American Empire
The Roots of American Imperialism
The entire American experiment was built on class, colonialism, genocide, slavery and expansion. This is not controversial to anyone who knows the actual history, not the whitewashed version that is taught in school.
From “The Monroe Doctrine” to “Manifest Destiny” in the 1840’s, justifying expansion, leading to the Mexican-American war, the “founders” of the United States always knew that without “independence,” rival empires would continue to be a “scourge” on the United States, and its right to “self determination”.
In 1823, President James Monroe’s annual message to Congress contained a specific message; one which warned the European powers not to interfere in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere. Ultimately, this message, now referred to as the “Monroe Doctrine,” stated in no uncertain terms to the empires of Europe that the United States owns the Western hemisphere (like it or not for those countries who inhabit it) and any further attempt to colonize or influence this region would be met with significant force.
After battling the British empire: beginning with the “Declaration of Independence,” leading to the “Revolutionary War,” (1776 - 1783) and subsequently, “The War of 1812” ( that lasted until February 17, 1815 ) the US proved that it could hold its own and ward off the world's largest empire of its day. This showed the rest of the world what the US would be able to do to protect its own interests and by that I mean an economic model based on slavery.
In 1772, in Great Britain, Lord Mansfield ruled that; “slavery was not recognized by English law,” in what became known as the “Somerset case”. To the Thirteen Colonies, this was a clear sign. This meant that the economic model, so many Americans prospered from, was soon to be abolished. The action was then taken to preserve their economy. Secession from Britain, by declaring independence, was the only means of protecting itself from abolition and economic ruin in the minds of the founders.
In 1807, Britain created the “Slave Trade Act” and finally the “Slavery Abolition Act” of 1833, of which, “the institution of slavery was to be prohibited in directly administered, overseas, British territories.”[1] Slavery was to be abolished on British soil.
Since the Thirteen Colonies were part of the British Empire, it is no wonder that the founders of the Declaration of Independence acted as they did, foreseeing what was to become the law of the land and defying British rule. This had very little to do with a “tea tax,” and the British empire was not abolishing the slave trade based on some type of new revelation that the slave trade was morally reprehensible, no. This was a strategic decision to hold control over the colonies economically in an attempt at preventing them from developing into their own independent nation and expanding. Clearly, that did not work.
Constant expansion was not just a theme but a new ideological precedent in the “Americas.” As journalist John L. O’sullivan wrote in the “Democratic Review” in 1845, "our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions…” talking about the annexation of Texas, leading to the Mexican-American War, where the US invaded Mexico (1846-1848).
However, it wasn’t until later in December 27, 1845, O'Sullivan addressed the ongoing boundary dispute with Britain in his newspaper the New York Morning News. O'Sullivan argued that the United States had the right to claim "the whole of Oregon…and that claim is by the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” [2]
As was for centuries; “the divine right of kings to rule,” now became the divine right of America to rule, dominate and expand over an entire continent, hemisphere, and even the world, based on the belief it was endowed by fate through divine intervention.
This is how the ideology of empires work and there is nothing innocent about it. Collanization, stolen land, ethnic cleansing through the genocide of the indigenous population, subjugation, slavery, murder, rape and pilledge…justified by those who believe they are morally superior spreading “Western values” and “to bring civilization to the savages.” The hypocrisy is self-evident.
The fundamental reason why countries invade other countries, or seek to forcibly depose their governments, has not changed over the course of history. It is the same reason children fight in schoolyards. The stronger one wants what the weaker one has. Most “regime change” operations fit within the larger category of resource wars. [3]
The ever expanding United States became more and more divided. All legitimate questions were brought to the fore of social consciousness; continental expansion, slavery, the influence of europe and debt… just to name a few. Eventually, moral questions started to erode the concept of what was considered “civilized society,” culminating into what was to become the “Civil War.” (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865)
Decades of political controversy over slavery were brought to a head by the victory in the 1860 U.S. presidential election of Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery's expansion into the western territories. Seven southern slave states responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederacy. The Confederacy seized U.S. forts and other federal assets within their borders. Four more southern states seceded after the war began and, led by Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy asserted control over about a third of the U.S. population in eleven states. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. [4]
A civil war often breaks apart a country, destroying it from a whole into a shattered reminisce of what once was. The American Civil war was a moment in history where an immoral and dehumanizing system was fought against, where slavery was finally abolished. However, the US was left extremely divided over abolition.
The country moved on, easily forgetting the plight of former slaves (especially after the assassination of Lincoln in 1865) as Andrew Johnson (the vice president ) assumed the role of president. Johnson implemented a series of proclamations in order to prevent the now freed slaves from truly becoming equal citizens of American society. “Johnson opposed the Fourteenth Amendment which gave citizenship to former slaves…[as well as] …directing the seceded states to hold conventions and elections to reform their civil governments. Southern states returned many of their old leaders and passed Black Codes to deprive the freedmen of many civil liberties…” [5]
After the Civil War, the US banking system grew rapidly and seemed to be set on solid ground. But the country was hit by many banking crises. One of the worst happened in 1873 – during the time of the Freedman’s Bank …The panic started with a problem in Europe, when the stock market crashed. Investors began to sell off the investments they had in American projects, particularly railroads. [6]
By the end of the nineteenth century, farms and factories in the United States were producing considerably more goods than Americans could consume. For the nation to continue its rise to wealth, it needed foreign markets. They could not be found in Europe, where governments, like that of the United States, protected domestic industries behind high tariff walls. Americans had to look to faraway countries, weak countries, countries that had large markets and rich resources but had not yet fallen under the sway of any great power…By 1893, one of every six Americans were unemployed, and many of the rest lived on subsistence wages. Plummeting agricultural prices in the late 1890s killed off a whole generation of farmers. Strikes and labor riots broke out from New York to Chicago to California. Socialists and anarchist movements began attracting broad followings. By 1894, Secretary of State Walter Gresham, reflecting a widespread fear, said he saw “symptoms of revolution” spreading across the country. [7]
To save the American economy meant racing full speed towards its imperial ambitions. The lack of reflection or even acceptance of equal rights would be a constant barrier to “a more perfect union” for decades. Racism would continue to become ingrained in the American psyche which would be used often to justify its imperial ambitions, as well as the domestic abuse of its own people at home that continues till this very day.
Cuba, the largest island in the Caribbean and the last great bastion of what had once been a vast Spanish empire in the Americas, was in turmoil during the second half of the nineteenth century. Patriots there fought a ten year war for independence that ended with a inconclusive truce in 1878, and rebelled again in 1879-80. Their third offensive broke out in 1895 …In the spring of 1897, William MCKinley, a Republican who was supported by midwestern business interests, succeeded the anti-imperialist Democrat Grover Clevland as president of the United States. Like most Americans, MCKinley had long considered Spanish rule to be a blight on Cuba. The prospect of the Cubans governing themselves, however, alarmed him even more. [He] worried that an independent Cuba would become too assertive and not do Washington’s bidding … MCKinley had a reason to worry. Cuban rebel leaders were promising that once in power, they would launch sweeping social reforms, starting with land redistribution. That struck fear into the hearts of American businessmen, who had more than $50 million invested in the island, most of it in agriculture. Early in 1898, MCKinley decided it was time to send both sides in the conflict a strong message. He ordered the battleship Maine to leave its place in the Atlantic fleet and head for Havana …. All realized that she was serving as a “gunboat calling card,” a symbol of America's determination to control the course of events in the Caribbean … on the night of February 15, 1898, she was torn apart by a tremendous explosion. More than 250 American sailors perished. News of the disaster electrified the United States. All assumed that Spain was responsible, and when the Navy issued a report blaming the disaster on “an external explosion,” their assumptions turned to certainty. [8]
On April 20th 1898, McKinley declared war on Spain. Called the “Teller Amendment,” it read:
[a] joint resolution for the recognition of the independence of the people of Cuba, demanding that the government of Spain relinquish its authority and government in the Island of Cuba and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuba and Cuban waters, and directing the President of the United States to use the land and naval forces of the United States to carry these resolutions into effect. — Congressional Record p. 4062 [9]
Essentially Cuba had already won the war against the Spanish but the United States saw an opportunity. On December 10th, the United States and Spain signed the “Treaty of Paris,” in which; “Spain relinquished all claim of sovereignty over and title to territories described there as the island of Puerto Rico and other islands now under Spanish sovereignty in the West Indies, and the island of Guam in the Marianas or Ladrones, the archipelago known as the Philippine Islands…to the United States. The cession of the Philippines involved a compensation of $20 million] from the United States to Spain.” [10]
After the Spanish were defeated The US quickly ignored the “Teller Amendment,” kept its military stationed there and installed a military government on the 1st of January, in what is known today as the “First Occupation of Cuba.”
At this moment the Spanish-American War, as it later came to be known, took its strangest territorial twist. The war was originally about Cuba. Puerto Rico would become a target because it was near Cuba. The Philippines were vulnerable after Dewey destroyed the Spanish Fleet there. Then, most unexpectedly, a fourth land emerged as a candidate for annexation: Hawaii. [11]
In January of 1893 Queen Liliuokalani of Hawaii “convened her cabinet to make a shocking announcement. She would proclaim a new constitution under which only Hawiian citizens had the right to vote. High property qualifications for voting would be eliminated, and the power of the nonnative elite would be sharply curtailed.” [12]
This announcement by the queen came due to, “Its tribal, land based culture … collapsing under pressure from the relentlessly expanding sugar industry. A few dozen American and European families effectively controlled both the economy and government, ruling through a succession of native monarchs who were little more than figureheads.” [13]
John L. Stevens was the American Minister to Hawaii. “Stevens and the men who visited him on the evening of January 14, 1893, fully understood the seriousness of their mission…They were the first Americans who ever met to plan and carry out the overthrow of a foreign government. That night they did much more than seal a country's fate. They opened a tumultuous century of American sponsored coups. Revolutions and invasions.” [14]
The famous Anti-inmperialist and writer of the time Mark Twain wrote in February 1901, “To the Person Sitting in the Darkness,” an essay about Anti-imperialism and Anti-colonialism. An excerpt from the essay:
There have been lies; yes, but they were told in good cause.We have been treacherous; but that was only in order that real good might come out of apparent evil. True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn’t it to sell; we have robbed a trusted friend of his land and liberty; we have invited our clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit’s work under a flag which bandit’s have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America’s honor and blackened her face before the world; but each detail was for the best…And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one - our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with our white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and crossbones. [15]
In his book “War is a Racket, General Smedley Butler (the most decorated American General of his day), in a speech given to the American Legion in 1931 said;
I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service, and during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902 - 1912. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents. [16]
These are the roots of American Imperialism.
Source Material:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny
3. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(pg 321)
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Johnson#:~:text=Andrew%20Johnson%20
6. https://home.treasury.gov/about/history/freedmans-bank-building/financial-panic-of-1873
7. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(pg. 34)
8. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(pg 35-36)
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teller_Amendment
10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1898)
11. “The True Flag; Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire” - Steven Kinzer (pg 45)
12. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(chapter 1 “A Hell of a Time Up at the Palace - pg 9)
13. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(chapter 1 “A Hell of a Time Up at the Palace - pg 9)
14. “Overthrow; America's century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq” - Steven Kinzer
(chapter 1 “A Hell of a Time Up at the Palace - pg 9)
15. “The True Flag; Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of the American Empire” - Steven Kinzer (pg 181-182)
16. “War is a Racket” ( 1931 speech at the American Legion ) - General Smedley Butler