America Is An Empire

Peter Hitchens writes:

I was struck by a comment from Stephen Squires on 27th July, after I cast doubt on the 'Special Relationship' and noted that the USA had used World War Two to bring about the end of the British Empire.

Mr Squires wrote: ‘Hitchens, you can't be serious? Churchill-like, do you REALLY pine for “lost” colonies after WWII (I don't mean America!). Long before 1940, you Brits couldn't even afford your so-called “empire,” upon which sun never set. Colonialism repressed legitimate movements for self-determination, which your wiser leaders recognized at the end of the war. Try this one on: USA in 1940 did not just act in its own interests since it was not yet at war with Germany, and had to fig-leaf a basis for legitimate national self-interest. That ‘fig-leaf’ we rightly now see as in the interests of Britain's and the later allies war effort...do GET REAL!’

And (apart from enjoying, as I always do, exhortations such as 'Get Real!'), I felt the answer to it was really rather interesting and so will concentrate on that for now. I wonder what Mr Squires would think of the suggestion that the United States is itself an empire. There is of course the question of the original settlements, which involved taking land and the freedom to roam from the indigenous peoples. Then there is the period of 19th century expansion. What was the Louisiana Purchase if not a colonial acquisition? Then there's the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), as colonial as anything we British ever did in India or Africa.

The differences are these. One, the USA had the sense to have its empire concentrated in one landmass, rather than scattered across the globe. Two, it had the sense not to call its empire an empire. Three, by setting up this empire in the isolated continent of North America, with vast oceans to East and West and weak neighbours incapable of rivalry, the USA assured itself of that great essential of all successful civilisations - physical safety from invasion or encroachment. Four, the American Civil War put an end to any serious idea that the USA was a voluntary assembly of individual states, and made it plain that it was in fact a federal, centralised nation which granted some local limited autonomy but which did not, in practice, permit any of its members to leave. The enormous growth of the Federal state and its agencies (look at the huge federal buildings now to be found in any major city) has both confirmed and strengthened this.

Now, Mr Squires (who I think must be a US Citizen) produces the following standard propaganda position: ‘Colonialism repressed legitimate movements for self-determination, which your wiser leaders recognized at the end of the war.’

Well, have there been no 'movements for self-determination' in the imperial possessions of the USA? Yes, there have been, and they are so well-known that they are part of the American national myth, but also somehow forgotten in discussions such as these. But Washington's response to them was far more ruthless and repressive than anything the British Empire ever contemplated in, say, India. I am of course talking about the 'Native Americans', whose resistance was utterly crushed in a series of campaigns of extraordinary cruelty. (I always find the treatment of the Nez Perce nation particularly poignant.) Well, you could say - the Marxists certainly would - that these actions 'had' to be done to secure the future of the USA. And Asia and continental Europe are full of the ghosts of extinguished nations and forgotten peoples, overwhelmed by greater civilisations.

I am also told that many Mexicans resent to this day the confiscation of about a quarter of their country by the USA in 1848, and some see the Mexican migration into the lost lands of Texas (a slightly separate question, I know), Arizona, New Mexico and California as a way of regaining what was taken away. Certainly I noticed, during a visit to the border city of El Paso, just across the ditch-like Rio Grande from Ciudad Juarez, slogans painted on the concrete sides of the canalised river, pointing out the contrast between the USA's outrage over the seizure of Kuwait by Iraq, and the lack of American consciousness that their country had also seized territory by armed force.

I'd only say that those who condemn British 'colonialism' and 'repression' of 'movements for self-determination' really ought to be careful to ensure that they know their own history - and, crucially, recognise it for what it is (for many colonialist oppressors have no idea that this is what they are) - before making such grandiose statements as Mr Squires has made.

I willingly concede that the British Empire often behaved with cruelty and stupidity. Why deny the obviously true? My view is that it was, even so, a good deal better for its subjects than many other empires that have come and gone, and sustained at its peak one of the most beneficial national civilisations ever to have existed. I really cannot say that I am pleased that it has gone, and more than I wish the USA to be supplanted by China. The interesting Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana (who knew a thing or two about empires), once famously said of Britain: ’Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just , boyish master. It will be a black day for the human race when scientific blackguards, conspirators, churls and fanatics manage to supplant him’ ('Soliloquies in England' - The British Character, 1922).

So I have reached this conclusion. That there will always be empires, that they vary immensely (compare and contrast Tamerlane the Great and Stanley Baldwin, or Stalin and FDR) and that on the whole it is better to have your own than to be in someone else's.