Habits of Empire

It has been written that the United States is an imperial nation, but Americans are loath to admit it. That is not the half of it. The United States has created three empires during its history. Thomas Jefferson, one of the few historic leaders to talk of empire, claimed that the United States should be an "empire for liberty." Since "liberty" is always equated with good, the word more than compensated for the bad associations of "empire." Most Americans remember Jefferson for writing "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. Therefore they think of him much more as a defender of liberty, personal and public, than as an imperialist. But imperialist he was. So were Benjamin Franklin, John and John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and many other presidents and founding fathers. In recent years, the American empire and the popular acceptance of imperialism have been promoted chiefly under Republican guardianship; but Jefferson and Jackson, celebrated as the founders of the Democratic Party, were as good imperialists as they come. Neither party has had a monopoly. Nor has imperialism been an exclusively male activity. Granted, women have not been major names in the standard histories of American builders and defenders of empire; they were never the generals, diplomats, or officeholders, at least not until the Madeleine Albrights and Condoleezza Rices came along. Empire-building involved not only diplomacy and force, however. It involved occupation and settlement of the American continental landmass, and without women that would not have happened. In traditional histories the diplomacy, battles, and politics necessary for empire-building have been written about as if they had no relation to population and settlement. On the other hand, histories of the westward movement, the frontier, and economic expansion have been treated with little reference to how America's territories were acquired. But acquisition and settlement have been the right and left hands of the same imperial organism. Put most briefly, this book relates a continuous narrative of the territorial acquisitions of the United States and how that history instilled in the American people the habit of empire-building. It describes how Americans acquired each parcel of real estate: by diplomacy, filibustering, armed conquest, cheating and lying, ethnic cleansing, even honest purchase and negotiation. It also explains who the previous occupants were and how Americans displaced them and occupied the land themselves. Many books have been written on individual acquisitions--the Louisiana Purchase, Oregon, Texas, the erstwhile Philippine colony, and the others. Here, however, is a continuous history, beginning with the peace treaties of 1782-1783, which ended the Revolutionary War and gave international recognition to the United States. It proceeds through each acquisition to the Virgin Islands in 1917 and the Northern Marianas in 1986. And it looks beyond them into the current global or virtual empire, the present "military hegemony." Telling the whole story reveals patterns that individual episodes do not. Central toHabits of Empireis the thesis that the acquisitions and occupations of transcontinental territory before the CivilWar not only forged the national boundaries as we know them, but also taught well-learned lessons of empire-building. All along, the United States was also a republic. "Republic" and "empire" have not always fit well together. Today there is a good chance that "empire" might eclipse "republic." Old habits can become unthinking practices. When I began this project, I intended to tie together the diplomatic and military history of the territorial acquisitions with the history of frontier settlement--two fields traditionally treated separately. In the nation's successive Wests, from RevolutioNugent, Walter is the author of 'Habits of Empire' with ISBN 9781400042920 and ISBN 1400042925.