A People’s Geography of American Empire
Dr. Zoltan Grossman
Geography/Native American Studies
The Evergreen State College
Olympia, Washington
grossmaz@evergreen.edu
Dr. Joseph Nevins
Geography
Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, New York
jonevins@vassar.edu
Joint book project
U.S. expansion from
“Manifest Destiny” and overseas imperialism,
to present-day resource wars.
Project focus
Place-making processes inherent in each stage of
expansion, and the imprints they have left on the
human and physical landscape.
“Imperial places”
Places that have been
shaped by each era
of expansion, and in turn
have shaped each era.
The Forbidden Book: The PhilippineAmerican War in Cartoons
(T’boli Publishing, San Francisco, 2004)
Drawbacks of many studies
• Focus on the origins, rationales, or violence
underlying each stage of expansion.
• Studies only at time of conquest, locates in the past
• Studies as distant, removed process without local effects
• Focuses on placeless/even process of “globalization,”
without differential role of U.S. state/hegemony
Our central question
How and to what extent
the world's landscape reflects and helps
to (re)produce U.S. imperial power.
Connect global to local,
and past to present.
Internal and external colonies
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Native American nations
Southwest (former Northern Mexico)
Puerto Rico & Virgin Islands
Pacific island possessions
Chronic military interventions
– Haiti, Dominican Rep., Nicaragua
Philippines, Iran, etc.
“Foreign” & “domestic” imperialism
• Successful integration
masks empire
• Social relations have
imperial origins
• Inequalities embedded
into landscape
Hegemony and
state coercion
• Successful U.S. power is uneven over space & time.
• Significant hegemonic aspects to U.S. power.
• Yet coercion still works, state power still central.
• Political-military subordination critical to imperialism.
“Nationalist
Globalism”
• Imperialism as a multilaterial, team effort
• Yet U.S. largely subordinates partners, global institutions
• Distinct areas still within U.S. spheres of influence
• Arms sales, political direction distinctly from Washington
Typology of imperial places
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Internal colonies
Emptied/erased places
Places of proxy terror
Ground zeros
Poisoned places
Places of resistance
Places of imperial restitution / justice
Disproportionate role of small places
– Wounded Knee, Vieques, Subic Bay, Diego Garcia,
Guantánamo, Okinawa, Bahrain, etc.
Emptied or erased places
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Removed Native communities
Bikini Atoll
Diego Garcia
Nevada Test Site
Cherokee Nation
Diego Garcia
Bikini
Atoll
Places of terror
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El Mozote, El Salvador
Cheju, South Korea
Guantánamo, Cuba
Abu Ghraib, Iraq
Vietnam
Cuba
El Salvador
Philippines
Iraq
Ground zeros
• Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1945
• Dili, East Timor 1999
• Fallujah, Iraq 2004
Japan
East Timor
Iraq
Poisoned places
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Clear Lake, CA
Agent Orange in Vietnam
Yong-do, South Korea
D.U.-contaminated Iraq
Baker Atoll
Vietnam
Iraq
Military base places
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Subic, Clark, Okinawa, Guam
Guantánamo, Roosevelt Roads
Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq
Poland, Romania, Kosovo
Bagram, Bishkek
Uzbekistan
Afghanistan
Kosovo
The Sorrows of Empire
(Chalmers Johnson)
Bananas, Beaches and Bases
(Cynthia Enloe), etc.
Philippines
New U.S. military base clusters
1. Gulf War,
1991
2. Yugoslav Wars,
1995-99
3. Afghan War,
2001
4. Iraq War,
2003
“Their function may be more
political than military. They
send a message to everyone.”
--Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, NYT 2002
Places of resistance
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Little Big Horn
Columbus, NM
Okinawa
Frankfurt, Germany
Narita, Japan
South Korea
Okinawa
Germany
Little Big Horn
Places of restitution or justice
• Subic Bay, Philippines
• Vieques, Puerto Rico
• Kaho’olawe, Hawai’i
Puerto Rico
Philippines
Chapter structure
• Focus on era of imperial expansion
(e.g., Early interventions in Caribbean)
• Central case study of
present-day legacy
(e.g., resistance to Vieques bombing range)
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
• Review of other lasting
imprints of the era
(e.g., Cuba, Guantánamo, Virgin Islands, etc.;
Locate within typology of imperial places)
Places that crosscut eras
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Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
Lower Manhattan
Panama Canal Zone
Guam
Angel Island, CA
Fort Leavenworth, KS
Los Alamos, NM
San Diego, CA
1898
1955
2004
Chapters:
Conquest of North America
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Introduction
Northeast
Southeast (Slavery, Seminole wars, Trail of Tears, etc.)
Southwest (Texas, Mexican-American War)
West (Gold Rush/Clear Lake, Alaska, etc.)
Midwest (Little Big Horn, Nez Perce, Leech Lake, etc.)
Native American
“warnings”
to new colonies
Chapters: Overseas expansion
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Pacific Conquest (Philippines, Hawai’i, Guam)
Caribbean conquest (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dom. Rep.)
Central America (Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua)
World War I (Europe, Mexico, Russia, etc.)
Interwar period (Haiti, Nicaragua, DC)
Nicaragua
World War II (Hiroshima, Okinawa)
Philippines
Cuba
Chapters: “Cold War” Era
• Early Cold War
(Korea, Greece, Iran, Guatemala, Lebanon, Bikini Atoll)
• Mid-Cold War
• (Cuba, Vietnam, Indonesia, Guyana, Brazil, etc.)
• Mid-Cold War
(Indochina)
• Late Cold War
(Central America, Lebanon,
Grenada, Angola, E. Timor)
Vietnam
Chapters: Globalization
• Transition to post-Cold War
Iraq
(Iran, Iraq, Somalia)
• “Humanitarian” interventions
(Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo. Haiti)
• Post-9/11
(Iraq, Afghanistan)
• Economic Globalization
(Main Street USA, Shenzhen)
• Conclusion
(Friendship Village, peace parks)
Tripolar
Economy
Example: Lakota Wars & Vietnam War
Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
Wounded Knee Massacre, 1890
Gen. Nelson Miles directed the troops. Like most Indian Wars
generals, he was later deployed in the Pacific and Caribbean.
Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-hating and Empire-building by Richard Drinnon (1980)
Wounded Knee
Massacre, 1890
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Wounded Knee Memorial
Destruction
of bison economy
Siege of Wounded Knee, 1973
American Indian Movement takes stand against BIA,
FBI at the site of 1890 massacre on Pine Ridge Res., SD
Blood of the Land: The Government and Corporate War Against First Nations by Rex Weyler
http://www.freepeltier.org/state_of_siege2.htm
Siege of Wounded Knee, 1973
Siege of Wounded Knee, 1973
“Indians are a conquered
nation and the FBI is merely
acting as a colonial police
force.”
--FBI agent-in-charge
Norman Zigrossi
Vietnam Vet in
Wounded Knee
“The APC had crawled out …
and parked with its searchlight
fanning out and shining toward
Wounded Knee….Suddenly a
popping sound punctuated the
night. I was shocked--I knew
that sound. I had heard it every
night for 20 months in Vietnam,
unleashing flares to light up the
Vietnamese night…In that
moment on the ravine, I realized
the United States military was
looking for me with those flares.
I was the gook now.”
Vietnam
War
“We were told that we were in a free-fire zone and
anybody we saw that was over 12 years of age that we
thought was a male, was to be considered the enemy and
engaged as such.” --Soldier Robert Kruch, 1969
My Lai Massacre, 1968
Massacre kills 347 civilians;
Gen. Westmoreland commends
“outstanding action”; killings
later exposed by GIs.
“wiping the whole place out….
the Indian idea…the only good
gook is a dead gook.”
--My Lai infantryman in
Charlie Company
My Lai as new Wounded Knee
“My Lai was hot and Wounded Knee
was icy cold, and that’s the only
difference.”
-- Lame Deer Speaks, p. 69
Agent Orange
as legacy of war
“The…U.S. policy of massive defoliation, crop destruction,
bombing and plowing of Indochina can be viewed as a modern
counterpart to the extermination of the bison in the American West.”
--Univ. of Montana zoologist E. W. Pfeiffer, in Washington Post (12/28/72)
My Lai Peace Park, 1996
Native Memorial
at Little Big Horn, 2004
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Old Custer Memorial
Native Memorial
at Little Big Horn, 2004
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Native Reenactment
of Little Big Horn, 2004
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Tribal reintroduction of bison, 2005
Quic kTime™ and a
TIFF (Unc ompres sed) dec ompres sor
are needed to see this pic ture.
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
Interconnecting scales
• Global and local
• Foreign and domestic policies
• Past histories and present-day histories
New
Orleans
Baghdad
Accessibility to mass audience
• Basic, undergrad-level language
• Make study of U.S. expansion more stimulating
• Examining lasting effects on real local places
Contributions to Study
of American Empire
• Geographical, place-based teaching approach
• Making and remaking of imperial places
• Examine legacy/imprint of past in present
1898
1998