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 with your proposition. Yes, the empire has hit its limits, geographically and otherwise. We also might agree that the extraordinary advantage coming out of WWII as the only economy that had not been ravaged by war, but indeed prospered, gave the empire a reach that the emergence of China and other great powers has tremendously reduced. This is a return to and older history where China was the world’s largest economy until the early 1800s. The hubris and ignorance of the U.S. ruling class to double down does indeed increase the rate of decline, as the ballooning national debt tells us. So we are in basic agreement.
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.
Of course, I doubt the founders could have envisioned today’s global empire. Washington would have seen it as entanglements. What I am saying is that the drive for those limited earlier engagements is the same as the drive for later mass military interventions. From the start the U.S. was deeply tied to global trade and sought opportunities throughout Eurasia. The military engagements I cite are all connected to that. By the late 1800s the U.S. was hitting a wall. The productive capacities of the settler empire had become so great it needed to expand its exports. Pressure came first from the farmers, then industry. The 1890s saw the greatest depression to date. TR and his close associates, Admiral Mahan, Brooks Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge and John Hay, saw the China market as salvation and the Panama Canal as a necessity. Thus the Spanish-American War secured Pacific coaling stations and the Caribbean approaches to the canal. Zimmerman’s “First Great Triumph” tells the story. Through the 20th century the overseas economic empire grew, and with it the U.S. military footprint throughout the world, Southwest Asia being a poster for the process. So I see the growth of the continental and global empire as a unified process connected by economic expansion. I draw much of this understanding from my study of William Appleman Williams, Dean of the revisionist school of U.S. history that emerged in to 50s and 60s.
Inevitably the native tribes would be overcome. But the book I cite depicts a process where they still controlled vast reaches of the continent as late as the 1870s. Remember, the wars on the indigenous started with the Spanish in Florida and New Mexico as early as the 1500s. The first enduring English colony, Jamestown, was warring shortly after its 1607 founding. The U.S. was still fighting the natives until the Pine Ridge Campaign of 1890-91. It still had problems with the Apaches into the 1920s! So I’d say it was a little more than a speed bump.
Ok. We're arguing different things, then. The core argument of this piece was that the expansion has hit its geographic limits, which marks the beginning of the downward trajectory for an empire. Further, the expansion of government due to the need to manage the spawning empire has encouraged its capture by interests not loyal to American citizens.
We can discuss exactly what set us on this path in our early days til we're blue in the face, and it's interesting, but I think it's tangential to the original point.
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.
Sure, there were plenty of minor engagements overseas before the World Wars including a brief foray into colonialism during the Spanish-American war. But those forays were limited in scope and nothing like what other empires were doing at the time. An empire of settlers is very different than what we're dealing with now.
Re: Continental vacuum — the tribes were there, but they were so few in number (due to plague) that they only represented a speed bump to settling the country's west and interior. Also, they were just as busy fighting other tribes as they were the settlers — the Sioux versus the Crow and the Comanche versus the Apache, for example. My ancestors had to fight the Comanche who, pound, for pound, were some of the fiercest fighters in history. But still they lost...
That book sounds interesting though, thanks for the recommendation.
"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
I think you would need to revisit your history just a bit. The revolution died with Stalin raise to power. Trotzky had to run and was assassinated in Mexico, which was also a signal Stalin wanted to give to the western capitals that as far as Soviet Union is concerned, there won't be any revolution pursuite in the outside world. However, when things turned south and everyone turned a bit fascist, and then when the nazis were gone and the US started threatening with nukes its ally, the opportunity to stick a wrency in the wheels of western capitals came with the nationalist and de-colonialism movement around the world, which soviets helped a bit, but not much, and sometimes even created problems.
The revolution phase was done within the country's borders, but communism was exported worldwide...I live in Vietnam, for example, and the hammer and sickle symbol is everywhere, though the market is quite free here. I think you might be leaning a bit into Soviet nostalgia here, no? The people of Eastern Europe I know certainly don't feel that way...
The Soviets didn't really export much. The communist ideas were picked in the west, studying Marx and Engels and then observing and studying the works of the Russian Revolution. Things were not good in those times. Jjust check Red Star Rising over Chine by Edgar Snow to see what in fact fueled the expansion of communism: over-exploitation and foreign occupation. Was the same in France, where the commies played a role in the Resistence or in Italy, where the Americans had to fly lots of cash in and dispers it with the help of "christan democrats" - former fascists and Mafia to make sure the Italian Communist Party did not win the elections. The elections in Korea were compromised because of the Americans, the commies would have won hands down, same as in Vietnam. probably not in the eastern Europe countries, not sure about Poland, which did have a more solid resistence.
As for market being "free" that is really an oxymoron, and we all know that...
And no, I don't have Soviet nostalgia, not a bit. While I agree with Lenin that there is a need for a vanguard party to provide leadership in the fight against the ruling oligarchic/tyranical systems, keeping power continuously and with a vengence really destroyed the Soviet Union. And the first two main factors that contributed was the disbandment of the soviets everywhere (so good-by democracy) and the introduction of the US managerial approach in the work places, and especially Taylorism (so top down and no worker input)
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 with your proposition. Yes, the empire has hit its limits, geographically and otherwise. We also might agree that the extraordinary advantage coming out of WWII as the only economy that had not been ravaged by war, but indeed prospered, gave the empire a reach that the emergence of China and other great powers has tremendously reduced. This is a return to and older history where China was the world’s largest economy until the early 1800s. The hubris and ignorance of the U.S. ruling class to double down does indeed increase the rate of decline, as the ballooning national debt tells us. So we are in basic agreement.
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.
Of course, I doubt the founders could have envisioned today’s global empire. Washington would have seen it as entanglements. What I am saying is that the drive for those limited earlier engagements is the same as the drive for later mass military interventions. From the start the U.S. was deeply tied to global trade and sought opportunities throughout Eurasia. The military engagements I cite are all connected to that. By the late 1800s the U.S. was hitting a wall. The productive capacities of the settler empire had become so great it needed to expand its exports. Pressure came first from the farmers, then industry. The 1890s saw the greatest depression to date. TR and his close associates, Admiral Mahan, Brooks Adams, Henry Cabot Lodge and John Hay, saw the China market as salvation and the Panama Canal as a necessity. Thus the Spanish-American War secured Pacific coaling stations and the Caribbean approaches to the canal. Zimmerman’s “First Great Triumph” tells the story. Through the 20th century the overseas economic empire grew, and with it the U.S. military footprint throughout the world, Southwest Asia being a poster for the process. So I see the growth of the continental and global empire as a unified process connected by economic expansion. I draw much of this understanding from my study of William Appleman Williams, Dean of the revisionist school of U.S. history that emerged in to 50s and 60s.
Inevitably the native tribes would be overcome. But the book I cite depicts a process where they still controlled vast reaches of the continent as late as the 1870s. Remember, the wars on the indigenous started with the Spanish in Florida and New Mexico as early as the 1500s. The first enduring English colony, Jamestown, was warring shortly after its 1607 founding. The U.S. was still fighting the natives until the Pine Ridge Campaign of 1890-91. It still had problems with the Apaches into the 1920s! So I’d say it was a little more than a speed bump.
Ok. We're arguing different things, then. The core argument of this piece was that the expansion has hit its geographic limits, which marks the beginning of the downward trajectory for an empire. Further, the expansion of government due to the need to manage the spawning empire has encouraged its capture by interests not loyal to American citizens.
We can discuss exactly what set us on this path in our early days til we're blue in the face, and it's interesting, but I think it's tangential to the original point.
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.
Sure, there were plenty of minor engagements overseas before the World Wars including a brief foray into colonialism during the Spanish-American war. But those forays were limited in scope and nothing like what other empires were doing at the time. An empire of settlers is very different than what we're dealing with now.
Re: Continental vacuum — the tribes were there, but they were so few in number (due to plague) that they only represented a speed bump to settling the country's west and interior. Also, they were just as busy fighting other tribes as they were the settlers — the Sioux versus the Crow and the Comanche versus the Apache, for example. My ancestors had to fight the Comanche who, pound, for pound, were some of the fiercest fighters in history. But still they lost...
That book sounds interesting though, thanks for the recommendation.
"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
I think you would need to revisit your history just a bit. The revolution died with Stalin raise to power. Trotzky had to run and was assassinated in Mexico, which was also a signal Stalin wanted to give to the western capitals that as far as Soviet Union is concerned, there won't be any revolution pursuite in the outside world. However, when things turned south and everyone turned a bit fascist, and then when the nazis were gone and the US started threatening with nukes its ally, the opportunity to stick a wrency in the wheels of western capitals came with the nationalist and de-colonialism movement around the world, which soviets helped a bit, but not much, and sometimes even created problems.
The revolution phase was done within the country's borders, but communism was exported worldwide...I live in Vietnam, for example, and the hammer and sickle symbol is everywhere, though the market is quite free here. I think you might be leaning a bit into Soviet nostalgia here, no? The people of Eastern Europe I know certainly don't feel that way...
The Soviets didn't really export much. The communist ideas were picked in the west, studying Marx and Engels and then observing and studying the works of the Russian Revolution. Things were not good in those times. Jjust check Red Star Rising over Chine by Edgar Snow to see what in fact fueled the expansion of communism: over-exploitation and foreign occupation. Was the same in France, where the commies played a role in the Resistence or in Italy, where the Americans had to fly lots of cash in and dispers it with the help of "christan democrats" - former fascists and Mafia to make sure the Italian Communist Party did not win the elections. The elections in Korea were compromised because of the Americans, the commies would have won hands down, same as in Vietnam. probably not in the eastern Europe countries, not sure about Poland, which did have a more solid resistence.
As for market being "free" that is really an oxymoron, and we all know that...
And no, I don't have Soviet nostalgia, not a bit. While I agree with Lenin that there is a need for a vanguard party to provide leadership in the fight against the ruling oligarchic/tyranical systems, keeping power continuously and with a vengence really destroyed the Soviet Union. And the first two main factors that contributed was the disbandment of the soviets everywhere (so good-by democracy) and the introduction of the US managerial approach in the work places, and especially Taylorism (so top down and no worker input)