two periods covering a half century or longer. The first encompasses the years between 1607 and 1783, when the mainland colonies were part of the British Empire in the New World. All parties accept, minimally, that a formal colonial empire existed during this period. The founding myth emphasizes features that stand in opposition to European, and specifically British, characteristics, notably monarchy, hierarchy, and imperialism, and accentuates qualities of liberty and individualism that are held to distinguish the new republic from the Old World. Although modern research has presented different layers of understanding of the cause and consequences of the Revolution, a new consensus remains elusive and the promising alternatives on offer at present have yet to drive competitors out of circulation.

The second period runs from World War II to the present, and traces the rise of the United States to superpower status. The idea that the United States created an empire in the second half of the twentieth century jars with the notion of exceptionalism and has caused practitioners and scholars to search for ways of squaring the circle. Some theorists of international relations have dealt with the difficulty by applying an alternative term, hegemon, or leader. Other scholars have endowed the language of empire with benign qualities that sought to reconcile global expansion with the principles of liberty and democracy. One influential view portrayed the United States as achieving dominance by invitation.³³ Another argued, in terms that are familiar today, that the United States possessed an unacknowledged empire that needed both reviving, to protect national interests, and expanding, to realize its potential power.³⁴ This was the empire in denial that ought to reveal itself and embrace what is now termed offensive realism.³⁵ Another group, writing from a radical standpoint, applied the term to register their hostility to imperialism. By 1988, the shelf of recent books devoted to analyzing the post-war American Empire as a successor to other Great Empires of the past had expanded at an astonishing rate.³⁶ Much of this literature remains consistent with the national epic in emphasizing the need to defend and then spread the benefits of political and economic freedom. When the demands of the Cold War called, academia responded by demonstrating that it was not lacking in patriotism.

Between these two periods lies uncertainty. Orthodox accounts of U.S. history after 1783 focus on the expanding national story. Some historians have adopted the epithet empire to describe continental expansion during this period, but the application of the term in this context needs careful consideration, as chapter 5 will suggest. External relations receive episodic treatment until 1898, when the United States went to war with Spain and annexed the remnants of her empire. From the standpoint of imperial history, however, the conventional approach is anomalous. Not even the most exceptional states achieved effective independence overnight, and Anglo-settler states typically retained enduring ties with the mother country.³⁷ As seen from the perspective adopted here, the nineteenth century can be divided into two parts: between 1783 and 1861, the United States remained dependent on British influence across a range of important material and cultural aspects of life; after 1865, effective independence became an increasing reality, and was sealed and celebrated in 1898. Accordingly,