WEBVTT NOTE The Rise of the American Empire 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:14.000 Before I begin to harangue, Dr. Livingston has an announcement that he would like to make. 2 00:00:14.000 --> 00:00:36.000 Let's get it exact, let's see, on the wrong page, okay. 3 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:41.000 Anyway, the origins, early development of the American Empire, 4 00:00:41.000 --> 00:00:52.000 The Rise of the American Empire, that's a good word, and it's a big topic, the Empire's big, the topic is big, so I want to say a few things. 5 00:00:52.000 --> 00:01:04.000 One of the problems with the American Empire is that there's a lot of sort of empire denial going around. 6 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:09.000 The mainstream press doesn't seem to think it's plausible that there is an American Empire, 7 00:01:09.000 --> 00:01:13.640 American Empire, who seem to rule the world, but somehow this is benevolent and benign, 8 00:01:13.640 --> 00:01:18.600 somehow an extension of always being attacked for no good reason by foreigners who envy 9 00:01:18.600 --> 00:01:25.880 us and are jealous, something like that. It's very implausible, I think. But nonetheless, 10 00:01:25.880 --> 00:01:30.440 in the mainstream media, and for that matter a lot of mainstream scholarship, you would 11 00:01:30.440 --> 00:01:36.400 never know that there might be an American Empire, and this might be a topic worth looking 12 00:01:36.400 --> 00:01:51.400 One example, just from millions of things you can find on the internet, here's something on world military expenditures. 13 00:01:51.400 --> 00:02:03.400 Okay, at $325 billion, the U.S. military budget for fiscal year, request for fiscal year 2002, 14 00:02:03.400 --> 00:02:08.400 is only six times larger than that of Russia, the second largest spender. 15 00:02:08.400 --> 00:02:15.400 It is more than 22 times as large as the combined spending of the seven countries traditionally identified by the Pentagon 16 00:02:15.400 --> 00:02:39.400 as our most likely adversaries, and I will have such dangerous powers as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, dangerous power of Libya, North Korea, which when they can take time off from eating pinecones will attack us, Sudan and Syria. 17 00:02:39.400 --> 00:02:47.400 And then U.S. spending, projected spending is more than the combined spending of the next 12 nations. 18 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:52.400 U.S. and its close allies spend more than the rest of the world combined. 19 00:02:52.400 --> 00:02:58.400 Now, I submit that this is unlikely that this is for defense and any traditional meaning of that word. 20 00:02:58.400 --> 00:03:06.400 Even a slightly expanded conception of defense in which we want to protect a few sea lanes seems to me might not be defense. 21 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:36.400 I suppose it could be argued that we're actually are cowering behind our continental borders and those are a few island possessions with a big fence and we're simply spending all this money because we happen to like and the voters like certain contractors and just want to give them this money I don't think this will hold up so I have a some general things I want to say I think we can take that this is possible give 22 00:03:36.400 --> 00:03:44.400 And talk about the origins. I want to say a few general things and draw some diagrams again. 23 00:03:44.400 --> 00:03:53.400 I think by now the secret, the hidden theme of this whole conference is coming into view. 24 00:03:53.400 --> 00:04:02.400 And it has something to do with the struggle over the long haul between liberty and power. 25 00:04:02.400 --> 00:04:21.000 And we've looked at this in a number of different modes from the standpoint of centralization and the suppression of natural order by the artificial man that Dr. Ludwigsen is speaking of and we've seen some concrete applications of this struggle. 26 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:31.700 I mentioned the Republican theme in which this was seen as an eternal struggle between court and country and I happen to like the court language. 27 00:04:31.700 --> 00:04:33.460 I mean, this is sort of evocative. 28 00:04:33.460 --> 00:04:36.460 You think of the court and you think of all these corrupt people 29 00:04:36.460 --> 00:04:38.220 hanging around the seat of power, 30 00:04:38.220 --> 00:04:41.620 having dangerous liaisons and spending all the people's money 31 00:04:41.620 --> 00:04:45.380 and plotting all sorts of unnecessary things that they can do. 32 00:04:45.380 --> 00:04:46.860 So now the court is much, much bigger. 33 00:04:46.860 --> 00:04:49.020 The court takes in, I suppose, in this sense, 34 00:04:49.020 --> 00:04:52.260 a large, not just a large bureaucracy, 35 00:04:52.260 --> 00:04:56.300 but a large set of intellectuals, 36 00:04:56.300 --> 00:05:09.300 Maybe some historians, a huge bureaucracy, whole segments of society whose fortunes are tied to the bureaucracy 37 00:05:09.300 --> 00:05:13.300 and various kinds of ideas advocated by the court intellectuals. 38 00:05:13.300 --> 00:05:18.300 So the court party, and this is why it's called a court party, is bigger than the court itself. 39 00:05:18.300 --> 00:05:21.300 And over here we have the country party. 40 00:05:21.300 --> 00:05:26.420 And again, I kind of like that word, even though it's not a perfect term for this. 41 00:05:26.420 --> 00:05:35.380 We could say, alternatively, that these are the state-building party and it's unfinished work, as John Dewey would say. 42 00:05:35.380 --> 00:05:38.580 It just has to keep being built and will never reach the end. 43 00:05:38.580 --> 00:05:46.740 It's just an ongoing process that might... there's just no, you know, final causes anymore, so it just goes on. 44 00:05:46.740 --> 00:05:54.180 And we might think of this as the Libertarian, Decentralist, or some other things. 45 00:05:54.180 --> 00:06:01.740 Anyway, people that are the enemy of that, for very positive reasons, common critique is that you... 46 00:06:01.740 --> 00:06:07.380 I think James Jackson Kilpatrick once wrote that a common liberal notion was that, 47 00:06:07.380 --> 00:06:10.900 oh, you conservatives are just again the government. 48 00:06:10.900 --> 00:06:17.600 Well, for good reason. This is not without some reflection that people might take these positions. 49 00:06:20.000 --> 00:06:23.500 I want to do a little sort of a chart. I hope you can see it in the back. 50 00:06:23.500 --> 00:06:28.700 Well, maybe I'll just erase some of this so you can have a chance of seeing it. 51 00:06:28.700 --> 00:06:34.100 It seems to me that at the danger of producing something like the Nolan Chart, 52 00:06:34.100 --> 00:06:37.100 I'll do a little box chart. 53 00:06:37.100 --> 00:06:45.100 We'll have political possibilities and political economy on one axis, whatever it is. 54 00:06:45.100 --> 00:06:51.100 Anyway, we'll say that there might be laissez-faire liberalism as an economic policy. 55 00:06:51.100 --> 00:06:55.100 And then there might be a general policy of statism. 56 00:06:55.100 --> 00:06:58.100 And this is actually wider because there's many varieties. 57 00:06:58.100 --> 00:07:05.100 There might be mercantilism, there might be communism, there might be some things in between. 58 00:07:05.100 --> 00:07:35.100 So that's actually wider in terms of possibility and in foreign policy you might decide to have empire and intervene all over the place for certain whatever reasons or you might have non-intervention and so you have four possibilities you might have people who say they are for laissez-faire liberalism but yet they objectively seem to be building an empire this has been called many things 59 00:07:35.100 --> 00:07:38.540 might be referred to as the National Review position. 60 00:07:40.400 --> 00:07:43.960 Might be named after my old boyhood hero, Barry Goldwater. 61 00:07:43.960 --> 00:07:46.620 But there's a certain structural incoherence 62 00:07:46.620 --> 00:07:50.400 in that you can't really in the end 63 00:07:50.400 --> 00:07:52.360 determine that you want to rule the world 64 00:07:52.360 --> 00:07:54.680 or even a large portion of it. 65 00:07:54.680 --> 00:07:59.280 And then at home have laissez-faire liberalism. 66 00:07:59.280 --> 00:08:00.500 It's incoherent. 67 00:08:00.500 --> 00:08:02.660 All these other policies in the foreign field 68 00:08:02.660 --> 00:08:04.080 tend to undermine. 69 00:08:04.080 --> 00:08:06.240 And finally, we see these people 70 00:08:06.240 --> 00:08:11.240 drifting into some part of this box here, okay? 71 00:08:13.080 --> 00:08:14.600 Where you have statism and empire, 72 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:16.400 which seems at least consistent, 73 00:08:16.400 --> 00:08:19.360 and this has a number of possibilities here 74 00:08:19.360 --> 00:08:22.400 from fairly, I guess, fairly benign ones 75 00:08:22.400 --> 00:08:26.000 over to communism, which expanded some, 76 00:08:26.000 --> 00:08:27.600 but the problem with outright communism 77 00:08:27.600 --> 00:08:29.940 was that since it couldn't calculate rationally, 78 00:08:29.940 --> 00:08:33.560 it tended to undermine its own future 79 00:08:33.560 --> 00:08:38.560 and didn't actually work out well in that form. 80 00:08:39.040 --> 00:08:44.040 Now you might have some combination of anti-empire 81 00:08:44.360 --> 00:08:46.000 and laissez-faire liberalism 82 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.120 where I think we would tend to find ourselves. 83 00:08:48.120 --> 00:08:50.320 I think this at least has the advantage 84 00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:54.000 of being intellectually consistent and coherent. 85 00:08:54.880 --> 00:08:56.960 Now you might have non-interventionists 86 00:08:56.960 --> 00:08:59.240 who are also statists and here we might, 87 00:08:59.240 --> 00:09:01.920 I don't know, Ralph Nader somehow comes to mind. 88 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:03.720 There might be a mild status. 89 00:09:03.720 --> 00:09:06.640 You might have people who believe 90 00:09:06.640 --> 00:09:10.920 in some sort of highly regulated economy 91 00:09:10.920 --> 00:09:15.780 but have understood that there's some relationship 92 00:09:15.780 --> 00:09:18.240 between empire and things they don't like 93 00:09:18.240 --> 00:09:19.900 or they're opposed to on some other grounds 94 00:09:19.900 --> 00:09:21.720 like pacifism or something. 95 00:09:22.760 --> 00:09:27.240 You see this with some of the so-called isolationists 96 00:09:27.240 --> 00:09:30.180 in the 1930s, someone like Charles Baird 97 00:09:30.180 --> 00:09:33.780 who's in favor of corporatism at home, 98 00:09:33.780 --> 00:09:36.840 some kind of regulated economy, or Lawrence Dennis, 99 00:09:36.840 --> 00:09:38.940 there are a number of people who, 100 00:09:38.940 --> 00:09:43.940 so that perhaps is a consistent position, 101 00:09:44.720 --> 00:09:47.220 but it tends to come out of an analysis 102 00:09:47.220 --> 00:09:50.680 which is descended among others from John Hobson, 103 00:09:50.680 --> 00:09:52.840 which taught people to believe 104 00:09:52.840 --> 00:09:55.360 that the market economy as such, 105 00:09:55.360 --> 00:09:58.800 somehow leads to imperialism, 106 00:09:58.800 --> 00:10:28.800 So you have to regulate the economy to prevent that, and so the cure for imperialism, if that's something you care about, is some form of socialism or corporatism, and indeed the late William Apple Williams might be put in this category, though he's really quite an interesting writer, and I think a historian whose insights are still being deliberately neglected by the historical profession at large. Okay, so, so much for that. 107 00:10:28.800 --> 00:10:32.800 I mean by empire and how do we distinguish empire from imperialism? 108 00:10:32.800 --> 00:10:35.800 I mean it used to be if anyone said anything about imperialism it was, 109 00:10:35.800 --> 00:10:41.800 oh you're echoing the Soviet line because only the Soviets talk about imperialism. 110 00:10:41.800 --> 00:10:47.800 And then maybe in some antiquarian sense there might have been some other imperialism, 111 00:10:47.800 --> 00:10:50.800 but it had nothing to do with anything that's going on now. 112 00:10:50.800 --> 00:10:53.800 So we have empire and imperialism. 113 00:10:53.800 --> 00:11:03.560 This term is sometimes, well it's handy because you can get an adjective from it, you can talk about imperialists. 114 00:11:03.560 --> 00:11:12.520 So clearly these words are related, this is Latin in essence, this is the French form of the same word. 115 00:11:12.520 --> 00:11:18.520 Sometimes there's a tendency to use the term imperialism referring to overseas possessions. 116 00:11:18.520 --> 00:11:22.080 Okay, we're gonna just use them kind of interchangeably, 117 00:11:22.080 --> 00:11:24.400 but turning to empire, 118 00:11:24.400 --> 00:11:26.880 been a number of ways this has been used. 119 00:11:26.880 --> 00:11:29.720 It was very typical in the 18th century 120 00:11:29.720 --> 00:11:34.720 for this to mean any large consolidated, 121 00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:40.120 I'm gonna abbreviate, any large consolidated state. 122 00:11:40.120 --> 00:11:41.480 And typically this might mean 123 00:11:41.480 --> 00:11:44.720 it has irresponsible government. 124 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:46.600 Sometimes it's used in a more neutral sense, 125 00:11:46.600 --> 00:11:51.600 is just meaning there's some large state somewhere in the 18th century writers. 126 00:11:51.600 --> 00:12:03.100 And in the 20th century, the late 20th century, we have tended to use the word also to refer to overseas imperialism. 127 00:12:03.100 --> 00:12:09.200 That was just to make it more dramatic, in case there's a film. 128 00:12:09.200 --> 00:12:15.900 So one of the interesting things about empires, I think, over the long haul is that 129 00:12:15.900 --> 00:12:45.900 The large consolidated kind of empire on land can be very long-lasting, like the Tsarist state in Russia is an empire, even before the Soviet period this was an empire, it's a huge land-based state, and there have been others, China, and these can be very long-lasting, whereas seaborne empires, empires based on sea power, tend to be a bit more brief, the Dutch, Spanish, 130 00:12:45.900 --> 00:12:47.400 and so on to British. 131 00:12:47.400 --> 00:12:49.840 They tend to be a little, have a little less staying power 132 00:12:49.840 --> 00:12:53.420 in the very long run, at least if we can trust Paul Kennedy, 133 00:12:53.420 --> 00:12:54.640 who wrote that interesting book 134 00:12:54.640 --> 00:12:57.500 on the rise and decline of the great powers 135 00:12:57.500 --> 00:13:00.920 about right before the Gulf War, actually, 136 00:13:00.920 --> 00:13:02.560 I think maybe it was one of the books they were reading 137 00:13:02.560 --> 00:13:03.860 and they said, oh no, we can't go into decline. 138 00:13:03.860 --> 00:13:06.520 We're gonna have to have a war to prove we're not in decline. 139 00:13:06.520 --> 00:13:07.620 That may have been it. 140 00:13:08.760 --> 00:13:13.760 So you can view history as a sort of series of incidents 141 00:13:13.760 --> 00:13:21.920 Incidents in which the court power, the country power is dominant in a particular country you're studying, in a particular place you're studying. 142 00:13:21.920 --> 00:13:30.260 Over the long haul, though, it tends to, you tend to see this ratchet effect whereby the court party, at least in our case, 143 00:13:30.260 --> 00:13:36.060 has gained over the long haul and has never suffered a serious setback. 144 00:13:36.060 --> 00:13:44.060 So we'll just table all of this, and I'll say something about the remote origins of the American Empire. 145 00:13:44.060 --> 00:13:55.820 One, of course, is religious, and there's a number of notions here, but the idea of a redeemer nation, 146 00:13:55.820 --> 00:14:00.220 And there's a book by a historian named Tuvesson, 147 00:14:00.220 --> 00:14:04.020 or Tuvesson, which is quite interesting, 148 00:14:04.020 --> 00:14:07.780 I believe it came out in 1968. 149 00:14:09.260 --> 00:14:12.260 And he says that there's a whole interesting millennial theme 150 00:14:12.260 --> 00:14:15.180 that's present in Protestantism 151 00:14:15.180 --> 00:14:17.740 and articulated sometimes by Protestants 152 00:14:17.740 --> 00:14:19.700 during the American Revolution, 153 00:14:19.700 --> 00:14:21.340 that, well, we've had this wonderful revolution 154 00:14:21.340 --> 00:14:24.360 and now we have to export this to the rest of humanity. 155 00:14:24.360 --> 00:14:39.920 And you get the impression it isn't always meant to be just by being a good example that at some point we will have grown in power and we shall have to go out there and knock heads together and make all these people enjoy the many benefits that we have. 156 00:14:39.920 --> 00:14:45.720 They're not necessarily going to be consulted. We're just going to take them these benefits. 157 00:14:45.720 --> 00:14:50.720 And again, a classic book by Weinberg. 158 00:14:50.880 --> 00:14:52.960 That's a classic book on Manifest Destiny, 159 00:14:52.960 --> 00:14:55.620 by which he means a series of rationalizations 160 00:14:55.620 --> 00:14:58.500 for American expansion over land. 161 00:14:59.800 --> 00:15:02.120 And a third thing I can mention 162 00:15:03.280 --> 00:15:06.860 is that there's a very early interest 163 00:15:06.860 --> 00:15:08.200 in the markets of Asia. 164 00:15:09.120 --> 00:15:10.440 But again, this is fairly innocent. 165 00:15:10.440 --> 00:15:12.800 Somebody found out you can sail a quiver ship to China 166 00:15:12.800 --> 00:15:14.000 and get silk and bring it back, 167 00:15:14.000 --> 00:15:15.640 and it's worth a lot more money 168 00:15:15.640 --> 00:15:18.360 in one place than it is in the other. 169 00:15:18.360 --> 00:15:21.280 So this is a moneymaker in New England. 170 00:15:21.280 --> 00:15:24.340 Shippers are interested in this very early, 171 00:15:24.340 --> 00:15:28.400 particularly once the slave trade is closing down 172 00:15:28.400 --> 00:15:31.160 and they aren't making so much money in New England 173 00:15:31.160 --> 00:15:32.500 on the slave trade. 174 00:15:33.860 --> 00:15:35.800 So they have to have alternatives. 175 00:15:37.500 --> 00:15:42.500 So another problem came up implicitly 176 00:15:44.000 --> 00:15:47.620 in my previous lecture. 177 00:15:47.620 --> 00:15:49.620 And that's a question of landed expansion 178 00:15:49.620 --> 00:15:51.580 and Dr. Higgs mentioned something about this. 179 00:15:51.580 --> 00:15:55.180 There's some debate about whether it constitutes empire 180 00:15:55.180 --> 00:15:58.280 when you just keep absorbing all the contiguous land 181 00:15:58.280 --> 00:15:59.120 next to you. 182 00:15:59.120 --> 00:16:01.660 And I mentioned that Harrington had opened up 183 00:16:01.660 --> 00:16:04.940 this possibility that you could expand over land 184 00:16:04.940 --> 00:16:09.940 indefinitely in the West without making the leap 185 00:16:09.940 --> 00:16:16.940 Making the leap or having the downfall of going from Republic to Empire. 186 00:16:16.940 --> 00:16:19.940 And I'll say this much for what it worked for a while. 187 00:16:19.940 --> 00:16:25.940 Because there was Northwest ordinances and so on, the plan was to, however we acquired the territory, 188 00:16:25.940 --> 00:16:36.940 by war or purchase, to organize into territories of some roughly similar size. 189 00:16:36.940 --> 00:16:45.940 When enough people arrived, they would constitute a new people, organize a republic and form a government and Congress would have to admit them into the Union. 190 00:16:45.940 --> 00:16:55.940 Now the only problem here it seems to me is the Roman problem, you expand rapidly, there's going to be a lot of fighting about the spoils and the details of how this process works. 191 00:16:55.940 --> 00:17:00.940 And of course this cut across the slavery question and a number of other questions and so on. 192 00:17:00.940 --> 00:17:30.940 And so on, but in a way I suppose there were those who argued that in the standpoint of empire in the bad sense that expanding into relatively empty land while it may not be good for the Indians, didn't necessarily undermine the constitutional system in the way that overseas imperialism would, or indeed, and neither of those in their initial phases undermined the way that having a major war of the kind we had in the 1860s 193 00:17:30.940 --> 00:17:37.940 So I'll table that. There are some historians, like Walter McDougall, who say, well, the expansion is just continuous. 194 00:17:37.940 --> 00:17:46.940 First thing you see is Florida, Yucatan, I don't know, this is Cuba, very rough, Baja California, I suppose, keep expanding. 195 00:17:46.940 --> 00:17:51.940 And then they have this habit of expanding, so then they just say, well, it's across the Pacific. 196 00:17:51.940 --> 00:17:59.940 So there may be a way in which this is true for some people, and they say, well, now that we've incorporated all this land into the farm sector, 197 00:17:59.940 --> 00:18:07.940 The farm sector, we've got all these farm exports, we have much more farm exports than we can possibly eat, we'll have to have foreign markets for that. 198 00:18:07.940 --> 00:18:17.940 And the farmers do by the second half of the 19th century become a big interest group, some of them asking for the government to go find them some foreign markets. 199 00:18:17.940 --> 00:18:23.940 But again, this could be done by reciprocity treaties, it doesn't require you to build an empire. 200 00:18:23.940 --> 00:18:28.940 You can see why I didn't go into cartography. 201 00:18:28.940 --> 00:18:32.060 But anyway, that's the map. 202 00:18:32.060 --> 00:18:33.700 So let's fast forward. 203 00:18:33.700 --> 00:18:36.660 The Southern Confederacy has been suppressed. 204 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:39.740 And then some of the same people suppressed the Plains Indians. 205 00:18:39.740 --> 00:18:42.100 Some of the one or two of the same officers 206 00:18:42.100 --> 00:18:50.580 involved in that process of rounding out the landed internal empire 207 00:18:50.580 --> 00:18:56.500 of the improved and saved union and its government. 208 00:18:56.500 --> 00:18:59.500 And things could have gone back to normal. 209 00:18:59.500 --> 00:19:02.500 We could have said, oh, look, we've got all this land, we could just develop this land peacefully 210 00:19:02.500 --> 00:19:06.500 and develop this big internal market and trade with the rest of the world 211 00:19:06.500 --> 00:19:11.000 and things would go rocking along indefinitely without any great disturbances. 212 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:15.500 Who's going to attack us? Probably not Canada. 213 00:19:15.500 --> 00:19:17.500 You never know, but you know, not a lot of enemies. 214 00:19:17.500 --> 00:19:21.500 Two huge oceans. Who's going to launch an amphibious invasion? 215 00:19:21.500 --> 00:19:24.500 You know, is the King of Portugal going to attack us? 216 00:19:24.500 --> 00:19:29.700 Probably not. This didn't seem satisfactory to a lot of people. 217 00:19:29.700 --> 00:19:34.160 And by the 1880s, you start to get an agitation that we need a blue water navy. 218 00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:44.500 Captain Mahan starts writing about sea power is the key to world history and we have to build an adequate navy to get in the big power game. 219 00:19:44.500 --> 00:19:51.300 And somehow it isn't enough. We already have a kind of rough dominance in Latin America to the extent that we exercise it. 220 00:19:51.300 --> 00:19:59.860 But also, once again, we cross into the religious sphere and pick up the millennial theme with the missionaries. 221 00:19:59.860 --> 00:20:04.960 I have a lot of missionary effort, and I'm sure this is all well and good, but very often missionaries 222 00:20:04.960 --> 00:20:10.860 go off very far away and involve them in some place, themselves in some place, and save souls. 223 00:20:10.860 --> 00:20:17.460 And then they want their home government to intervene to protect their group in the society 224 00:20:17.460 --> 00:20:22.180 from people that are picking on them or somehow they tend to be a force for 225 00:20:22.180 --> 00:20:30.740 intervention. You might see this in South African history with the London Missionary 226 00:20:30.740 --> 00:20:36.900 Society playing an interesting role in dragging British power further into the 227 00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:42.220 South African frontier and so forth. But also you get writers, people that's sort 228 00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:56.220 of extending the social gospel into foreign policy, like Josiah Strong, who wants a kind of general expansion of American power to help Christianize and uplift and so forth, so there's interesting overlap. 229 00:20:56.220 --> 00:21:11.220 And it's a perfect illustration of what Tom Woods was talking about. There's a great quote from Burgess during the progressive era. He was one of them. I can't think of his first name. What's Burgess's first name? 230 00:21:11.220 --> 00:21:31.220 That's right, of course. Thanks, David. Yes, John W. Burgess, who says, referring to, I think specifically to Roosevelt and his party, the Progressive Party, that the jingoes and the social reformers have gotten together. 231 00:21:31.220 --> 00:21:38.220 Now, the other interpretation would be that they'd always been together because, again, it's an elective affinity. 232 00:21:38.220 --> 00:21:43.220 These are the people that want to increase state power at home and abroad. 233 00:21:43.220 --> 00:21:45.220 There's not a huge distinction to them. 234 00:21:45.220 --> 00:21:48.220 They want to increase the power of the state in all areas. 235 00:21:48.220 --> 00:21:54.220 So that's why that's at least a consistent position. 236 00:21:54.220 --> 00:21:59.220 Now, something else comes into the picture, and that's labor strife in the late 19th century. 237 00:21:59.220 --> 00:22:02.220 Panic of 1873. 238 00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:05.220 More importantly, the panic of 1893, 239 00:22:05.220 --> 00:22:12.220 which can be analyzed, I should think, along the lines of monetary policy and so forth. 240 00:22:12.220 --> 00:22:23.220 But a lot of people interpreted this labor strife and economic recession as proving there was something fundamentally wrong with the political economy. 241 00:22:23.220 --> 00:22:31.220 And leaping into the fray, certain people said, well, it means we need a new frontier. 242 00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:34.220 And the new frontier will take the form of foreign markets. 243 00:22:34.220 --> 00:22:39.240 And this, of course, is the famous Turner thesis. 244 00:22:39.240 --> 00:22:48.000 Frederick Jackson Turner, who wrote a famous article in 1893 saying that the frontier had ended. 245 00:22:48.000 --> 00:22:52.920 And this was terrible because the frontier had been what had given American society its character, 246 00:22:52.920 --> 00:22:56.580 white Americans had been individualistic and democratic and all these good things. 247 00:22:56.580 --> 00:23:02.820 And if the frontier, that is this endless supply of empty land to the West, if that ran out, 248 00:23:02.820 --> 00:23:06.620 We wouldn't have the social safety valve for discontent in the cities 249 00:23:06.620 --> 00:23:14.020 and they would have more trade unions and socialists and populists and all sorts of unhappiness. 250 00:23:14.020 --> 00:23:16.420 And this was a problem. 251 00:23:16.420 --> 00:23:22.620 And in the great article that Murray Rothbard did on the origins of the Federal Reserve, 252 00:23:22.620 --> 00:23:26.220 which is in the quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, 253 00:23:26.220 --> 00:23:32.520 I can't think of the exact issue, but it's four or five issues ago, 254 00:23:32.520 --> 00:23:37.620 He links up people making the economic argument. 255 00:23:37.620 --> 00:23:42.420 And then here we have people like Conant, professional economists, 256 00:23:42.420 --> 00:23:47.920 making the argument that actually anticipates the Leninist argument. 257 00:23:47.920 --> 00:23:53.420 The argument Lenin made famous after Lenin in some ways plagiarized Hobson's material. 258 00:23:53.420 --> 00:24:00.520 Hobson was writing about the Boer War and what the economic causes were on the British side of the Boer War. 259 00:24:00.520 --> 00:24:04.000 Well, Lennon presents a similar argument in which it's the failure of capitalism, 260 00:24:04.000 --> 00:24:07.560 it's the inherent unbalanced productivity of capitalism 261 00:24:07.560 --> 00:24:11.360 that causes capitalists to demand foreign markets 262 00:24:11.360 --> 00:24:15.720 for investment and for goods. 263 00:24:15.720 --> 00:24:17.160 And we've already got these people who've been dreaming 264 00:24:17.160 --> 00:24:18.440 of the China market all this time. 265 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:19.520 They want the markets anyway, 266 00:24:19.520 --> 00:24:22.400 here's an economic rationalization where they have to have them, 267 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:25.440 the economy won't function without them somehow. 268 00:24:25.440 --> 00:24:26.480 I think we would tend to agree 269 00:24:26.480 --> 00:24:29.320 this is not really a great economic analysis. 270 00:24:29.320 --> 00:24:31.840 But it is interesting that this is inverted Leninism, 271 00:24:31.840 --> 00:24:34.600 and the Leninist argument is formulated 272 00:24:34.600 --> 00:24:37.680 by some American economists before Lenin, 273 00:24:37.680 --> 00:24:39.040 formulates this idea. 274 00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:43.240 The difference is that the American writers say that, 275 00:24:43.240 --> 00:24:47.840 well, we like the market economy pretty well. 276 00:24:47.840 --> 00:24:49.080 We just don't think it works very well, 277 00:24:49.080 --> 00:24:51.920 so we want to save it through imperialism, 278 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:53.160 and this would be good. 279 00:24:53.160 --> 00:24:54.240 And the Leninists are saying, 280 00:24:54.240 --> 00:24:55.520 well, no, imperialism is bad 281 00:24:55.520 --> 00:24:58.640 because bad things happen to the people 282 00:24:58.640 --> 00:25:03.640 in the countries that are subjected to imperialism. 283 00:25:03.920 --> 00:25:06.000 But it is interesting that it's virtually 284 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:09.200 the same argument, okay. 285 00:25:09.200 --> 00:25:14.200 Now what happens to actually get the process underway? 286 00:25:16.320 --> 00:25:18.480 Well, you've got a number of people, 287 00:25:18.480 --> 00:25:21.920 I think of as a sort of historical block 288 00:25:21.920 --> 00:25:25.480 in the Gramscian sense of their own historical block. 289 00:25:25.480 --> 00:25:37.720 And this includes Theodore Roosevelt, Brooks Adams, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, and Captain Mahan, or maybe some other people. 290 00:25:37.720 --> 00:25:43.360 And they begin talking about, well, the solution to all of America's problems is a large policy. 291 00:25:43.360 --> 00:25:52.480 And there's no end to things that having a large policy, there's no end to things that this will improve. 292 00:25:52.480 --> 00:25:56.640 and it'll solve the economic problem they believe they have. 293 00:25:56.640 --> 00:25:58.800 It'll also mean that we're playing our proper role 294 00:25:58.800 --> 00:26:00.560 in the world now that we've come to maturity 295 00:26:00.560 --> 00:26:03.040 and mature powers should have colonies 296 00:26:03.040 --> 00:26:05.520 or should have empires, it's just what's done. 297 00:26:05.520 --> 00:26:07.900 It's our coming out party, whatever. 298 00:26:09.680 --> 00:26:12.920 Roosevelt, of course, is this belligerent lunatic 299 00:26:12.920 --> 00:26:15.520 who thinks we should have a war once in a while, 300 00:26:15.520 --> 00:26:20.180 just so we will keep our manly virtues. 301 00:26:20.180 --> 00:26:22.000 You have to have some war. 302 00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.700 I don't know if there's other ways to do that, but he seemed to think war was the most obvious one. 303 00:26:26.700 --> 00:26:33.200 So there's a whole number of things that they want to solve at once. 304 00:26:33.200 --> 00:26:41.200 And what happens concretely is that Cuba, which is the last important, 305 00:26:41.200 --> 00:26:47.200 or maybe the last Spanish possession at all in the New World, 306 00:26:47.200 --> 00:26:50.900 Western Hemisphere is undergoing another revolution. 307 00:26:50.900 --> 00:26:56.200 and there have been a number of Cuban revolutions in the 19th century, the 10 years war and so on. 308 00:26:56.200 --> 00:27:01.200 Well, now this is underway again in Cuba, you've got the Cuban independence movement, 309 00:27:01.200 --> 00:27:10.100 inspired, I guess, by the writings of Jose Marti, the last writer to combine nationalism, romanticism, 310 00:27:10.100 --> 00:27:16.600 and maybe liberalism as a package deal, and he goes down to Cuba himself. 311 00:27:16.600 --> 00:27:26.240 All the Cuban refugees are in Ocala and New Orleans and various American cities agitating 312 00:27:26.240 --> 00:27:30.640 and then they actually get something going and Jose Marti goes down there and gets killed 313 00:27:30.640 --> 00:27:35.680 in the first couple of weeks because, I mean, he's a writer, he's not a military guy, but 314 00:27:35.680 --> 00:27:38.560 at least he did what he thought was right. 315 00:27:38.560 --> 00:27:46.320 And so the Spanish authorities have this problem and they're suppressing the Cuban rebellion 316 00:27:46.320 --> 00:27:54.320 and various means that seem a bit stern to outside powers who complain about them like the policy of re-concentracion 317 00:27:56.320 --> 00:28:00.320 where they round up, well they figure out very quickly, this is what always happens in these situations, 318 00:28:01.320 --> 00:28:07.320 that some of the population supports the guerrillas, these people don't have an army, they're not fighting an organized war yet, 319 00:28:07.320 --> 00:28:12.320 they're burning sugar plantations and using hit and run tactics 320 00:28:12.320 --> 00:28:21.920 And they're supported in some parts of Cuba, I think more particularly the East, by the population. 321 00:28:21.920 --> 00:28:25.200 So what people do when they want to win a war like this, invariably, is they say, 322 00:28:25.200 --> 00:28:29.120 well, we'll have to sort of somehow separate the guerrillas from the population. 323 00:28:29.120 --> 00:28:32.720 So they turn to a policy in effect of making a war on the population. 324 00:28:32.720 --> 00:28:38.720 Again, exact parallel with what happens in South Africa, what happens when the Americans, 325 00:28:38.720 --> 00:29:08.720 Well, we'll get to that but shortly in the Philippines, separate the people from the guerrillas by making war on the people you put the people in strategic hamlets and put barbed wire around them and they can't get out and support the guerrillas usually when this happens no one says well we have to provide some way for these people to make a living while this is going on we have to have some clean water we have to have some food medical supplies generally this is very hard on the population when they're suddenly being separated from their livelihood 326 00:29:08.720 --> 00:29:18.720 In Vietnam, the United States got the brilliant idea that you could do this with airplanes. 327 00:29:18.720 --> 00:29:22.720 Just create one of these zones and say, well, we won't bomb inside this zone. 328 00:29:22.720 --> 00:29:28.720 We'll bomb everything outside of it. So I'm not sure that worked all that well either. 329 00:29:28.720 --> 00:29:31.720 Okay, so the Spaniards are doing this. 330 00:29:31.720 --> 00:29:36.720 And in the meantime, we're having a presidential election in 1896. 331 00:29:36.720 --> 00:29:39.240 1996, a number of reasons why this might be important. 332 00:29:39.240 --> 00:29:43.120 One reason is that it's the end of the Democratic Party, 333 00:29:43.120 --> 00:29:48.120 as we have known it, that the sort of left millennialist 334 00:29:49.840 --> 00:29:54.840 elements associated with populism take over the nomination 335 00:29:55.280 --> 00:29:58.080 and become a permanent force within the Democratic Party 336 00:29:58.080 --> 00:30:01.280 for this kind of social welfare, social gospel thinking, 337 00:30:01.280 --> 00:30:02.940 which is later secularized, I suppose. 338 00:30:02.940 --> 00:30:05.440 This is a simplification, but nonetheless, 339 00:30:05.440 --> 00:30:08.140 You never get a guy like Grover Cleveland again, 340 00:30:08.140 --> 00:30:11.980 unless we count the unsuccessful Al Smith maybe as being a, 341 00:30:11.980 --> 00:30:14.220 but that's another special factor there, 342 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:17.780 again, a religious factor with Al Smith. 343 00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:23.520 And on the Republican side, William McKinley, 344 00:30:23.520 --> 00:30:27.360 very successful Ohio politician 345 00:30:27.360 --> 00:30:31.560 who is aware of this whole argument about foreign markets 346 00:30:31.560 --> 00:30:34.900 and the relationship of this to the tariff and so forth, 347 00:30:34.900 --> 00:30:39.900 is nominated, is easily elected because at this point, 348 00:30:40.300 --> 00:30:42.420 the idea of the high tariff has been sold 349 00:30:42.420 --> 00:30:45.220 to industrial workers as somehow the source 350 00:30:45.220 --> 00:30:48.860 of their prosperity and other people are afraid 351 00:30:48.860 --> 00:30:51.420 of the populistic Brian and what he might do 352 00:30:51.420 --> 00:30:52.780 in monetary policy. 353 00:30:52.780 --> 00:30:54.740 So McKinley is elected. 354 00:30:54.740 --> 00:30:57.420 And now they've got a problem and an opportunity. 355 00:30:57.420 --> 00:31:00.620 They've got this war in Cuba, 90 miles away famously 356 00:31:00.620 --> 00:31:02.900 from the last part of Florida. 357 00:31:02.900 --> 00:31:16.900 And they say, well, we have American property and maybe, you know, a few American lives might be in danger, we'd like to protect that and get these Spaniards to solve this problem somehow. 358 00:31:16.900 --> 00:31:30.900 On the other hand, I think it's pretty clear that they also realized that if this situation led to a war with Spain, well, it's clear who would win, there's not much question who would win, very unequal contest at that point. 359 00:31:30.900 --> 00:31:39.900 And then the United States could, at the end of such a successful war, take some better real estate from Spain. 360 00:31:39.900 --> 00:31:48.900 That is the Philippine Islands and various islands in the Pacific, which would be wonderful coaling stations and stepping stones through these markets of Asia. 361 00:31:48.900 --> 00:31:52.900 And this is more or less what happens. I won't go through the whole political history. 362 00:31:52.900 --> 00:32:00.900 The American press takes literally any claim made by the Cuban rebels and puts it in the front page. 363 00:32:00.900 --> 00:32:05.900 As was typical of that period, I'm not sure things have changed completely. 364 00:32:05.900 --> 00:32:09.900 The press will just completely make up stories about Spanish atrocities. 365 00:32:09.900 --> 00:32:11.900 So it's hard to sort out. 366 00:32:11.900 --> 00:32:17.900 Nonetheless, there's a campaign going on in favor of the Cuban rebels and humanitarian intervention. 367 00:32:17.900 --> 00:32:24.060 and then McKinley pretends to bow to this public pressure and he pretends to bow to pressure in Congress 368 00:32:24.060 --> 00:32:32.060 when in fact McKinley, like Brer Rabbit, is getting thrown into briar patch, which is precisely where he wanted to go. 369 00:32:32.060 --> 00:32:36.940 I think Forrest MacDonald may be the first historian to have used this briar patch motif, 370 00:32:36.940 --> 00:32:45.580 but McKinley was apparently a master of appearing to not be in charge and to not be making policy, 371 00:32:45.580 --> 00:32:50.780 But he just was very subtle and would manipulate people and accomplish his goals. 372 00:32:50.780 --> 00:32:53.780 I think he's been misunderstood. 373 00:32:53.780 --> 00:33:04.180 And so to make a long story short, by, I guess, by April of 1898, 374 00:33:04.180 --> 00:33:05.880 McKinley gets a declaration of war. 375 00:33:05.880 --> 00:33:13.080 There's been a series of supposed negotiations in which governments have changed in Spain and negotiations go on. 376 00:33:13.080 --> 00:33:15.760 And every time the Spanish government says, 377 00:33:15.760 --> 00:33:18.200 okay, we'll concede that point. 378 00:33:18.200 --> 00:33:20.400 And you think, well, that's it, it's resolved. 379 00:33:20.400 --> 00:33:21.320 Then the Americans come back. 380 00:33:21.320 --> 00:33:23.920 Well, we actually have these two other points. 381 00:33:23.920 --> 00:33:26.320 So the negotiations are probably meant to fail. 382 00:33:27.240 --> 00:33:29.320 It seems like that might be the case. 383 00:33:29.320 --> 00:33:31.560 So anyway, McKinley has a budget for a war 384 00:33:31.560 --> 00:33:33.240 and he's authorized to go to war. 385 00:33:33.240 --> 00:33:36.560 At least he actually didn't proclaim on his own 386 00:33:36.560 --> 00:33:39.360 that he could send troops to Cuba. 387 00:33:39.360 --> 00:33:41.400 And we'll cut through the fun stuff. 388 00:33:41.400 --> 00:33:56.400 We got a new drink, the Cuba Libre, and some new songs, and new public hero Dewey, the, I guess, Commodore, I don't think he was an Admiral, I don't think. 389 00:33:56.400 --> 00:34:05.400 And it's a very brief war. The American casualties in Cuba mostly die of disease and bad food supplied by the Army contractors. 390 00:34:05.400 --> 00:34:09.400 The military casualties are pretty minor compared to a lot of wars. 391 00:34:09.400 --> 00:34:17.400 And it's also used as a means of reconciling the defeated Southerners because they're given prominent positions in the campaign. 392 00:34:17.400 --> 00:34:22.400 Feit and Joe Wheeler is called out of Congress to help lead the campaign in Cuba. 393 00:34:22.400 --> 00:34:27.400 Former Confederate Brigadier Feit and Joe Wheeler and so forth. 394 00:34:27.400 --> 00:34:29.400 So there's a lot of purposes that are served by this. 395 00:34:29.400 --> 00:34:37.400 And in the end, what's important I think is the American acquisition of the Philippines. 396 00:34:37.400 --> 00:34:51.400 We do turn Cuba into a kind of protectorate, but Congress had passed a clause saying we were only in this to save the Cubans and liberate them, so there was no room to maneuver and actually make Cuba into a territory. 397 00:34:51.400 --> 00:34:59.400 But we did acquire Puerto Rico, I guess, of Ladrones, some other islands, and so forth. 398 00:34:59.400 --> 00:35:09.400 The Philippines are the most important because they're the ones that give you a wonderfully large harbor on the way to these Asian markets that these people are interested in. 399 00:35:09.400 --> 00:35:19.400 Now what's interesting, this is not a Marxist analysis because there's not some abstract capitalist class, some big class of capitalists who are calling for this. 400 00:35:19.400 --> 00:35:25.600 This whole policy is the creature of the people who are theorizing it, 401 00:35:25.600 --> 00:35:33.200 ambitious politicians and small segments of business who think they may directly benefit. 402 00:35:33.200 --> 00:35:35.100 So this is the interesting thing. 403 00:35:35.100 --> 00:35:40.000 In fact, Murray Rothbard used to say that the vulgar Marxists, 404 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.600 the so-called vulgar Marxists are always better on these questions 405 00:35:44.600 --> 00:35:47.700 than the high theoretical Marxists who never go out and do the research 406 00:35:47.700 --> 00:35:51.780 and find out who did what and where the money went. 407 00:35:51.780 --> 00:35:56.780 And so it's the, oh, someone who might count as an economically, 408 00:35:57.420 --> 00:36:02.180 a Marxist interested in really following the economic trail, 409 00:36:02.180 --> 00:36:06.580 someone like Philip Foner comes to more interesting conclusions 410 00:36:06.580 --> 00:36:11.580 vis-a-vis who supported war in 1861 than his relation, 411 00:36:13.260 --> 00:36:14.500 I don't know the exact relationship, 412 00:36:14.500 --> 00:36:16.740 but his relative, Eric Foner, 413 00:36:16.740 --> 00:36:19.860 who seems to find fuzzy ideology all around 414 00:36:19.860 --> 00:36:21.820 and high noble causes, so there's a difference. 415 00:36:21.820 --> 00:36:23.300 So the vulgar Marxists are actually better 416 00:36:23.300 --> 00:36:27.040 because they'll go out and do sometimes a hard research. 417 00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:28.660 And we have to, I suppose, emulate this 418 00:36:28.660 --> 00:36:31.580 or where we haven't done it, we can look at their research 419 00:36:31.580 --> 00:36:33.180 at least and see if it holds up. 420 00:36:33.180 --> 00:36:36.540 Okay, so now we have the Philippines, 421 00:36:38.100 --> 00:36:39.240 Treaty of Paris and so forth. 422 00:36:39.240 --> 00:36:40.420 This is debated in Congress. 423 00:36:40.420 --> 00:36:41.540 There are a lot of people who don't wanna go 424 00:36:41.540 --> 00:36:43.500 into the overseas empire business. 425 00:36:43.500 --> 00:36:46.460 They think, well, it's one thing to acquire 426 00:36:46.460 --> 00:36:52.700 a bunch of land and incorporate it into new states, into the logic of a Republican system, 427 00:36:52.700 --> 00:36:58.500 even though that's changed a little bit since the war of secession. 428 00:36:58.500 --> 00:37:07.100 Still, it's sort of a leap to suddenly get into overseas empire the way the British have done 429 00:37:07.100 --> 00:37:08.980 and the French and the Dutch and so forth. 430 00:37:08.980 --> 00:37:15.260 This might be damaging to our institutions and it might just be morally bad to govern people 431 00:37:15.260 --> 00:37:16.900 without their consent. 432 00:37:16.900 --> 00:37:19.020 In fact, there's a number of ironies. 433 00:37:19.020 --> 00:37:22.060 There were one or two 434 00:37:24.420 --> 00:37:28.500 southern congressmen who made a direct link and said, 435 00:37:28.500 --> 00:37:30.380 well, if the Philippines aren't governed any better 436 00:37:30.380 --> 00:37:33.160 than South Carolina was governed during Reconstruction, 437 00:37:33.160 --> 00:37:34.940 they're in for a bad time. 438 00:37:34.940 --> 00:37:38.260 There were a few that made the direct comparison. 439 00:37:38.260 --> 00:37:41.900 Unfortunately, for getting that kind of argument, 440 00:37:41.900 --> 00:37:45.620 This is, of course, the period of the New South ideologists. 441 00:37:45.620 --> 00:37:49.340 All these guys wanna do is forget about the unpleasant trees 442 00:37:49.340 --> 00:37:52.180 for the most part and be reconciled and be cut in 443 00:37:52.180 --> 00:37:53.460 on the big card game. 444 00:37:54.580 --> 00:37:58.740 And they're willing to be very cooperative 445 00:37:58.740 --> 00:38:01.020 at the national level if they can be cut in. 446 00:38:01.020 --> 00:38:03.180 It's sort of, has something to do with the rise 447 00:38:03.180 --> 00:38:06.960 of Atlanta perhaps, but that might be unfair. 448 00:38:06.960 --> 00:38:08.240 I mean, some of this is just commerce 449 00:38:08.240 --> 00:38:10.860 and I don't object to commerce as such. 450 00:38:10.860 --> 00:38:17.620 But nonetheless, you get some of this criticism, but it's not a groundswell. 451 00:38:17.620 --> 00:38:20.020 And from the old enemies, and this is interesting, 452 00:38:20.020 --> 00:38:25.100 at every stage in the rise of the state, there's a sort of piston effect. 453 00:38:25.100 --> 00:38:30.580 The rise in the power of the state pushes former enemies together into coalition. 454 00:38:30.580 --> 00:38:33.380 So now you have people who say, well, everything was fine. 455 00:38:33.380 --> 00:38:38.580 Nothing wrong with saving the Union by force, but now this overseas empire is wrong. 456 00:38:38.580 --> 00:38:43.480 I mean, Lincoln was right, but it would be wrong to govern the Filipinos without their consent. 457 00:38:43.480 --> 00:38:47.880 It's okay to govern, make the South stay in the Union, but this is wrong. 458 00:38:47.880 --> 00:38:50.280 People draw lines at different places historically. 459 00:38:50.280 --> 00:38:54.480 So now former enemies are in the anti-imperialist coalition. 460 00:38:54.480 --> 00:39:00.880 So you have someone like Edward Atkinson, textile manufacturer, 461 00:39:00.880 --> 00:39:07.280 someone with links to the abolitionist movement, complaining about this new policy, this new state policy, 462 00:39:07.280 --> 00:39:08.520 but not making the analogy 463 00:39:08.520 --> 00:39:10.520 that some of the Southerners would have made. 464 00:39:11.760 --> 00:39:13.400 So you have an interesting coalition 465 00:39:13.400 --> 00:39:16.440 that finds expression in the Anti-Imperialist League 466 00:39:16.440 --> 00:39:19.400 which lasts for a few years, for about 1900 467 00:39:19.400 --> 00:39:21.760 until it kind of just withers away 468 00:39:21.760 --> 00:39:26.400 into his lack of interest, maybe about 1921. 469 00:39:26.400 --> 00:39:28.400 So you have the Anti-Imperialist League, 470 00:39:29.960 --> 00:39:32.840 there's Moorfield's story, there's any number of writers 471 00:39:32.840 --> 00:39:34.520 who try to make the case that it's wrong 472 00:39:34.520 --> 00:39:40.800 to Have an Overseas Empire and Make Various Arguments 473 00:39:40.800 --> 00:39:43.800 in Declaration of Independence or the Nation of Government. 474 00:39:43.800 --> 00:39:46.400 The most interesting thing I think is that 475 00:39:47.800 --> 00:39:50.440 some of the anti-imperialists were driven 476 00:39:50.440 --> 00:39:53.840 to quoting Judge Taney from the Dred Scott decision 477 00:39:54.800 --> 00:39:56.880 against the idea of empire. 478 00:39:56.880 --> 00:39:59.760 Because Taney, and of course, he's saying a lot 479 00:39:59.760 --> 00:40:02.600 of other things and about the specific case of 480 00:40:02.600 --> 00:40:05.360 Was Dred Scott a slave or not? 481 00:40:05.360 --> 00:40:07.680 Tony went into a lot of republican theory 482 00:40:07.680 --> 00:40:11.000 and he said, well, republics are sort of contained systems. 483 00:40:11.000 --> 00:40:13.040 They have to expand in this regular way 484 00:40:13.040 --> 00:40:15.120 that we've already invented. 485 00:40:15.120 --> 00:40:16.840 Otherwise it's not a republican system 486 00:40:16.840 --> 00:40:18.480 and it's not constitutional. 487 00:40:18.480 --> 00:40:23.480 You can't constitutionally govern territories indefinitely 488 00:40:24.720 --> 00:40:26.400 without the consent of the people. 489 00:40:26.400 --> 00:40:28.160 And here he's referring to the Western territories, 490 00:40:28.160 --> 00:40:31.000 whether there might be slavery or not be slavery 491 00:40:31.000 --> 00:40:36.840 in the 1850s, but now the poor anti-imperialists, some of whom are descended from abolitionists, 492 00:40:36.840 --> 00:40:41.080 are having to make this argument and use the argument from Tawny that we can't govern the 493 00:40:41.080 --> 00:40:47.240 Philippines territorially. And then there were some politically incorrect arguments made at the time 494 00:40:47.240 --> 00:40:52.440 by people who said, we've got enough immigrants and foreigners now, we don't really need Filipinos, 495 00:40:53.240 --> 00:40:57.480 and there were some arguments of that type. In fact, well, I won't go into that, but there were 496 00:40:57.480 --> 00:41:07.480 There were some, we didn't want to govern people who we, at the time we had no, very unlikely we'd want to really make them a state, okay. 497 00:41:07.480 --> 00:41:16.480 And then there were certain economic interests who didn't like the idea that if we somehow incorporated the Philippines as territory, then they'd be, they might be within our tariff walls. 498 00:41:16.480 --> 00:41:23.480 And then there'd be Filipino industries competing with maybe our sugar or whatever. 499 00:41:23.480 --> 00:41:27.560 Although the question of our sugar is very complicated because sometimes our sugar is actually in Cuba 500 00:41:27.560 --> 00:41:33.940 But it's being bought by an American company and so forth or our sugars in Utah and Idaho, and it's the beet sugar 501 00:41:34.740 --> 00:41:36.740 producers and their congressmen 502 00:41:36.840 --> 00:41:42.800 Wanting to protect their share of the sugar market. So it's sort of tricky. I mean, we finally give the Philippines independence 503 00:41:43.320 --> 00:41:46.760 But Congress finally votes independence for the Philippines in the 30s 504 00:41:47.800 --> 00:41:50.360 And the sugar argument plays quite a role there 505 00:41:50.360 --> 00:41:53.080 I think, and sometimes you organize labor. 506 00:41:53.080 --> 00:41:55.400 They say, well, gee, we have to give the Philippines 507 00:41:55.400 --> 00:41:56.800 their independence so they won't come here 508 00:41:56.800 --> 00:42:00.480 and lower our wages, all those Filipinos lowering our wages. 509 00:42:00.480 --> 00:42:04.860 And in any event, we want to be able to put them 510 00:42:04.860 --> 00:42:06.120 outside the tariff wall. 511 00:42:06.120 --> 00:42:07.860 So the economic considerations seem to have played 512 00:42:07.860 --> 00:42:10.320 the major role when independence is granted, 513 00:42:10.320 --> 00:42:12.160 but then it's interrupted because then the Japanese 514 00:42:12.160 --> 00:42:14.360 come and occupy the islands. 515 00:42:14.360 --> 00:42:16.420 And so then they're not independent either 516 00:42:16.420 --> 00:42:18.080 till after the war. 517 00:42:18.080 --> 00:42:19.080 But what happened in the meantime? 518 00:42:19.080 --> 00:42:19.920 Well, what happens in the meantime 519 00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:21.720 is that the Filipinos aren't happy. 520 00:42:23.200 --> 00:42:25.760 There's been a revolution like the parallel 521 00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:29.960 to the one in Cuba going on in the Philippine islands 522 00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:34.680 before the Americans became involved in Cuba. 523 00:42:34.680 --> 00:42:35.820 And they're kind of on break. 524 00:42:35.820 --> 00:42:39.000 They're kind of on break because the Spanish government 525 00:42:39.880 --> 00:42:43.280 had a few years before this negotiated a truce and said, 526 00:42:43.280 --> 00:42:44.900 look, we'll give you a bunch of money 527 00:42:44.900 --> 00:42:46.760 if you'll quit fighting us. 528 00:42:46.760 --> 00:42:48.680 So Aguinaldo's agents went to Hong Kong 529 00:42:48.680 --> 00:42:50.200 and bought a bunch of weapons. 530 00:42:51.480 --> 00:42:52.800 And then the Spaniards said apparently, 531 00:42:52.800 --> 00:42:55.640 well, we won't give you the second check. 532 00:42:55.640 --> 00:42:58.080 It seems it's not what we wanted. 533 00:42:58.080 --> 00:43:00.920 So this is a sort of rebellion and suspension. 534 00:43:00.920 --> 00:43:02.840 It's a potential rebellion. 535 00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:05.940 And as soon as they find out that the Americans 536 00:43:05.940 --> 00:43:07.520 may be entering a war against Spain, 537 00:43:07.520 --> 00:43:11.600 they say this is our opportunity and they appear in arms. 538 00:43:11.600 --> 00:43:16.080 And so there's a very brief naval battle 539 00:43:16.080 --> 00:43:24.720 in Manila Harbor and then we proceed to occupy the outskirts of the city and the Filipino 540 00:43:24.720 --> 00:43:27.280 insurgents be a part of the occupying. 541 00:43:27.280 --> 00:43:32.560 This breaks down very quickly for a number of reasons and one of which is that the Philippine 542 00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:38.280 insurgents believe that they have been led to believe, they think they've been sort of 543 00:43:38.280 --> 00:43:42.240 been hinted that the Americans have come to liberate them and suddenly when they learn 544 00:43:42.240 --> 00:43:45.000 about the peace treaty they find out the Americans have come to be the new 545 00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:51.160 landlords and some of them are unhappy and the more militant ones then proceed 546 00:43:51.160 --> 00:43:55.280 to continue the struggle against the Americans and this is what in American 547 00:43:55.280 --> 00:44:00.640 historiography is referred to for some reason as the Philippine insurrection I 548 00:44:00.640 --> 00:44:04.960 don't know why this is Indians have insurrections but it's not a proper war 549 00:44:04.960 --> 00:44:08.920 somehow because we acquired the territory fair and square through 550 00:44:08.920 --> 00:44:15.400 of International Treaty at Paris, and these guys are just insurrectionists and so on. 551 00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:20.880 And this costs several times more than the whole Spanish-American War itself did. 552 00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:24.400 This is the consequence that costs more than the original exercise. 553 00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:32.800 And I have the figures in my article, not to be as shamelessly self-promoting as the previous speaker, 554 00:44:32.800 --> 00:44:36.760 But in my article, in the Costs of War book, 555 00:44:36.760 --> 00:44:39.120 I have the figures on this, on the costs, 556 00:44:39.120 --> 00:44:41.720 and then I have the article on McKinley 557 00:44:43.480 --> 00:44:47.280 and in the presidency book, so you could look for it there. 558 00:44:47.280 --> 00:44:48.600 Anyways, it's very costly, 559 00:44:48.600 --> 00:44:51.260 and it's also very costly for the Filipinos, 560 00:44:51.260 --> 00:44:54.280 about 200,000 of whom managed to die 561 00:44:54.280 --> 00:44:58.960 while they're being incorporated into the empire of freedom. 562 00:45:00.640 --> 00:45:02.200 Now, this isn't all battlefield deaths. 563 00:45:02.200 --> 00:45:05.360 I mean, so many insurgents are killed, that might be, 564 00:45:05.360 --> 00:45:07.400 I don't remember, I have to look it up myself, 565 00:45:07.400 --> 00:45:10.280 but a lot of this is just, 566 00:45:10.280 --> 00:45:14.360 when you proceed to fight a counterinsurgency, 567 00:45:14.360 --> 00:45:19.360 now we're doing exactly what we complained, officially, 568 00:45:19.860 --> 00:45:22.140 that Spain was doing in Cuba. 569 00:45:22.140 --> 00:45:23.200 Now we're doing the same thing, 570 00:45:23.200 --> 00:45:26.200 we're wiping out whole villages 571 00:45:27.520 --> 00:45:29.720 regarding the entire population 572 00:45:29.720 --> 00:45:31.680 of parts of the Philippines as the enemy. 573 00:45:31.680 --> 00:45:35.160 becomes a very ugly war because, again, it's the same thing. 574 00:45:35.160 --> 00:45:36.840 Well, we don't know who the friendly ones are. 575 00:45:36.840 --> 00:45:38.400 You know, who are the friendly natives? 576 00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:40.200 We don't know for sure. 577 00:45:40.200 --> 00:45:44.200 So it's one of the just one of the logical 578 00:45:46.200 --> 00:45:48.640 natural problems of empire is trying to separate out 579 00:45:48.640 --> 00:45:51.120 who your supposed friends are and so forth. 580 00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:54.520 And so this is all, this is sort of malnutrition, 581 00:45:54.520 --> 00:45:56.300 disease, everything attendant on the war, 582 00:45:56.300 --> 00:45:59.400 disruption of normal food production and so forth. 583 00:45:59.400 --> 00:46:06.560 So it's not all battlefield deaths or massacres, although there is a lower figure of maybe 584 00:46:06.560 --> 00:46:08.560 on the order of 10,000, I can't remember. 585 00:46:08.560 --> 00:46:15.600 Okay, to make a long story short, this continues down to about, I think, 1902, and it ends 586 00:46:15.600 --> 00:46:20.560 because Roosevelt officially, Roosevelt who's now president, because McKinley, McKinley's 587 00:46:20.560 --> 00:46:26.480 been re-elected in the meantime with Roosevelt as vice president, and then he unfortunately 588 00:46:26.480 --> 00:46:36.880 takes a trip to Buffalo, New York, where some immigrant shoots him, and it's unfortunate. 589 00:46:36.880 --> 00:46:40.840 And then Teddy Roosevelt becomes president. I don't know if people wanted this, to put 590 00:46:40.840 --> 00:46:45.920 Roosevelt in the vice presidential slot. Now he's president. Well, he simply signs a proclamation, 591 00:46:45.920 --> 00:46:51.000 well, you know, the Philippine troubles are over, officially. So there was a little fighting 592 00:46:51.000 --> 00:47:21.000 It came down to about 1910 in the lower islands, especially the southern islands where they're particularly difficult because they're Muslims and they have these funny bolo things that they will throw at you and the rocks wind around your, the rope around your neck and you're dead or something, so this is when we adopted the, I think what the 45 automatic replaced the 38. We had to have more stopping power, right, because of this part of it. 593 00:47:21.000 --> 00:47:26.840 A whole reorganization of the Army, because the Army hadn't performed brilliantly. 594 00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:33.480 I mean, there's some funny stories about all the supplies piling up in Tampa, 595 00:47:33.480 --> 00:47:41.600 and the officers are all drinking, getting soused at Mr. Plant's hotel, 596 00:47:41.600 --> 00:47:47.560 and the enlisted men are all enjoying the sinful delights of the port of Tampa, 597 00:47:47.560 --> 00:47:57.920 And then they're all getting sent winter uniforms to go to Cuba and all sorts of logistical problems in getting the expedition off the ground. 598 00:47:57.920 --> 00:48:02.920 Oh, there's one funny anecdote I can't leave out, and this is just to drop back to the actual little bit of fighting. 599 00:48:02.920 --> 00:48:08.800 There is a huge amount of fighting, and Roosevelt did not win the war all by himself by charging up with his volunteers. 600 00:48:08.800 --> 00:48:11.960 This is not true. It's just his version. 601 00:48:11.960 --> 00:48:26.460 But there was a very funny incident at the Battle of Las Guasimas where Fighting Joe Wheeler and his men advance and the Spaniards start to run and Wheeler says, 602 00:48:26.460 --> 00:48:35.260 Come on boys, we got the damn Yankees on the run, forget which war he's in. So it's the best quote from the war. 603 00:48:35.260 --> 00:48:39.060 So anyway, now we have the Philippines and now it's proving costly to keep the Philippines. 604 00:48:39.060 --> 00:48:43.420 This is constantly at the end of the Philippine people. 605 00:48:43.420 --> 00:48:44.740 But I think what happens in the end 606 00:48:44.740 --> 00:48:48.060 is that enough of the ilustrado class, 607 00:48:48.060 --> 00:48:51.180 this is the educated class, people of illustration, 608 00:48:51.180 --> 00:48:55.620 ilustrados, I think there's some of these people, 609 00:48:55.620 --> 00:48:57.380 all these people are flexible. 610 00:48:57.380 --> 00:48:58.820 And they say, well, we'll just have to, 611 00:48:58.820 --> 00:49:00.080 you know, we can get along with the Americans. 612 00:49:00.080 --> 00:49:01.540 After all, we got along with the Spaniards. 613 00:49:01.540 --> 00:49:02.860 We collaborated with them pretty well. 614 00:49:02.860 --> 00:49:05.640 Let's just get along with the Americans and cut our losses. 615 00:49:05.640 --> 00:49:08.620 But it is interesting that when the Japanese arrive, 616 00:49:09.060 --> 00:49:17.060 In 1941, Aguinaldo is still alive, and he proceeds to collaborate with the Japanese. 617 00:49:17.060 --> 00:49:21.060 He's quite happy to do that, so it's one of those funny things. 618 00:49:21.060 --> 00:49:25.060 Okay, so this is an interesting story. 619 00:49:25.060 --> 00:49:26.060 Well, what happens institutionally? 620 00:49:26.060 --> 00:49:31.060 Well, there are some interesting cases constitutionally 621 00:49:31.060 --> 00:49:38.060 about whether the Constitution applied to these new territories like Puerto Rico and Guam. 622 00:49:38.060 --> 00:49:56.060 These are the insular cases and I think it was the Secretary of War who said that once the court decided these cases that they seemed to mean that the Constitution follows the flag but doesn't quite catch up with the flag. 623 00:49:56.060 --> 00:50:05.060 So eventually we draw up a kind of fundamental law for the Philippines, the Institute of Self-Government eventually. 624 00:50:05.060 --> 00:50:10.060 And we give the Philippines the whole Bill of Rights, except for two. 625 00:50:10.060 --> 00:50:20.060 This is as we institute a local government to replace Taft and the purely American bureaucracy. 626 00:50:20.060 --> 00:50:25.060 So we give them all the rights except two, and guess what those two might be? 627 00:50:25.060 --> 00:50:28.060 Trial by jury and right to bear arms. 628 00:50:28.060 --> 00:50:32.060 That's odd. Why would those two be left out? 629 00:50:32.060 --> 00:50:37.360 So, this is interesting, but safety is important in these situations. 630 00:50:37.360 --> 00:50:47.060 Okay, so this enhances the presidency, because it gives McKinley an occasion to expand the so-called war powers, 631 00:50:47.060 --> 00:50:51.760 which Lincoln had invented, which is Lincoln's theory that there were war powers inherent in the presidency. 632 00:50:51.760 --> 00:50:53.860 It's nowhere in the Constitution. 633 00:50:53.860 --> 00:50:58.860 And Raoul Berger has shown this in a very good book on executive privilege. 634 00:50:58.860 --> 00:51:02.540 And before that, there's a book by Edward S. Corwin, 635 00:51:02.540 --> 00:51:04.900 the fact that it may be his only good book that I know of, 636 00:51:04.900 --> 00:51:11.940 Edward S. Corwin, in 1947, called Total War and the Constitution. 637 00:51:11.940 --> 00:51:16.100 And he made the case that Lincoln had simply invented the whole idea of war powers. 638 00:51:16.100 --> 00:51:17.740 There's two separate clauses. 639 00:51:17.740 --> 00:51:22.300 One clause is purely administrative, it's kind of housekeeping, it's, 640 00:51:22.300 --> 00:51:26.300 you know, if you have a chief executive, then he would, you know, enforce the laws. 641 00:51:26.300 --> 00:51:27.660 This is peacetime. 642 00:51:27.660 --> 00:51:31.560 The President shall take care that the laws are enforced, some words to that effect. 643 00:51:31.560 --> 00:51:35.960 Elsewhere it says that the President is Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. 644 00:51:35.960 --> 00:51:39.560 So I guess they can issue orders, tell him to salute, shine their shoes. 645 00:51:39.560 --> 00:51:42.060 If there's a war, he can actually draw up a battle plan. 646 00:51:42.060 --> 00:51:46.460 The two clauses don't seem to have any organic connection, but in Lincoln's mind, 647 00:51:46.460 --> 00:51:51.860 this was a big, vast, unlimited fund of war powers inherent in the presidency, 648 00:51:51.860 --> 00:51:54.460 which he then proceeded to act on that theory. 649 00:51:54.460 --> 00:52:00.580 So McKinley is now able to act in his capacity as ruler of foreign territory 650 00:52:00.580 --> 00:52:04.060 and starts issuing some of these administrative orders that Tom was talking about. 651 00:52:04.060 --> 00:52:07.700 I don't know if the curve goes up at that point, but he issues some. 652 00:52:07.700 --> 00:52:13.540 And we have an expansion of the bureaucracy because now we have to have the Bureau of Insular Affairs. 653 00:52:13.540 --> 00:52:17.740 I don't know why they just didn't put it in the Bureau of Indian Affairs 654 00:52:17.740 --> 00:52:22.580 since the American troops in the Philippines had tended to... 655 00:52:22.580 --> 00:52:26.300 Many of the officers had fought in the last Indian wars and they tended to think of the 656 00:52:26.300 --> 00:52:31.820 Filipinos as sort of Indians who were, you know, further west, had the Indian, had the 657 00:52:31.820 --> 00:52:38.380 same Indian fighting attitude. Might have just merged those two bureaucracies. 658 00:52:38.380 --> 00:52:42.540 And so we have the reorganization of the army because of logistical failures, but also we've 659 00:52:42.540 --> 00:52:49.420 emerged as a world power. And this is interesting, can someone advise me on the time? 660 00:52:49.420 --> 00:52:50.900 Is that with questions? 661 00:52:50.900 --> 00:52:51.900 Pardon? 662 00:52:51.900 --> 00:52:53.700 Five minutes without Q&A. 663 00:52:53.700 --> 00:52:54.700 Okay, good, I can do that. 664 00:52:54.700 --> 00:52:55.700 Okay. 665 00:52:55.700 --> 00:53:00.900 Well, it's interesting, because now we are emerging as an international power. 666 00:53:00.900 --> 00:53:04.900 And the British are sitting up and taking notice, and the British are saying, well, 667 00:53:04.900 --> 00:53:08.380 our backward cousins are emerging as a great power. 668 00:53:08.380 --> 00:53:10.740 They're surpassing us industrially. 669 00:53:10.740 --> 00:53:14.480 We need to shape up our backward cousins. 670 00:53:14.480 --> 00:53:20.480 And we need to turn them into the junior partner in an Anglo-American world hegemony. 671 00:53:20.480 --> 00:53:22.480 It would be nice to the Americans. 672 00:53:22.480 --> 00:53:26.480 So we won't criticize anything that they're doing in the Philippines, 673 00:53:26.480 --> 00:53:31.480 even though it's the exact same sort of thing they complained the Spaniards were doing in Cuba, 674 00:53:31.480 --> 00:53:37.480 and, you know, pursue the Anglo-American friendship, okay? 675 00:53:37.480 --> 00:53:41.480 And this is reciprocated in the Boer War. 676 00:53:41.480 --> 00:53:47.320 During the Boer War, Secretary Hayes is as pro-British as he could have been 677 00:53:47.320 --> 00:53:53.800 without actually being on the British payroll and attempts to prevent any criticism. 678 00:53:53.800 --> 00:53:59.240 The delegates arrive from the Boer Republics and he won't see them. 679 00:53:59.240 --> 00:54:09.800 And so if you had a funny thing at the Democratic Convention where, let's see, that would be... 680 00:54:09.800 --> 00:54:12.200 I guess it's the next convention. 681 00:54:12.200 --> 00:54:15.720 No, no, it's just 1900, can it be? 682 00:54:15.720 --> 00:54:18.720 Yeah, hang on. 683 00:54:18.720 --> 00:54:23.200 Well, I guess the imperialism issue is already on the table, yeah. 684 00:54:23.200 --> 00:54:25.920 Democratic convention, I guess it would be 1900. 685 00:54:25.920 --> 00:54:29.880 You have a funny thing where a few of the Democrats 686 00:54:29.880 --> 00:54:32.120 take an interest in the imperialism issue 687 00:54:32.120 --> 00:54:33.760 in a general kind of way, 688 00:54:33.760 --> 00:54:37.040 and they have, some of them are waving 689 00:54:37.040 --> 00:54:43.040 The Transfall Flag of the South African Republic at the Democratic Convention 690 00:54:43.040 --> 00:54:47.040 So it's an interesting thing. 691 00:54:47.040 --> 00:54:52.040 They saw these issues as being the same British imperialism, 692 00:54:52.040 --> 00:54:55.040 one place, our imperialism in the Philippines. 693 00:54:55.040 --> 00:54:57.040 And so did the leadership. 694 00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:00.040 They felt a certain commonality with the British 695 00:55:00.040 --> 00:55:03.040 and sympathized with the British and their problems running an empire. 696 00:55:03.040 --> 00:55:07.520 and indeed there always been a wing in the American political system that had 697 00:55:07.520 --> 00:55:12.480 forever felt a great kinship to the British and wanted to pursue the British 698 00:55:12.480 --> 00:55:20.400 project except it would be the American project this has been in place as long 699 00:55:20.400 --> 00:55:25.880 as there's been people like Alexander Hamilton around it seems to me okay so 700 00:55:25.880 --> 00:55:29.880 Do I have anything at all in terms of time? 701 00:55:29.880 --> 00:55:32.880 No, if you want to answer, I have a few questions. 702 00:55:32.880 --> 00:55:33.880 Okay, we'll make a long story short. 703 00:55:33.880 --> 00:55:36.880 This all gets worse because then we have now a world power 704 00:55:36.880 --> 00:55:38.880 and Wilson has to get us into the First World War, 705 00:55:38.880 --> 00:55:41.880 and many things happen because of that. 706 00:55:41.880 --> 00:55:42.880 Okay. 707 00:55:42.880 --> 00:55:44.880 Thank you very much.