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Abstract
This article disputes explanations of American expansionism that are based on the requirements of national security or more abstract theories such as the balance of power. In contradistinction to the imperatives of defence and survival, the article shows how civilisational factors weighed heavily on the emergence of US grand strategy at the turn of the nineteenth century. In particular assumptions about the peoples of the Third World being lesser played an important role in the conception and legitimation of imperial expansion. During this period, the US Navy went through a dramatic build-up. The article shows the ways in which the worldviews of many of the key players (such as Alfred Mahan and Theodore Roosevelt) contributed to the militarisation of global racism, a development that led to widespread killing in the Philippines and elsewhere.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to an anonymous reviewer regarding the economic aspects of my arguments; to Nivi Manchanda for excellent feedback as the discussant at the 58th Annual Convention of the ISA (Baltimore, Maryland); and to my colleagues of the ‘America and the World Research’ cluster at SIS, American University, who provided some incisive comments. I especially want to acknowledge the observations of Shoon K. Murray, Joshua Rovner, Philip J. Brenner, Sarah Snyder and Jordan Tama. The paper also benefitted from the tremendous efforts of Research Assistant Samuel Chapple-Sokol.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Kim argues that critical scholarship on US expansionism is too bogged down with its temporal unfolding. He suggests a more spatial approach. See Kim, “Empire’s Entrails and the Imperial Geography.”
2 For an excellent volume on orientalism and international relations, and especially on orientalism and war, see Barkawi and Stanski, Orientalism and War. See also Porter, Military Orientalism.
3 Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk.
4 Layne argues that there is no such thing as a ‘benign hegemon’. For him, ‘A hegemon is a threat to the security of others simply because it is so powerful’, see Layne, The Peace of Illusions.
5 For an excellent review of approaches to American grand strategy see Posen and Ross, “Competing Visions for US Grand Strategy.” For a clear presentation of the natural drive towards hegemony see Mearsheimer, Tragedy of Great Power Politics.
6 Walt, “American Primacy,” 11.
7 Race and racism are differentiated on the basis that the former is an ambiguous concept with considerable elasticity due to its socially constructed character, while racism refers to the measurable or observable practices in which race is invoked.
8 For more on production relations see Cox, Production, Power and World Order.
9 Cox, “Social Forces, States and World Orders.”
10 Kim, “Empire’s Entrails and the Imperial Geography,” 63.
11 Beckert, Empire of Cotton.
12 Barkawi and Laffey, “Postcolonial Moment in Security Studies.”
13 Ibid.
14 Krishna, “Race, Amnesia, and the Education of International Relations.”
15 Laffey and Nadarajah, “Postcolonialism.”
16 Muppidi, Colonial Signs of International Relations.
17 Galton’s eugenic science had in the early twentieth century been legitimised and institutionalised. There were numerous eugenic theorists who were influential in American society at the very moment that the United States was getting more involved in world affairs. Many of the big names would eventually form the American Eugenics Society in 1926. See http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/html/eugenics/static/themes/14.html
18 Roosevelt, The Naval War.
19 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power.
20 Varacalli, “National Interest and Moral Responsibility,” 109.
22 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 18.
23 Ibid., 20.
24 Dorothy S. Brady, ed., Output, Employment, and Productivity in the United States after 1800, 1966, 11, http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1565.pdf
25 Irwin, Explaining America’s Surge, 364.
26 McCormick, “Insular Imperialism and the Open Door,” 158.
27 Varacalli, “National Interest and Moral Responsibility,” 109.
28 Colonial wars, according to Pham and Muppidi, “Colonial Wars, Postcolonial Specters,” 110, have two logics, namely the logic of extermination and the logic of domination. While the logic of extermination is practically self-explanatory, the logic of domination is complicated, not least because of the will to resist. The result of this is that ‘domination is both enabled and hampered by a paradoxical dependence, not on its own desire and will alone, but on that of the other’.
29 Black, Geopolitics and the Quest for Dominance, 40.
30 Mahan, The Strategic features of the Gulf of Mexico 684.
31 Mahan, “Hawaii and our Future Sea-Power.”
32 The relationship between American greatness and western expansion, though not spelled out beyond the west coast, is perhaps best articulated by Turner, Significance of the Frontier in American History.
33 The renowned geographer, or more accurately military geographer, H. J. Mackinder was deeply influenced by Mahan. See Mackinder, “The Geographical Pivot of History” republished in The Geographical Journal, 170, no. 4, December 2004, 298–321; originally published by the Royal Geographical Society. London: No. IV – April, 1904.
34 Theodore Roosevelt, Review of The Influence of Sea Power on History. The Atlantic Monthly (Vol. LXVI) Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co, The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1890, 564.
35 For a more immediate sense of the ways in which race, imperialism, and expansion were combined, see the speeches by Bevridge, 1898, 1899, 1900; Lodge, 1895, 1898; T. Roosevelt, 1910, 1901, 1894; Root, 1912, 1904, 1900.
36 The notion of ‘immanent responsibility’ has survived until today. It was most eloquently expressed by US Secretary of State Madeline Albright as America as an ‘indispensable nation’. Immanent responsibility also operates at the civic level through religious and NGO practices.
37 Persaud, “Shades of American Hegemony.”
38 Strong, Our Country, 1.
39 Ibid., 28.
40 Ibid., 160.
41 Ibid.
42 Strong, Expansion Under New World Conditions.
43 He put it this way – “I desire … to acknowledge the courtesy of Captain A. T. Mahan, the eminent writer on naval subjects, who read several chapters of the book which traverse the filed in which he is acknowledged to be the highest authority, and who was so good to give me the benefit of his valuable criticism”; Strong, Expansion Under New World Conditions, 10.
44 Although the United States did not colonise Japan it did in fact, at least through the middle of the nineteenth century, think of it as another Asian, inferior race. In 1853, for example, the US Navy Secretary wanted Japan to recognise ‘its Christian obligations to join the family of Christendom’. Bradley, Imperial Cruise, 176.
45 Beveridge, “March of the Flag.”
46 Lodge, “Speech to the Senate on the Subject of Intervention in Cuba, April 13, 1898.”
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 In what must be considered a peculiar statement of record, the US Navy currently (as of February 2017) omits the Queen Liliuokalani from the US intervention in Hawaii. The Naval History and Heritage Command website makes the following astounding claim: ‘With the election of a new king, King Kalakaua in March, 1874, anti-American factions helped to precipitate a number of riots which were regarded as sufficiently disturbing to have bluejackets landed from the USS Tuscorora and the USS Portsmouth. The British warship, HMS Tenedos, also, landed a token force. It was during the reign of King Kalakaua that the United States was granted exclusive rights to enter Pearl Harbor and to establish ‘a coaling and repair station’. The website states that the views expressed on the US Navy in the nineteenth century, and especially concerning the annexation of Hawaii, are the views of the ‘author’ and not necessarily those of NHHC. See https://www.history.navy.mil/research/library/online-reading-room/title-list-alphabetically/u/the-us-navy-and-hawaii-a-historical-summary.html
50 Lodge, “Speech in the US Senate,” March 7, 1900.
51 Chatterjee, Black Hole of Empire.
52 Ibid., 337.
53 Augelli and Murphy, America’s Quest for Supremacy, 37.
54 Ibid.
55 Ibid.
56 The thesis of race perpetuation is a fundamental aspect of Roosevelt’s worldview. On 23 April 1910, he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne under the title “Citizenship in a Republic” where he boldly stated that ‘The greatest of all curses is the curse of sterility, and the severest of all condemnations should be visited upon willful sterility. The first essential in any civilization is that the man and women shall be father and mother of healthy children, so that the race shall increase and not decrease’. Roosevelt, “Citizenship in a Republic,” 15.
57 Roosevelt, Strenuous Life, 117.
58 Singh, Race and America’s Long War.
59 Quoted in Drinnon, Facing West, 314.
60 Miller, Theodore Roosevelt: A Life, 259.
61 Ibid.
62 The idea of American, Western and Christian duty for civilisation had an expansive resonance within the American elite in the late nineteenth century. Thus for John Barrett (formerly the United States Minister to Siam), ‘The United States, acting with charity and equity, and in no spirit of vengeance, should employ all its moral and material influence in prescribing just punishment and indemnity for loss of life and property sustained at the hands of fanatical and insurrectionary mobs; in adjusting the true moral responsibility of the overwhelmed government; in establishing permanent order and honest progressive administration of government throughout the Empire; in safeguarding, both for the present and the future, the lives, rights, and holdings of missionaries, merchants and other foreign residents; and finally, in so preparing the way for peace, order and prosperity, to be followed by liberty, justice and freedom under the guiding direction of Christian civilization, that we shall win the lasting gratitude of the countless blameless Chinese and make them forever our disciples in moral and material progress.
63 By inventions I mean claims that are at odds with basic facts, but which reflect a mentality of paternalism and civilisation arrogance. The following quote from a speech by Secretary of War Elihu Root in 1900 captures the point. Speaking about the Philippines, he said: ‘our soldiers are conspicuous in the arts of peace. Where they go, law and order and justice and charity and education and religion follow. … They have been feeding the hungry and clothing the naked and protecting the weak and cleaning the foul cities and establishing hospitals and organizing commerce and teaching people how to take the first steps in self-government, with cheerful industry and zeal’, See Root, The Military and Colonial Policy, 59.
64 Mark Twain made the following observation of the treaty: ‘I have read carefully the treaty of Paris [between the United States and Spain], and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem …. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land’. Quoted in the New York Herald, October 15, 1900, http://www.internationalist.org/marktwain3.html
65 The horrors and erasures of violence against the Third World have a long history in Eurocentric international theory and history. For postcolonial critiques of this silencing see Krishna, “Race, Amnesia and the Education of International Relations.”
66 Butler, Frames of War.
67 Paddock, “US Set to Return Philippines Bells”, A6.
68 Ibid.
69 Drinnon, Facing West, 293.
70 The First Philippine Commission consisted of five members, two of whom were academics. Jacob Schurman was President of Columbia University, and Dean C. Worcester of the University of Michigan was actually listed as Expert of Philippine Affairs. Other members were Admiral Dewey of the US Navy and Major General Elwell S. Otis of the US Army. The fifth member of the Commission was Charles Denby, who had served as US Ambassador to China. Incidentally, his brother Edwin Denby was had served as Secretary of the US Navy.
71 McKinley, Second Inaugural Address.
72 Roosevelt, The Expansion of the White Race.
73 Ibid.
74 Ibid.
75 Ibid.
76 Roosevelt, The Strenuous Life, 8.
77 Root, Speech by the Hon. Elihu Root.
78 Gerstle, ”Theodore Roosevelt and the Divided Character”, 1281.
79 See Tuathail, “Understanding Critical Geopolitics.”
80 For an excellent discussion on Tuathil’s critique of traditional geopolitics, see Dalby, “Imperialism, Domination, Culture.”
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Randolph B. Persaud
Randolph B. Persaud is an Associate Professor of international relations at American University in Washington DC. At American University, he has served as the Interim Director for the Council on the Americas and Director of Comparative and Regional Studies. He writes on race and international relations, postcolonialism, human security, counterhegemony and the politics of identity. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Race, Gender and Culture in International Relations: Postcolonial Perspectives (Persaud and Sajed, New York: Routledge, 2018).