| Reading Guide for Week 9 | |
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Tuesday Over the course of the 1810s and 1820s various kinds of Americans — traders, missionaries, whalers, and more — increasingly ventured throughout the world, on sea as well as on land. The United States Navy followed behind, and by the late 1830s had become able to dispatch small squadrons likewise throughout the world. In contrast to how American territorial dominion expanded in advance of actual settlement, American maritime activity expanded before the United States was fully able to project diplomatic presence or military power. Americans overseas tended to rely on the advance work done by the British empire in carving out spaces and creating linkages throughout the world, including the cultural currency of the English language. On North America, empire preceded settlement reach until the 20th century; around the world, American global activity preceded its imperial reach. Nevertheless, by the middle of the 19th century, Americans increasingly imagined themselves to have attained second-nation status in the world, behind only the British empire. In this report written in the aftermath of the so-called “opening” of Japan in 1853 and 1854, Matthew Calbraith Perry pondered the practical possibility and useful potential of the United States establishing colonies in the Pacific. Perry indulged in predictable “virtue talk” typical of imperial discourse, in Perry’s case with reference to the recent Mexican-American war. Beyond “virtue talk,” Perry entertained whether the United States should and could pursue overseas empire in the Pacific Ocean, beyond continental empire on North America. Thursday 1898 proved to be a momentous year in American history, the year in which the United States gained an overseas empire. In the aftermath of the Spanish-American war, American books and maps began to refer to the “Greater United States” because there was so much imperial territory as well as colonial subjects beyond the continental United States (45 states as of 1898). American print culture was full of “empire talk,” both for and against. Rudyard Kipling was a British children’s author and poet, who in this poem sought to inspire Americans to assume their share of the imperial burden supposedly borne by the British empire for the benefit of the world. At the same time Kipling urged Americans to transition from national adolescence to national manhood. Empire talk was suffused in (brittle) masculinity talk, as has remained the case into the 21st century. U.S. President McKinley articulated a notion of “benevolent assimilation” whereby other countries and peoples would be guided, with a firm American hand, toward civilization. As the United States acquired a new overseas empire, McKinley and many other American politicians borrowed from new imperial techniques undertaken by the British empire, toward exercising stringent control until indigenous peoples managed to become acceptable to American cultural and political standards. The Platt Amendment, inflicted upon Cuba, gave serious teeth to McKinley’s vision, because it created diplomatic and military policy that was aggressively enforced by military means, at first especially in Latin America.&nspb; Unlike the Philippines, a colony, Cuba was ostensibly an independent country, but the Platt Amendment made a mockery of any such independence. The early 20th century saw the U.S. military intervene in and occupy various countries whenever American business interests were perceived to be threatened. The aim was docile, subservient political stability as ideal conditions for American companies. The “empire talk” prompted by the 1898 Spanish-American War and subsequent peace treaty provoked both pro- and anti-imperialist constituencies. Yet even many anti-imperialists had a difficult time seeing the receiving end of empire and what was inflicted upon indigenous peoples. Often the concern focused solely on perceived threats to the reputation and character of the United States itself. Emilio Aguinaldo had a long career as a political leader in the Philippines, when it was a colony of the Spanish empire and when it was a colony of the American empire. His political choices spanned from military revolution to diplomatic negotiation. Traumatized by an upbringing under the Spanish empire, Aguinaldo had high hopes for the United States in 1898, which were swiftly dashed in 1899, with the outbreak of a second war, this one between the Philippines and the United States. Longer lasting and more brutal than the war between Spain and the United States, this war too did not result in the independence of the Philippines, to Aguinaldo’s dismay. |