Lincoln the Imperialist: A Long Bow to Draw

Was Abraham Lincoln an empire builder? Was he an imperialist? Our correspondent, Christopher, thinks so. And one can easily find, on the net, Lincoln haters who argue that the aggrandisement of the American state has origins in the national consolidation of the Union in the Civil War. Certainly it is true that if the South had been allowed to secede and establish its own separate nation, then the ability of the remaining United States to project power regionally and globally would have been much more limited. Imagine trying to fight the Spanish-American War, that ended with the United States in possession of Cuba (as a protectorate till 1902 and a de facto protectorate until at least 1934), Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines with supply lines that had to skirt a possibly hostile, pro-slavery south holding New Orleans, Florida and Norfolk, Virginia. Imagine later maintaining the whole Caribbean as an American lake in the years 1898-1934. American imperialism might not have gained the foothold in the region that it did without the consolidation of the union, and the maintenance of a large, united territory that could later project power globally from a secure and unchallenged continental base.

Lacking a secure water passage for border state and Midwestern farmers to international markets via the Mississippi might also have hurt economic development. The rich resources of states such as Texas, which by the first decade of the 20th century included oil, would have belonged to another people. The growth of the American state in the 20th century would also have been difficult without the latent powers of the 14th amendment, which could not have been passed without the defeat of the Confederacy and the subsequent Reconstruction struggle.

So it’s an interesting hypothetical question. But there’s another side to this. As Lincoln understood, the secession of the states would not stop squabbles over such thorny questions as escaped slaves, and might have led to an eventual war anyway between the two separate nations. The South would have been free to pursue its own imperialist designs on Cuba and Santo Domingo, etc. It could be equally said that the rights of black people, and non-white people more generally, in the remaining United States, would have taken even longer to be protected, since the 14th amendment applied also to Northern and border states, which did not practice racial equality in 1865.

Christopher is correct that the Mexican War was an expansionist war. Some people do not want to call it imperialist because the country taken was thinly settled, but the rights of the indigenous people there and the quite substantial numbers of existing Hispanic settlers were trampled on in the process (and statehood was denied to Arizona and New Mexico for nearly seven decades!).

The occupation of the South after the Civil War was by a military force and military occupation, though provoked by the resistance of southerners to the terms of reintegration in the Union. In some ways, this could be seen as a rehearsal for 1898 and the occupation of the Philippines etc. See D. Meinig, Transcontinental America, 1850-1915 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995) But consolidation of national power in the decades after the Civil War was both contested and incomplete. The latent power of the 14th amendment to transform the relations between states and the federal government did not take full effect for a century.

Lincoln also did as much as he could possibly have done (many historians think too much) to appease the South and maintain the federal union, as it existed before 1861. See Potter, The Impending Crisis of the South (1976) and Lincoln and His Party in the Secession Crisis (1941), new ed. 1995). So I don’t think it makes sense to call Lincoln an imperialist or the tool of imperialists. History doesn’t always turn out exactly the way you intend, in fact it never does.

The St George Leader reported last year the following:
“Australian Seabird Rescue president Marny Bonner said the botulism toxin is produced by bacteria in decaying animal and vegetable matter. Once ingested by birds it paralyses the neck and limbs and most die within 48 hours.” [Source: http://www.theleader.com.au/news/local/news/general/pelicans-poisoned/1411686.aspx]

(It’s made worse by the rains and the run-off of garden fertilizer and dog excrement).

The renovation of the Cooks River in the vicinity of Ewen Park, between the suburbs of Earlwood and Hurlstone Park is a classic case of attempted remediation of the river that reproduces certain faults of the earlier renovation of the river in the 1930s. In time the planting of salt marsh and other species may soften the look, but the formidable sandstone banks erected will never approximate the banks before the era of steel piles. The decaying steel pile banks prompted this action on the part of a local council, but the replacement blocks of sandstone reproduce the essential features of the canalised river. The visual pollution of this sandstone wall is complemented by the provision, presumably for the sake of bikers who might skid off the path into the river and fall over the substantial sandstone ledge, of a visually polluting steel rail along large sections of the river.

Sandstoneblocks as 'remediated' river bank, near Ewen Park

Thomas H. Buckle, History of Civilization in England (London, 1857)

Ellsworth Huntington, World-Power and Evolution (New Haven, 1919)

Fernand Braudel (1902-1985) Annales School –
The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (1949), transl. 1972

i) geography/climate/ seas/ soils/ forests-
the physical setting – the longue durée

ii) demography/ economics — forestry, fishing, commerce, agriculture — births and deaths, disease etc

iii) l’histoire événement — social life/politics, belief, culture –event based history– stories, narrative

declension

Donald Worster, b. Needles, California, 1941

i) Natural world and its history

ii) Human systems of production such as capitalism

iii) Ideas we have about nature

Dust Bowl: The Southern Great Plains in the 1930s (1979)

Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (1985)

declension

Donald Worster, b. Needles, California, 1941

i) Natural world and its history

ii) Human systems of production such as capitalism

iii) Ideas we have about nature

Rivers of Empire: Water, Aridity, and the Growth of the American West (1985)

Hydraulic Society – Karl Wittfogel

William Cronon, b. 1954

http://www.williamcronon.net/students.htm

Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983)

Richard White, b. 1947 — cultural turn in environmental history.

cultural landscapes

hybrid landscapes

a. climate change
Jean Grove, The Little Ice Age, 1400-1800

b. The Dust Bowl (Worster) See Cunfer, Geoff. “The Dust Bowl”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/Cunfer.DustBowl for an extensive bibliography.

c. El Nino/Southern oscillation index
Mike Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts (2001) — combination of El Nino induced drought and new political economy of market forces brought about catastrophic late 19th century Indian famines.

d. Alfred Crosby, Ecological Imperialism (1987) . Biological expansion of Europe to the Americas in the 16th and 17th centuries and then the Pacific and Australia >>> European dominance in the temperate regions of Australia, US, Canada, NZ

“What is environmental history?”

http://www.eh-resources.org/environmental_history.html

http://www.eh-resources.org/vodcast/

http://iantyrrell.wordpress.com/publications/