RIPPLE SALVO… #883… A WEEKEND BOOK REPORT… AMERICAN IMPERIALISM: A Speculative Essay by Ernest R. May (1968) …Humble Host’s post is short and simple on this Saturday night. But this short shot of history, in the form of a New York Times Book Report, packs a powerful message for a better understanding of why our beloved but misguided nation can’t or won’t stay home. And a reminder of what happens when we don’t. The book of less than 300-pages is available used from two dozen sellers on abebooks.com for less than ten bucks. Here is the short shot for free. This “weekend RTR book report”was purloined from the New York Times of 4 July 1968… (Review’s author Charles Poole?)… I quote…
THE VICTOR BELONGS TO THE SPOILS…
“When in the course of human events this nation expands its territory there is usually hell to pay.
“The original 13 Colonies would today makeup the entire United States if all warnings against national megalomania had been heeded. And if we’d acted on the notions of the eternal megalomania, God knows how big we’d be. Instead of our trying to police the world, the world would have its hands full trying to police us. One great turning point, or, I would say, striking of balance took place in 1898-99, when we, ah, escalated a war with Spain into rather far-flung Caribbean and Pacific Ocean floriations. A fine fresh look at a wildly contentious era I offered in Ernest R. May’s new book, ‘American Imperialism: A Speculative Essay.’
“Mr. May is the most courteous disputant I have encountered in recent historical discussions. He is aware of the seething mass of material on all sides of imperialism’s bastions. Indeed, his book is a sort of roundtable manque’. Outstanding modern authorities on white-man’s-burdenism are deferentially heard. But there’s no doubt that Mr. May has strong humanistic opinions of his own.
IT ALL STARTED IN 1898
“He presides with a firm hand. Here’s his agenda: ‘In 1898-99 the United States suddenly became a colonial power. It annexed the Hawaiian Islands. Humbling Spain in a short war it took Puerto Rico and the Philippines. In quick sequence it also acquired Guam and part of Samoa, and, if the Danish Rigsdad had consented, would have [then] bought the Virgin Islands. In an 18-month period it became matter of empires in the Caribbean and the Pacific.’ Shy?
“In case you’re wondering, we bought our share of the Virgin Islands, of the Danish West Indies, in 1917, for $25-million–which shows how real-estate values inflated since Thomas Jefferson paid Napoleon about $15-million for a Louisiana Territory stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Canadian border. Our most acceptable conquests are settled for cash.
“Now, whose views are represented at Mr. May’s round table? Principally, Frederick Merck, with ‘Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History‘; Julius W. Pratt, with ‘Expansionists of 1898‘; Walter LeFeber, with ‘The New Empire,’ and Richard Hofstader in, among other studies, ‘Manifest Destiny and the Philippines.'”
“They all get their say. Their insights are commended. Then, Mr. May adds his own dimension. He stresses ‘the impact on American and
English and European examples’ when turn-of-the-century imperialism was in flower. Or, to put it tersely: Monkey see, monkey do. ‘
“Mr. May is a professor of history at Harvard, and Harvard, come to think of it, stands on land once taken by a variety of imperialism. So do numberless localities between, say, Jamestown and San Francisco Bay. But Mr. May is not about to make an issue out of that. His interest lies in charting main currents of 1898-99 American thought.
‘ESTABLISHMENTS’ EVERYWHERE…
“Which leads, inevitably, to the anatomizing of yet another Establishment. Do you shudder when I say that? Well, there it is, anyway. The nineteen-sixties have establishments obsessively on the brain. You can’t discuss a new literary posse, hardly dry behind the ears, or a drearily entrenched political machine, or a covey of millionaires, or any little group of little thinkers, without calling it an Establishment (Humble Host note: Ditto the 2010s). In Mr. May’s field, the powers-that-were, here and abroad, wanted colonies and they got them.Tran-Atlantic travel, commercial and cultural bonds, even famous international marriages, Mr. Mays shows, muscled imperialism’s 1898-99 establishment.
“Have we acquired wisdom after the event? Does the Vietnam tragedy encourage us to believe that we should never bite off more than we can chew? These questions will come to your mind as you read Mr. May’s stimulating book. It deals with questions of national life and death but it’s not infected with moralism’s screechy pedantry. What it hits us with is the truth of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s aphorism that the victor belongs to the spoils.” … End Book Review quote…
RTR quote for 5 August: SECRETARY OF STATE COLLIN POWELL. Writer David Samuels interviewed General Powell in The Atlantic, April 2007, and asked: “You were famously quoted as saying ‘if you break it, you own it’ about the consequences of an American invasion of Iraq. So do we own it? And as a practical matter, is it possible for the United States to declare at this late date that we don’t take part in other people’s Civil Wars and to withdraw our troops?”
POWELL: “The famous expression, if you break it you own it…was a simple statement of the fact that when you take out a regime and you bring down a government, you become the government. On that day that the statue came down and Saddam Hussein’s regime ended, the United States was the occupying power. We might also have been the liberating power, and we were initially seen as liberators. But we were essentially the new government until a government could be put in place. And in the second phase of this conflict, which was beginning after the statue fell, we made serious mistakes in not acting like a government. One, maintaining order. Two, keeping people from destroying their own property. Three, not having in place security forces–either ours or theirs or a combination of the two to keep order. And in the absence of order, chaos ensues.”… End Powell Quote…
Then came Afghanistan– “…in the absence of order, chaos ensues” and “the victor belongs to the spoils.”
Lest we forget… Bear
Post-post: RTR ops for 5 Aug will be doubled up with Aug 6 tomorrow…