Populism and Imperialism: Politics, Culture, and Foreign Policy in the American West, 1890–1900 by Nathan Jessen (review)

During its explosive heyday between 1890 and 1896, the radical Populist movement thoroughly disrupted American politics, especially in the rural South and West. Propelled by hard times and the transformative changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution, the Populists demanded sweeping reforms designed to break the power of ascendant corporate monopolies and the compliant Democratic and Republican party politicians who did their bidding. Populist success at the polls forced the Democrats to embrace several of their proposals, most notably the free coinage of silver, and to nominate Nebraska congressman William Jennings Bryan for the presidency in 1896. Choosing fatefully to endorse Bryan’s candidacy, the Populists went into rapid decline following his crushing loss to Republican William McKinley.

In the enormous scholarly literature devoted to the Populist uprising, most accounts effectively end with the grand debacle of 1896, ignoring the lengthy postscript that continued the People’s party saga into the opening years of the twentieth century. Consequently, historians have almost completely overlooked the significant contributions that Populists made to the anti-imperialist movement that rose in the wake of America’s military triumph over Spain in 1898.

Prior to the Spanish-American War, most Populists focused exclusively on domestic reforms, and historians have faithfully replicated that focus. Jessen, however, has broken important new ground by producing the first book-length study ever published about Populist foreign policy. Opting to concentrate on the West, where Populism remained much stronger after 1896, Jessen, drawing heavily from private manuscript collections and the Congressional Record, looks closely at the foreign-policy views expressed by Populist members of Congress, along with their reform-minded allies in the Democratic and Silver Republican parties. Jessen supplements this material with rank-and-file opinions gleaned from partisan newspapers in Nebraska, Colorado, and Washington, the three states that he selected to represent, respectively, the West’s distinct sub-regions—the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Coast.

The result is a detailed reconstruction of an idealistic foreign policy that emphasized faithful adherence abroad to the cherished principles of the American republic—individual liberty, equality, economic opportunity, democracy, and self-rule. Among the most outspoken proponents of U.S. military intervention against Spanish monarchy and tyranny in revolutionary Cuba, Populists like Sen. William V. Allen of Nebraska and Rep. Curtis H. Castle of California, who took the cause of Cuba Libre seriously, were outraged when President McKinley transformed their noble war of liberation into a grasping war of conquest. With near unanimity, the Populists opposed the annexation of Puerto Rico and the Philippines; they became highly vocal critics of the Philippine War and the enlarged standing army that it called into being.

For Populists, the crusade against militarism and imperialism overseas was a logical extension of their struggle against corporate monopoly and plutocracy at home. Only the wealthy, they argued, would reap the benefits of empire. Glossing over Native American dispossessions, the Populists drew sharp distinctions between frontier expansion and overseas colonialism. The sparsely populated territories of the American West had always been slated for eventual statehood, not perpetual subordination. In the meantime, they provided bountiful opportunities for hardworking families seeking better lives. Densely populated tropical islands offered no comparable frontiers for American settlers. Instead, corporations would monopolize their resources and extract their riches by ruthlessly exploiting the cheap labor provided by teeming indigenous populations. Regarding dark-skinned peoples, the Populists shared many of the racial stereotypes held by white Americans generally. Nevertheless, they flatly rejected the notion that Filipinos and Puerto Ricans were incapable of governing themselves.

Unfortunately, such contrarian views left the agrarian critics of empire vulnerable to crass but effective Republican appeals to unity on the home front and unquestioning wartime patriotism. Thrown off balance by trumped-up charges of disloyalty and treason, the Populists suffered major setbacks in the midterm elections of 1898 and went down to a final...