American Constitutionalism Heard Round the World, 1776-1989: A Global Perspective

8. Fourth Echo: American Empire

223 8 Fourth Echo American Empire The fourth “echo” of American constitutionalism resounded with the Spanish-American War in 1898, after which the United States strode like a colossus across the world stage to become an imperial power. Winning the war meant acquiring the Philippines and Puerto Rico and ultimately the Hawaiian Islands and the Samoan archipelago, thus becoming a major presence in both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Never before in world history had an imperialist nation risen so far so fast as the United States did between 1776 and 1900.1 With these possessions, America burst its continental bonds and emerged as a truly global power. America’s break with its presumed anti-imperialist past came at a cost, however, because American constitutionalism abroad was changed forever . Before the acquisition of an overseas empire, territories added to the Union were expected to become states. All the people along the Western frontier wished to become American citizens, or so it was assumed (except for the Native Americans whose dispossession of their lands presents a very different story of American imperialism). White settlers spoke the same languages, followed the same customs, and hoped to become a part of the United States. They joined the Union of their own volition. Acquisition of an overseas empire, however, changed all that. After the 1890s, the spread of American constitutionalism abroad often resulted more from imposition than volition. The United States resorted to force to compel peoples in its colonies, protectorates, and conquered lands to follow its constitutional lead. The Constitution had no provisions for acquiring overseas possessions or adding non-American peoples to the body politic. Indeed, America’s tradition of republicanism contradicted the idea of ruling over peoples in foreign lands. Having adopted the republican idea that all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, Americans 224 American Empire suddenly faced a dilemma after the Spanish-American War: could nonAmericans abroad be incorporated into the body politic against their will? If so, what was their constitutional position? And what about the tradition of volition? Was it to disappear completely? Nonetheless, the American model remained attractive to many non-Americans, such as the white settlers in Hawaii who petitioned for statehood for more than six decades. Cubans, in contrast, wanted independence immediately and fought for it for a long time. The two policies, volition and imposition, continued to exist side by side and influenced different people, in different regions, at different times. The motives behind imperialism were mixed, and Americans were ambivalent about their country’s new role. Many feared that America’s democratic institutions and the country’s republican ethos were incompatible with imperialism, and they had no wish to acquire an empire. Others wanted to expand the empire for economic reasons, such as new markets for American products and outlets for American capital. Still others wanted an empire for national security: to protect the homeland, guard the approaches to the Panama Canal, or shield against foreign ideologies that might infect America. Others believed in imperialism as an ideological crusade, a sense of mission to spread America’s democratic institutions and values and bring the blessings of the American model to foreign lands. Most Americans traditionally saw themselves as an anti-imperialistic nation. Having been born in a revolution against an imperial power, they believed that their tradition of anti-imperialism could continue as long as they stayed away from European affairs. They considered themselves exemplars of democracy, and in expanding into the Western frontier, they were extending the empire of liberty rather than acting as imperialists. Even when Americans robbed the Native Americans of their lands, seized territory from Mexico, and wrested regions from Canada, they invoked the myth of “Manifest Destiny,” a God-given right to stretch across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Before the Civil War, Americans also rationalized their expansion as a desire of an agrarian people seeking new lands, arguing that as Americans they were better prepared to civilize regions in the West than were the people living in them.2 And in regard to the Native Americans, most whites assumed they would either fade away or eventually be absorbed into America’s white civilization.3 American Empire 225 American Imperialism The reasons why the United States became involved in the wave of imperialism that had motivated other great world powers became the subject of an intense national...