A different view of the U.S. revolution is that a colonial ruling class wanted to build a continental empire without interference from Britain, which was restricting migration across the Appalachians. Land speculators such as Washington could not abide that. Then the U.S. went on the build that empire, conquering native tribes in the way. When that was done it went overseas with the Spanish-American War. The U.S. has been an empire from the start. So where the country is at is not ironic, but seeded in its roots. . Historian William Appleman Williams has written about our “Empire As a Way of Life.” The fundamental U.S. drive is expansion. But the empire seems to have hit its limits as you document here. I approach that from a slightly different angle here. https://theraven.substack.com/p/on-this-memorial-day-nemesis-stalks
I agree to a certain extent, but an empire including military intervention in Eurasia was never part of the plan. Further, Jefferson, for example, vastly underestimated how long it would take to settle the US – if you count the continental US as an empire, building it was more like filling a power vacuum than anything else. The country was dragged kicking and screaming into both world wars by its financial elite due to intercontinental ties. So I wouldn't say we've been an empire from the start – more that we stumbled into it due to extraordinary historical circumstances. The only time something like the US will happen again is if another planer gets colonized.
Well, there was the wars on the Barbary pirates under Jefferson, Perry’s forcing Japan open in the 1850s, the US piggybacking on Britain’s opium empire in China, then intervention with other colonial powers in the Boxer Rebellion and the Open Door Notes in the 1890s telling the other powers they could not divide up China. The U.S. was a mercantile empire that stretched to the eastern hemisphere almost immediately. The “Empress of China” set sail from Boston harbor in 1784, the year after the peace treaty. The group around Teddy Roosevelt definitely saw the U.S. as a global power and TR exerted that with the Great White Fleet, intervention in Morocco and negotiating settlement to the Russo-Japanese War. Certainly you’re correct the financial elites drove the country into the world wars, because they had their sights set on global empire. Jefferson was wrong about a bunch of things, but he definitely viewed the U.S. as an “empire for liberty.” In terms of the continental power vacuum, I highly recommend “Indigenous Continent” by Hamalainan. It rewrites the history of continental conquest to portray tribes as more powerful and difficult to conquer than generally depicted. In the 1870s a large swathe of the west was dominated by the Sioux and Comanche tribes. The Sioux even pushed the Cavalry back for a time and the Comanches long proved intractable. Richard White documents how earlier the lands west of the Appalachians were “The Middle Ground” until settlement finally overwhelmed the tribes. Tecumseh was stirring resistance for many years. So it was definitely a conquest for a settler-colonial empire.
"The vast network of US military bases wasn’t built for today’s multipolar world. Rather, it was built to contain the Soviet Union and its goal of worldwide communism." I don't think this is true. The US has crushed any nationalist, sovereignist movement that could reach in order to bring freedom and unrestrained liberty for the wall street capital. Everyone else, includingthe Soviets, wonted to be left alone to mind their own business... That is Iran's or Cuba's or Venezuela's sin today...
The Soviets absolutely did not want to be left alone to mind their own business. International communist revolution was their goal from the get-go. Now, Cuba and many other smaller nation, sure, they've been playthings for big money. But the banana empire of the first half of the 20th century had nothing on the containment empire post WW2
A different view of the U.S. revolution is that a colonial ruling class wanted to build a continental empire without interference from Britain, which was restricting migration across the Appalachians. Land speculators such as Washington could not abide that. Then the U.S. went on the build that empire, conquering native tribes in the way. When that was done it went overseas with the Spanish-American War. The U.S. has been an empire from the start. So where the country is at is not ironic, but seeded in its roots. . Historian William Appleman Williams has written about our “Empire As a Way of Life.” The fundamental U.S. drive is expansion. But the empire seems to have hit its limits as you document here. I approach that from a slightly different angle here. https://theraven.substack.com/p/on-this-memorial-day-nemesis-stalks
I agree to a certain extent, but an empire including military intervention in Eurasia was never part of the plan. Further, Jefferson, for example, vastly underestimated how long it would take to settle the US – if you count the continental US as an empire, building it was more like filling a power vacuum than anything else. The country was dragged kicking and screaming into both world wars by its financial elite due to intercontinental ties. So I wouldn't say we've been an empire from the start – more that we stumbled into it due to extraordinary historical circumstances. The only time something like the US will happen again is if another planer gets colonized.
Well, there was the wars on the Barbary pirates under Jefferson, Perry’s forcing Japan open in the 1850s, the US piggybacking on Britain’s opium empire in China, then intervention with other colonial powers in the Boxer Rebellion and the Open Door Notes in the 1890s telling the other powers they could not divide up China. The U.S. was a mercantile empire that stretched to the eastern hemisphere almost immediately. The “Empress of China” set sail from Boston harbor in 1784, the year after the peace treaty. The group around Teddy Roosevelt definitely saw the U.S. as a global power and TR exerted that with the Great White Fleet, intervention in Morocco and negotiating settlement to the Russo-Japanese War. Certainly you’re correct the financial elites drove the country into the world wars, because they had their sights set on global empire. Jefferson was wrong about a bunch of things, but he definitely viewed the U.S. as an “empire for liberty.” In terms of the continental power vacuum, I highly recommend “Indigenous Continent” by Hamalainan. It rewrites the history of continental conquest to portray tribes as more powerful and difficult to conquer than generally depicted. In the 1870s a large swathe of the west was dominated by the Sioux and Comanche tribes. The Sioux even pushed the Cavalry back for a time and the Comanches long proved intractable. Richard White documents how earlier the lands west of the Appalachians were “The Middle Ground” until settlement finally overwhelmed the tribes. Tecumseh was stirring resistance for many years. So it was definitely a conquest for a settler-colonial empire.
"The vast network of US military bases wasn’t built for today’s multipolar world. Rather, it was built to contain the Soviet Union and its goal of worldwide communism." I don't think this is true. The US has crushed any nationalist, sovereignist movement that could reach in order to bring freedom and unrestrained liberty for the wall street capital. Everyone else, includingthe Soviets, wonted to be left alone to mind their own business... That is Iran's or Cuba's or Venezuela's sin today...
The Soviets absolutely did not want to be left alone to mind their own business. International communist revolution was their goal from the get-go. Now, Cuba and many other smaller nation, sure, they've been playthings for big money. But the banana empire of the first half of the 20th century had nothing on the containment empire post WW2