Written and Performatively Enacted by:
Kimberly Burroughs
Christian Chessman
Jack Hahne
Harrison Powell
Andy Underkofler
1763-1789
 1763
Proclamation Line
 Heavy
war debt
 Increased
 Sets
enforcement of taxes
stage for revolution
 The
End of Salutary Neglect
 Taxes and Acts
• Stamp Acts
• Sugar Acts
• Townshend Acts
• Intolerable Acts
 Boston Tea
Party
 Boston Massacre
 First
• Enacts boycott
 Second
• Declaration of Independence
• Articles of Confederation
• Revolutionary War
 Emphasis
on Confederation instead of
Nation
 Issues with taxation
• Cannot maintain army/navy
 Land
Ordinance of 1785
 Northwest Ordinance
 Weak Central Government
 Shay’s Rebellion
 New
Constitution
• Virginia and New Jersey Plans
• Three-Fifths Compromise
• Strong National Government
 Ratification
• Federalists and Antifederalists
• Only ratified with the agreement for a Bill of
Rights
 French
Revolution
 Whiskey Rebellion
 Precedent
• Two Terms
• Cabinet
 Alexander Hamilton
 Thomas Jefferson
 John
Adams
• Alien and Sedition Acts
• Father of the Navy
 Thomas
Jefferson
• Revolution of 1800
 Louisiana Purchase
• Strict Interpretation vs. Loose Interpretation of the
Constitution.
 Precursor to the Monroe Doctrine
• Justifies expansion and defensive.
 Louisiana
Purchase and Westward
Expansion
• Lewis and Clark (1804-1806).
 Causes:
• Naval Impressments,
• Trade Restrictions,
• Desire to Expand into Canada,
• disputes over the Oregon Territory and Northern
borders of Oregon and Maine
 "I
believe that in four weeks from the time
a declaration of war is heard on our
frontier, the whole of Upper Canada and a
part of Lower Canada will be in our
power." –John C. Calhoun
 Jackson
invades Florida
• Justifies with the Monroe Doctrine
 Adams-Onis Treaty
cedes all of Florida to
U.S. in exchange for a promise that the
U.S. would no longer hold any aspirations
for Texas.
 The
Election of Andrew Jackson Marks
(1829-1837) marks a dramatic shift in
American-Native American relations.
 Indian
 Trail
Removal Act
of Tears




“54’40” Or Fight!”
Treaty of 1818 established joint occupation of
Oregon Territory
Monroe Doctrine and Louisiana Purchase used to
rationalize claim up to 49th parallel.
Hudson Bay Company Compromise




Multiple requests for annexation by Texans are
turned down for fear of War with Mexico and dispute
of spread of slavery.
Tyler passes Texas Annexation in Executive Action
which creates outrage in government
Dispute of Nueces Region boundary used as an
excuse to incite war with Mexico because AdamsOnis Treaty did not clearly define boundary.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ends the war - the US
extends claims to CA, NM, OK, AZ, NV, and CA.
• Again justified by Monroe Doctrine (proactive
defense).
The Gilded Age
•
Abraham Lincoln
– 1861-1865
– Slavery
– Preservation of the Union
•
Rutherford B. Hayes
– 1877-1881
– Great Railroad Strike
•
Chester A. Arthur
– 1881-1885
– “Father of the Steel
•
– 1897-1901
– Economic expansion
– Territorial expansion
– Spanish-American War
– Civil Rights
Navy”
•
Grover Cleveland
– 1885-1889, 1893-
1897
– Opposed to US
imperialism
– Supported big
business
William McKinley
•
•
William Henry Seward
Henry Cabot Lodge
•
Emancipation Proclamation
– 1862
– Freed the majority of the slaves
•
Amendments 13, 14, and 15
– 13 - abolished slavery
– 14 - blacks can be citizens
– 15 - race, color, and previous servitude
cannot prevent voting rights
•
Wade-Davis Bill
– 1864
•
A Century of Dishonor by Helen Hunt Jackson
– 1881
– Injustice towards Native Americans
•
•
1890 census:
“Up to and including 1880 the country had a frontier of
settlement, but at present the unsettled area has been so
broken into by isolated bodies of settlement that there can
hardly be said to be a frontier line. In the discussion of its
extent, its westward movement, etc., it can not, therefore,
any longer have a place in the census reports.”
•
How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis
– 1890
– Urban poverty
•
New York Draft Riots
– 1863
– Men who could pay were exempt
•
Plessy v. Ferguson
– 1896
– “Separate but equal”
•
American Anti-Imperialist League Founded
– 1898
•
Government Acts
– Homestead Act & Morrill Act of1862
• Both encouraged westward settlement
– Alaska in1867
– Bancroft treaties begin in 1868
– Immigrants from the North German Confederation
– Burlingame Treaty with China of 1868
• China attains Most Favored Nation status
– First transcontinental United States railroad completed
• 1869
– Chinese Exclusion Act
• 1882
– Interstate Commerce Commission
• 1887
– Dawes Act
• 1887
– Divided reservation land into private plots
– Extra land made available to non-Native Americans
•
Private Acts
– Pony Express (1860)
– Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone (1875)
•
Civil War
– 1861-1865
•
•
Dakota War of 1862
Sand Creek Massacre
– 1864
•
Red River Indian War
– 1874
•
Battle of Little Bighorn
– 1876
•
Nez Perce War
– 1877
•
The Battle of Wounded Knee
– 1890
•
Hawaii
– Queen Liliuokalani overthrown in 1893
•
Newlands Resolution in 1898, Territory of
Hawaii
•
Spanish-American War
– 1898
– USS Maine sinks
– Fought in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Philippines, and Guam
– Treaty of Paris
•
American Samoa
– 1899
•
Philippine-American War
– 1899-1902
•
Alabama Claims
– 1871-1872
– Treaty of Washington
•
Virginius Affair
– 1873-1875
•
Baltimore Crisis
– 1891
•
Teller Amendment
– 1898
•
Open Door Notes
– 1899
•
Panic of 1873
– Domestic factors
• Boom after the Civil War
• Railroad industry
• Speculators
• Jay Cooke & Company fails
– International factors
• Germany abandon’s silver standard
• European economic depression
•
Centennial Exposition
– 1876
•
Reconstruction ends
– 1877
•
Fence Cutting War
– 1883-1888
– Open range v. fenced-in property
•
Sherman Antitrust Act
– 1890
– First federal act to limit trusts
•
Panic of 1893
– Railroad speculation
– Monetary standards
•
Acquired in Spanish-American War
•
“Independent” in 1902
•
Platt Amendment
•
Business and Colonization
– Sugar, Railroads, and more!
•
Acquired in Spanish-American War for
$20,000,000
•
Filipino Nationalism
•
Greater autonomy in 1916
•
Filipino migration in the 1920s
•
Seen by FDR as a drain on resources
– Given commonwealth status and path
to independence
•
Invaded by Japan
•
Panama gets independence from
Colombia
•
Hay–Bunau-Varilla Treaty establishes
Canal Zone
•
Canal completed in 1914
•
Becomes center of commerce and
conflict between US and Panama
•
Woodrow Wilson and World
War One
– 14 Points
•
Seen as threat by Great Britain
– Wanted to create world market for US goods
– Sees US motives as pure and selfless
Treaty of Versailles
• Results
•
•
One of the last powers to
officially join
– Gave support to Allies
Yalta
• Potsdam
• The UN, IMF and World Bank
•
The United States had many foreign
interventions of questionable nature
during the past 75 years. A pattern tends
to emerge; the US dislikes a leader, and
that leader is deposed by CIA blackoperatives, or US-led military
intervention.
In essence….

June 25 1950 – 1953
USSR
was perceived as
expanding sphere of influence
What is sphere of influence?
Why did the USSR matter?
Countering Russian expansion:
war in Korea.
 Operations
PBFORTUNE and PBSUCCESS
• Initiated to depose Guatemalan President Jacobo
Arbenz
 Arbenz was a Commie.
 CIA
succeded in deposing Arbenz, replaced
with Fuentes.
 Fuentes
 “But
was a violent autocrat
he’s OUR son of a bitch” mentality.
 US
feared Iran would turn to Communism
 Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh’s
interest in nationalizing oil didn’t help
 CIA operatives:
• stir up rebellion,
• assassinate Mossadegh,
• implant a puppet government – the Shah –
favorable to the US
 Castro
takes power
• Its called the Communist Revolution
• 90 miles from US shores
• “Beachhead” of Communism
 CIA
pays and trains Cuban exiles to retake Cuba
 “Bay of Pigs” invasion – fails miserably
 1964: President
Joao Goulart considers
income redistribution and nationalization
of agriculture
 CIA covertly assists a coup d’etat in
Brazil
 Surprise!
• The new President loves the US, free market
capitalism, and debt payment to the IMF.
• Everybody* wins!
*named the United States federal government
 North Vietnam
is Communist
 South Vietnam is not
• We support them
 Ghosts
of Tonkin: Military
“Engagement”?
 Gulf of Tonkin Legislation Permits US to
respond to Vietnamese “Aggression”.
• Except, the US had been attacking – Vietnam’s
(non-existent) response




Israel was controversial – warring with Egypt, Syria and
Jordan
Egypt was uniquely valuable of Israel’s enemies.
Israel served as a foothold in the MidEast for the US –
important to maintain.
Thus, Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David Accords
 People’s
Revolutionary Government –
Communists – seize power in 1979.
 US
responds with Operation Urgent Fury
• (note the name tone change)
 Explicit
 Paul
military action!
Scoon

Miguel Noriega refuses to conform to US
dominance
• Threatens independence on the Canal
• Kills a US military official
 Operation….Just
Cause?
• Noriega is deposed
• Guillermo Endara
 Caved to US influence
 Lassez-Faire banking control
 Reduced unemployment
 Iraq
begins drilling in Kuwaiti oil fields –
Rumailah
 Oil
Instability? Not on our watch.
• Operation Desert Storm is a go.
 PERMITTED
Sadaam Hussein
to stay in power.
 Responses
were outraged and shocked –
but should they have been?
 Was
9/11 a form of imperial “blowback”
for almost a century of foreign
intervention and reckless militarism?
Should we have seen this coming?
 Certainly
the loss of life is wrong. But is it
unexpected?
 Operation
Enduring Freedom authorizes
the US military to enter Afghanistan
 We depose the Taliban in under a month
 We install the puppet Hamid Karzai as
president.
 Except…

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is quoted as saying:
 “Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly. Near
term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things
related and not’ ”

The attack was neither organized nor directed from Afghanistan
by the Taliban. In fact, the attack was planned and carried out
from Falls Church, Virginia; Paris, France; Sarasota, Florida;
Hamburg, Germany;— and funded and manned from Saudi Arabia
 On
the justifications that Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction, the War on
Terrorism expands to Iraq
 Two years later, The Iraq Study Group
concludes that Iraq not only does not
have WMD, but it hasn’t had an active
WMD program since 1991.
 Sadaam Hussein was deposed, but never
formally linked to Al Qaeda.
The US does not have explicitly named
colonies that it exploits for material
wealth.
How then does it establish itself as an
empire?
 That
entire previous section about
crushing dissenting leaders.
 World War
II leaves almost every
economy – except the US – devastated.
 1943
- US Dept. of Commerce issues a
now-declassified report whose title is
revealing:
• “Markets After the War”
 June
5, 1947 – 1951
• Marshall plan.
 Bulwark against communism
 European Dependency
 3rd World Markets
 September
1960
• Act of Bogota – makes social reform favorable
to American Trade a requisite to aid
 July
1944 – Bretton Woods Agreements
Signed
• Currency Regulation
 “Beggar Thy Neighbor” is so 1930s…
• Gave US immense leverage – the dollar was the
standard
 December
27, 1945
• The IMF is created formally codifying the Bretton
Woods system of economic engagement
• The IMF is the enforcement mechanism for the
system and is dominated by US control
 The
status quo uses a pegged system of
currency
 For
example, in 1998, one dollar was worth
115 yen.
 Even
without gold standard, the US
remains at the core.
 That
was crazy, right?
 Psychological
dominance
 Domestic Power
 Power-projection
 Nuclear bombs at
 Okinawa
 TNWs in Turkey
 Often
harmful to locals –
 September 4, 1995 – Okinawan based soldiers gang rape a
Japanese girl
 Destroys local environments –Guantanamo
 Same
old threat construction:
 America v Communism
• Must protect American capitalism from
Communist threats abroad or else they’ll spill
over to our home shores and engulf us!
 America v Terrorism
• Must protect American liberalism from Terrorist
threats abroad or else they’ll spill over to our
home shores and engulf us!
 July
17, 1998
– US says no to an ICC
 No
one else has bases on foreign soil.
 No
one has bases on US soil.
STEALTH
IMPERIALISM
DEFINED:
Imperial actions
performed
behind closed
doors, while
openly denying
being an empire.
Pre-Iraq and Afghanistan



Dick Nixon: “US is only great power without a history of imperialistic
claims on neighboring countries”.
Echoed by Samuel Berger, Advisor to Clinton on National Security – “We
are the first global power in history that is not an imperial power.”
In 2000, Bush campaigned on the platform, “America has never been an
empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the change
and refused”.




After invading Iraq, Bush said “the US has no intention of
determining the precise form of Iraq’s new government”
and “we will remain in Iraq as long as necessary and not a
day more”.
Bush in 2004 – “Other nations in history have fought in
foreign lands and remained to occupy and exploit.
Americans want nothing more than to return home.
Rumsfeld: “we’re not a colonial power. We’ve never been a
colonial power”.
Powell – “The US does not seek a territorial empire. We have
never been imperialists. We seek a world in which liberty,
prosperity and peace can become the heritage of all
peoples, and not just the exclusive privilege of the few.”
• Wolfowitz: US foreign policy should be to
maintain primacy.
• Naval War College study “explores strategic
approaches” to sustain “US predominance for
the long term” and makes explicit parallels
with Roman, Chinese, Ottoman and British
Empires.
• Also, Iraq and Afghanistan.
American actions can be interpreted as
imperialist, or non-imperial; they can be
questioned as good or bad, or perhaps
even necessary in an increasingly
globalized world.
At the end of the day we, as deliberative
democratic citizens, must decide if the
United States is an empire, and if it is – is
that good?
Fin.