American Imperialism — With US From the Start (Part 1: 1700–1800)
American Imperialism is a subject that, in my experience, is sorely underrepresented in modern political discourse and schooling. It is the unifying principle of our two major political parties, and their silent agreement on approach to foreign affairs brings them closer together “ideologically” speaking than most are ready to admit. I put ideologically in quotes because ideology is used by the media and politicians to justify and make palatable acts of aggression, terror and violence in pursuit of economic and strategic goals. This sort of philosophical handwaving is done to ease the minds of the American public, and something I haven’t been in tune with my entire life. This will be the first of several main articles discussing America’s imperialist past and present, and it will focus on the time between the country’s birth and the mid 1800s. Part 2 will be focused on the age of New Imperialism and up into the start of the new century. Part 3 will discuss the War on Terror and cover the Bush and Obama years, hopefully highlighting the disturbing similarities with which these two approached foreign policy, and how Bush’s legacy may just be as the worst US president in history. Part 4 will be a hyper-specific discussion of US imperialism during the events of 2020 and in response to the Coronavirus Crisis.
“The United States is the one country that exists, as far as I know, and ever has, that was founded as an empire explicitly”. — Noam Chomsky [1]
If you think critically about America’s inception, it is easy to see the truth in this excerpt. Abandoning British rule for the freedom of North American soil, it is often understated how bloody and brutal the initial years of American expansion were. Even when discussed in school, an undertone of exceptionalism and justification derails any attempt to accurately cover the subject matter. The land was inhabited by natives, for which the founding members of our nation had little sympathy or respect. Before it was explicitly coined in the early 19th century, Manifest Destiny and its motivations were etched into the soil we’ve since built cities on. The thought that we are a superior people, with superior religion(s), customs and culture led to widespread suffering for the native peoples. As if violent clashes over land were not enough, European settlers also brought over smallpox, which swept through the indigenous population and is estimated to have killed 90% of the existing tribes [2].
According to Lemkin, colonization was in itself “intrinsically genocidal”. He saw this genocide as a two-stage process, the first being the destruction of the indigenous population’s way of life. In the second stage, the newcomers impose their way of life on the indigenous group.[3]
This cultural embrace of the spirit of Manifest Destiny led infant America directly into the Mexican-American War of 1846, which acquired approximately 525,000 miles of new land [4]. Politicians of the time, in particular President Monroe in the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 [5], expressed clear anti-colonial sentiment in regards to European influence on the young America, while simultaneously leaving the door open for transgressions against the native people through conspicuous lack of detail when it came to the limitations of the US government. The resulting Indian Wars gave America 48 states and culminated in the California Genocide. It’s worth noting here that since the native tribes were effectively sovereign upon our arrival from abroad, this entire campaign and conflict(s) can be seen as textbook colonialism. The California Genocide occurred between 1849 and 1870, as settlers murdered over 9,500 Native Americans in their efforts to seize the California land. Outside of those killed directly by settlers, the California native population is estimated to have decreased from close to 150,000 to 30,000 by 1870, spurred by disease and starvation on top of the culling[6].
One could write entire books on the treatment of Native Americans by our fledgling nation, but the time it would take to do so would cause you to miss the next big act of self-righteous militaristic aggression: the age of New Imperialism (1800–1900). This overlaps with the previously discussed topics, but if there is anything American history can show us, it’s that the country can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Stay tuned for the next article in this series about American imperialism, and please do share your thoughts below on what we’ve gone over so far. Learn something new? Disagree with me? I’d love to hear it!
[1] Chomsky, Noam. April 24, 2008. Modern-Day American Imperialism: Middle East and Beyond. https://chomsky.info/20080424/
[2] Kiger, Patrick. November 25, 2019. Did Colonists Give Infected Blankets to Native Americans as Biological Warfare? https://www.history.com/news/colonists-native-americans-smallpox-blankets
[3] Lemkin, Raphael. April 2010. Concept of Genocide. https://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199232116.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199232116-e-2
[4] Rives, George Lockhart. 1913. The United States and Mexico, 1821–1848; a history of the relations between the two countries from the independence of Mexico to the close of the war with the United States. https://archive.org/details/unitedstatesand05rivegoog
[5] J.D. Richardson, ed., Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, vol. 2 (1907), 287.
[6] “1925 — Handbook of the Indians of California, A. L. Kroeber” (2019). Government Documents and Publications. 8.
