Empire by Invitation: William Walker and Manifest Destiny in Central America by Michel Gobat (review)

Expanding upon the early chapters of his first book Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham, NC, 2005), Michel Gobat seeks to reframe the way historians understand Nicaragua's encounter with the U.S. filibuster William Walker. He argues that Walker's filibuster expedition in Nicaragua during the mid-nineteenth century marks the "international origins of U.S. liberal imperialism," which historians typically begin in the post-1898 era (11). In his telling of the episode, Gobat rejects the popular image of Walker as a proslavery swashbuckler and expansionist. Instead, he portrays Walker as an agent of Manifest Destiny who wanted to bring U.S.-style democracy and progress to Central America.

Before going to Nicaragua, Walker spent two years in the new state of California, where he became a well-known filibuster following his failed invasion of the Mexican territories of Baja California and Sonora. In October 1853, Walker and about two hundred men captured the capital of Baja California and created the Republic of Lower California. A few months later, the Mexican army overwhelmed Walker and his men and forced them to retreat. In June 1855, Walker and fifty-nine of his followers left California for Nicaragua. Unlike their experiences in Mexico, these filibusters rose to power in Nicaragua quickly. In little more than a year, this group helped oust the Conservative Party from government, seized command of the national government first by controlling a local puppet and then winning Walker's election as president, survived a Costa Rican invasion, and secured official recognition from U.S. President Franklin Pierce. Although the coalition built a functioning state, the reign of filibusters started to decline by September 1856 when Walker passed two notorious pieces of legislation that prosecuted Nicaraguans for vagrancy and re-established slavery. The angry backlash of Nicaraguans over these new laws strengthened a growing coalition of Central American forces who wanted to remove filibusters from Latin America. On May 1, 1857, the Costa Rican General José Joaquín Mora Porras negotiated Walker's surrender and expelled the filibusters from Central America.

In the first two chapters of his study, Gobat sheds light on the overlooked connections between filibusterism, settler colonialism, Manifest Destiny, and liberal imperialism by explaining how and why Nicaraguans supported U.S. filibusterism and settler colonialism. In Gobat's words, "[Nicaraguans] trusted that the filibusters were 'civilizers.' Their trust reflected pro-U.S. sentiments prevailing in Nicaragua since the California Gold Rush. But many Nicaraguans also believed that the filibusters would 'regenerate' their country by settling its frontier" (47). The Walker regime used this sentiment to its advantage.

In the next two chapters, Gobat explores ideological diversity within the rank and file of the filibusters along with views articulated by the pro-and anti-Walker factions in the capital of Granada, the Liberal bastion of León, and more broadly across the United States. One of the overarching themes throughout this work is how Walker and his followers required the support of local Nicaraguans to secure their control over the government. In this section, Gobat illustrates this point through a case study of the Granadan priest and envoy Agustín Vijil, who helped secure President Pierce's recognition of the Walker regime. In this section, Gobat's assessment of U.S. slaveholders is questionable. "Since filibusterism had long been identified with proslavery expansion," he argues, "it is surprising that among those most opposed to Pierce's recognition were leading Southern slaveholders" (92). It is surprising that Gobat would treat U.S. slaveholders in such a generalized way, especially when considering the care that he takes to analyze the diverse views within local Nicaraguan communities and the filibuster regime.

Gobat uses the next pair of chapters to delve into the different ideas that Walker and his followers had for their Central American empire...