By Clare Howell
An empire isn’t what it used to be. Following WWII, the field of play had changed. Native peoples fought back against occupations—witness liberation movements in the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Palestine, and throughout Africa—and technology made occupations unnecessary. Plastics and other synthetics allowed the United States to make goods that formerly had to come from foreign lands. Airplanes and radio enabled goods and information to move freely and quickly. Globalization replaced colonization.
Daniel Immerwahr in his book How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, makes the case that the U.S. created a “pointillist empire” that extends worldwide. “Since 1945, U.S. armed forces have been deployed abroad…211 times in 67 countries…Besides Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands, the United States maintains roughly 800 overseas military bases around the world.”
The sobering part of Immerwahr’s story is that, from the get-go, the United States’ project of imperial domination was justified by (a tacitly assumed) white supremacy. The justifications for suppression of native populations throughout the book are replete with the N-word, none referring to people of African descent. When the U.S. attacked the Spanish in the Philippines in 1898, Filipino insurgents thought the U.S. was helping them free their country. The rebels had besieged Manila, losing thousands of soldiers over two months. Then they watched as the U.S. marched unopposed into the city, locking them out, while the Spanish governor-general surrendered to the U.S. rather than to N—s, as he put it. Philippine rebels then fought the U.S. for their independence, which only came in 1934.
The Mexican War (1846-48) ended with U.S. forces, having laid waste to the Mexican army, occupying Mexico City. Many in the U.S. Congress wanted to take all of Mexico, as the U.S. now “owned” it. But South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun, stalwart defender of slavery, objected: “We have never dreamt of incorporating into the Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race…Are we to associate with ourselves, as equals, companions, and fellow-citizens, the Indians and mixed races of Mexico?” So, the U.S. annexed the sparsely populated northern part of Mexico (present day California, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona) leaving the sub-desert regions to Mexico. Or, as a newspaper at the time said, “All the territory of value…without taking the people.”
And I haven’t mentioned the tragic history of Puerto Rico, whose citizens endured scientific experiments at the hands of U.S. doctors, and whose revolutionaries shot up the U.S. congress while in session and almost assassinated President Truman. Nor have I touched on the more curious aspects of the U.S. empire: Whence the peace symbol and the shape of today’s college football; how traffic signals and their colors came about; and, the rise of the Beatles. All this and more awaits you in this extraordinary book.
