After Johnny: From Republic to Empire
Part of an ongoing series about the Osher class I'm teaching in April, focused on the history of the United States between 1865 and 1900
These two maps tell the story I’ll be talking about in this essay:
I don’t really have to write anything to talk about this part of my upcoming Osher class (but you know I will); the United States expanded from 31 states in 1850 to 45 states by 1900, with the number growing to include Oklahoma, Arizona, and New Mexico by 1912. The population tripled during this same time – growing from 23 million to 76 million people. The land mass controlled by the United States grew from 2.9 million to 3.5 million square miles (a reminder – in 1840, the land mass of the United States was only 1.7 million square miles).
The American Civil War was fought fundamentally over the issue of slavery (no matter what Nikki Haley said last week), but the ensuing period was focused on the issue of citizenship. Freed slaves were granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment – but did that mean voting? If it didn’t mean voting, what did it mean?
This was not entirely about citizenship for freedmen, of course. Women renewed their push for inclusion as citizens with the right to vote, although that didn’t happen until 1920. But what about Native Americans? As Americans moved into the West in greater numbers after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1867 (and subsequent railroad ventures after that), conflict with the indigenous people already living on the coveted land increased. What to do with the Native Americans? Were they to be considered citizens? After all, the 14th Amendment guaranteed birthright citizenship. Ain’t nobody more “born in the USA” than Native Americans.
They were not granted citizenship until 1924; the right to vote, governed by state law, took longer, as New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah continued to legally deny suffrage to Native American until the 1950s and early 1960s.
And what about the Chinese, who were welcomed into the United States as workers in the mines, farms, and railroads in the 1850s and 1860s? By the 1870s, fear of the “yellow peril” escalated in the West, leading to the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 (the only time the United States had passed a law to prevent all members of a specific national group from immigrating to the United States — the malignant country-specific “Muslim Ban” proposed in 2017 was not passed into law.) The Chinese Exclusion Act not only suspended Chinese immigration for ten years; it barred U.S. Chinese residents from citizenship.
This didn’t stop with the turn of the 20th century. In a series of cases in the 1920s, the Supreme Court ruled that people of Japanese, Indian, and Filipino ancestry were barred from citizenship. There was a light at the end of the tunnel for Filipinos – they could “earn” citizenship by serving three years in the United States Navy in World War I.
Fundamentally, in the last third of the 19th century the United States was evolving from a republic to an empire. In the course of my research, I came across this simple statement: “Republics have citizens; empires have subjects.” A nation with legal residents who are denied the rights of citizenship ceases to be a constitutional republic and becomes an empire. By 1900, the United States – the world’s first modern constitutional democratic republic – joined a dozen nations (mostly European) as global imperial powers. This map shows what this looked like.
A deep exploration of all of this would take a semester of a narrowly focused college elective – and then you would only have further questions that needed to be explored. But it’s not hard to make a list of elements that could be explored in the hour or so I’ll have to talk about this.
What led to the expansion of the United States in this period?
Economic factors, including industrialization, the need for raw materials, and the desire for new markets
Strategic interests, including naval power (to protect expanded global trade) and a desire to increase the global influence of the United States
What are some examples of this expansion?
1853: Opening of Japan, including Commodore Matthew Perry’s mission and subsequent trade agreements with Japan
1867: Purchase of Alaska from Russia
1867: The Guano Islands Act. Check it out. This was new to me — I didn’t know sh*t about this (this is a pun — although if you have to identify something as a pun it may not be a very good one). Hint: it let the United States claim Midway Atoll, which turned out to be useful 75 years later.
1893-98: Annexation of Hawaii, led by economic interests (specifically, the American sugar industry). This includes the American-led overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and the 1898 annexation of the Hawaiian archipelago by the United States
1898: The Spanish-American War, including its causes (primarily, the Cuban struggle for independence) and key events
the explosion of the USS Maine (February 15)
the Battle of Manila Bay (May 1)
the Battle of San Juan Hill (July 1)
Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders are the best-remembered participants
the Battle of Santiago de Cuba (July 3)
Discussion would include the 1898 Treaty of Paris and the resultant territorial acquisitions – Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.
All of this made it possible for the United States to become the world player it was in the 20th century. Some people argue that the ends justify the means – that because the emerging imperial power of the United States in the last decades of the 19th century “saved the world” in 1918 and 1941-45, anything that led to this result was okay.
I’m not so sure. I think it generated a sense of entitlement and exceptionalism that leads Americans to believe that being a Superpower is undeniably a good thing for everyone in the world. There are large parts of the world that disagree with this assessment.
How odd that I've never considered the US an empire, but have always pointed to the UK as being one. I always thought being a Superpower was 'fortuitous' but more recently I've wondered what our country would be like if we were not and looked at Superpower status as a way to prevent war on our soil from our enemies. Oh, dear, so much to learn; so little time.