Jan 282010
How to torture an American: force them to conceive of a history of the United States wherein we are not the greatest military force on earth, we are aggressive bullies and thieves, and others are more wily and sophisticated than we are. Now, make them tell that story. Actually, I don’t think it can be done. Even the most leftist American historian I’ve ever read is a patriotic apologist. C’est le nationalisme. Le nationalisme est un bourbier.
This is a natural habit well cultivated by a tendency never to ask others for their opinion. My professional training reinforced the inclination. None of my masters ever asked me to read any American history written by a non-American. What’s more, none of them even asked me to read histories of other North Americans. It is in this way that I was trained to keep my thinking parochial and my attitude dismissive. Now, I struggle to teach myself the history of Nueva España and Nouvelle-France in order to broaden my take on American history. It’s damn hard to do so, by the way. It’s pretty much the ignorant leading the stupid.
Happily, I stumbled onto a history of the French in North America (subtly entitled The French in North America), which is largely a history of Canada. What a difference your perspective makes! The author is English but he was trained in Canada and France. Free from many of our prejudices and assumptions, he makes daring statements. The most surprisingly nuanced is that the greatest military force in North America in the seventeenth century was the Iroquois Confederacy. Upon reflection, I think it’s largely true. The group dominated the northeastern part of the U.S. at that time and being a combination of six nations, it was significant in numbers — giving it a numerical advantage over its foes. It certainly outnumbered the European settlers in the colonies. I have yet to discover an American textbook that in anyway acknowledges the superiority of any Indian nation or body. I guess the Canadians and French don’t feel threatened by acknowledging this truth.
Also, during the course of his story, the author — W. J. Eccles — recounts a number of incidents of aggression on the part of English colonists against the Canadians. I was completely unfamiliar with these. No one had ever instructed me before that New Englanders raided Acadia and Newfoundland for spoils. These were apparently unprovoked and the sole purpose was to steal from the French. So noble. Did I mention that these New Englanders settled the territory before the Puritans? I guess that’s how Squanto knew already knew English and could teach them how to plant corn so they wouldn’t starve to death. Anyway, so much for our founders coming to our shores in search of religious liberty. Damn the inconvenience of truth. Pillaging pirates, not prayerful Puritans — these were our English forefathers in the northeast.
Well, we can always console ourselves with the myth of social Darwinism: Anglos conquered the continent — driving out the French, Spanish, and Native Americans — because it was their manifest destiny as the greater culture/force (chosen by God). Through various military endeavors, we eventually bested the Indians and took their land. Those pathetic Frenchies weren’t up to the task. But, wait! Eccles says: early on, the French realized that they were grossly outnumbered and militarily inferior to the Indians in North America. The French government determined that it did not wish to commit the necessary money and troops to fully develop Canada. The returns would not be that great, and it was more interested in besting the English in Europe. As such, they came up with an Indian policy that was essentially to trade with the Indians and depend on them for protection and assistance. In short, they opted to be the subservient in order to make money off of the fur trade. They decided that was all they really wanted with North America anyway. Genius. Then, they figured out that they could use their settlements in America as a thorn in the flesh of the English. They — along with their Indian allies, to whom they gave guns in return for valued furs — could mount enough of a military threat to force the English to commit troops to protect their colonies. This would siphon off soldiers from the battlefields of Europe, giving the French the advantage they preferred there. Further, the French realized that with proper encouragement, they could sit back and let the rebel colonies do the dirty work for them. If the English were busy fighting their colonists, the French would again have the advantage in Europe, as the English would be fighting two fronts. (Unfortunately, in the end, they did have to send in the navy to save us because alone the American military was not up to the task and colonists were too cheap to pay for the necessities of war.) Shortly thereafter, Napoleon would prove the wisdom of this policy and lead the French empire to dominance. As painful as it is to accept, to the French, the Americas were but a pawn. We may have been undertaking a noble experiment, but they were playing at a larger game.
So, here is a bit of American history from a completely different perspective — one in which we are not the grand heroes and enlightened victors. In this history, we are cheap, greedy, aggressive, and militarily inferior to both the French and <gasp> the Indians. I dare you to tell that story to your children. Oh, the horror! Don’t worry. It would never make it past the Texas School Board.
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Historians are judges — of what is good or evil, of what is noble or undesirable, of what is human nature or aberrant. In trying to make sense of past events, we judge them — and the people involved in them — in order to understand them. Thus, we ask questions like: were slave owners in the American colonies cruel sadists or did they know not what they were truly doing? Did they unconsciously build a system that robbed others of their very selves by enslaving them or did they set out to intentionally establish a culture of cruelty towards blacks? These are moral questions as much as they are intellectual ones. When we ask them, we are trying to understand the thinking of our ancestors, but we are also making value judgments about their behaviors. We cannot escape doing so. It is part of being human. Social scientist might find this duty objectionable and pretend they can remove it from our practice, but that is foolish nonsense. We are not history automatons and the value of history is tied to its role in creating and supporting our ethical beliefs. We are moral beings studying other moral beings; it would be the height of ridiculousness to pretend to remove morality from that study.
When we write about noble characters who commit great deeds we tend not to struggle with the morality of our judgments as much. We generally accept that people do good and desirable things, so when we write about this, we tend not to question from where this goodness originates. It may be uncommon to be a great patriot, but it isn’t a psychological aberration. When we write about perpetrators of great evils, however, we confront just such qualities. What kind of a man was Adolf Hitler that he could do the things he did? Underlying that question is moral repulsion at his behavior. Thus, in writing about him and the other Nazis, historians struggle with how best to judge these men. Some attack them as evil, psychologically disturbed persons. Others, try to come up with a rationalization that makes their motives seem reasonable and, therefore, comprehensible. In her analysis of Adolf Eichmann’s participation in the Final Solution of the Jewish Question, Hannah Arendt proposed that his case illustrated the “banality of evil.” Eichmann’s actions were not the result of a great prejudice or psychosis. Eichmann was just a regular guy who went along with the herd. The great evil of the Holocaust here was its inanity or lack of conscious maliciousness. In other words, it’s not personal, it’s just business. The ideological extension of that contention is that there is nothing special about evilness and you should not engrandize evil historical figures by characterizing them as exceptional (even in a negative way). Thus, you rob them of their infamy by treating them as regular human beings rather than powerful individuals. Perhaps this is our revenge on them.
Last summer, an old man consumed with disease and hatred endeavored to commit a mass murder at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. A white supremacist with a violent animosity toward Jews, he plotted to kill visitors at the museum — a futile act of rage against the society from which he had become marginalized. He was thwarted in his aim by a guard who wounded him when returning gunfire. Our hero, Stephen Johns, died in the line of duty, preventing a potentially great slaughter. Our villain, James von Brunn, has been declining in jail since that time, dying of his diseases while awaiting trial. Clearly, von Brunn was no Eichmann (or at least Arendt’s Eichmann). His action was intentional and vile. It was abnormal, and it seems impossible to dismiss it as banal. What to do then with this character? How do we judge him? And, if we do so, do we reward him for his evil act by giving him an acknowledged place in history? On the day that he died, the museum put out a statement remembering Johns instead and pointing to the continued need for efforts to eradicate prejudice and hatred in human society. It was a rather ahistorical tack for a place of remembering. It was, undoubtedly, an intentional refusal to acknowledge von Brunn and his significance or connection to the museum. For a place dedicated to keeping the memory of the Shoah alive, as to prevent its reoccurrence, it was an antithetical act, and perhaps not even a proper one. To reject the historical perspective in order to punish one man seems a high price to pay.
In the end, von Brunn’s passing held little significance anyway. The story didn’t even make the front page of the papers. It was a small item on even a slow news day. Perhaps the real justice in this story is the banality of von Brunn’s death. He was not a victim of the death penalty — earning the martyr’s status that would give him longevity among certain circles. It wasn’t a gruesome death etched in the memory of a watching public that would give it notoriety either. No, he died of ill health unrelated to his actions at the museum; it was the way he would have died if he had never plotted murder or raised his gun. Thousands annually die the same way. It was unremarkable, and that is the way history will record it.
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Dec 272009
Imagine this: roughly 10,000 people have nothing better to do on Christmas Day than to venture out to watch a re-enactment of George Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware River in 1776. This is an annual event, drawing hardy souls who brave the cold to watch wannabe Continentals fight fake Redcoats for lovely Trenton, New Jersey. Forget the birth of Christ. It’s the birth of a nation (apologies to D.W. Griffith). The big concession to convenience today is that the re-enactment takes place in the afternoon, although Washington et al crossed in the night.
The recent Great Recession has cut deeply. This year, the state park that houses the re-enactment event was closed for the day due to budget cuts,and now history also became a victim of the fiscal conflagration burning through our economic resources. Private supporters stepped in to keep the tradition alive, and the show was to go on!
Alas, the Friends were no match for Mother Nature. Strong winds and high waters made the crossing impossible this year. Instead, there was a ceremony on land followed by a ritual crossing of the local bridge. It might lack the same danger, nobility, and discomfort of the first crossing, but Washington the Re-enactor found it as solemn and significant, according to his comments to the local paper. He led his men proudly. Perhaps in solitude, he wept.
I have to admit here that I love history in a way that others often don’t share. No one else I know enjoys spending hours holed up in the library scrolling through old microfilm of hard to read newsprint or digging through antique shops for old books, records, and bric-a-brac. But, I am at a loss to explain why 10,000 souls would want to stand out in the cold on the biggest holiday of the year to watch people act out a historical event from well over two hundred and fifty years ago. Even less can I comprehend why someone would apply and take an exam to portray Washington or any other gentleman at the event. The devotion of citizens to public history is a mystery to me. Theirs is not a love of truth or narrative or philosophy. Instead, they have an emotional connection to the persons involved in the event and a patriotic love of country that causes them to revere such moments.
So, the Christmas season for them is a time to mark a special civic remembrance on the day of a Christian one. For them, the civic and the religious mingle and compound the day’s significance. Or, maybe they co-mingle and the participants consider their religion and patriotism of the same belief. In any case, it is these moments where history and current events mix that remind me that I am not like my compatriots and that fascinates me about them. I can’t imagine paying homage to George Washington and Jesus with shared traditions on the same day. Or for such different persons, honoring the same night.
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Dec 252009
I understand that the works of Ayn Rand are gaining popularity again. Aficianados of the free market system are boisterously promoting its virtues and bandying about the bugaboo of imminently threatening socialism. Their fervor and simple absolutes breed interest, and the curious turn to Rand for inspiring depictions of ideal capitalism. Her work makes the capitalist heroic and virtuous. He is noble and principled, and who would not aspire to such? Rand’s capitalism is not about greedy fat cats sucking the blood of the proletariat. Her vision appeals to our highest instincts and caters to our vanity. Of course, it is also fiction. Yes, the best expositions of free market ideology are made up tales.
History tells us a very different story. Boosterish proponents of free market ideology may point to the overarching narrative of the American century to promote their theory, but, as they say, the devil is in the details. Our best shot at a truly free market economy in the United States was in the late nineteenth century. It was brief and chaotic. Many literally died in the violent exchanges between workers and hired hands brought in by company owners to crush strikes and rebellions. These disputes were often settled with guns, fists, torches, and other weapons. Railroad transportation was often stalled by strikes and other means of disruption. Boycotts and walk offs frequently meant that consumers could not access the goods and services they wanted or needed. Order was upset by the violence and disputes; in some cases, property and towns were actually destroyed due to arson and riots. Urban life was not safe in the way we understand it today. Further, there were no employee protections, assuring that they would not have to work in unsafe conditions, be shorted in their pay, or lose their jobs if injured at work. Workers who were injured on their jobs were not entitled to medical treatments at their employers’ expenses and they were often fired after the fact for being unable to fulfill their duties while incapacitated. Maimings and serious injuries were common then. Factory workers were often permanently injured or disabled at work. They then had no means to support themselves and no social security benefits to fall back on. The average male factory worker made about $400.00 a year in the late nineteenth century. Budget estimates by social workers of the time indicated that it took at least $600.00 a year for a family of four to get by — and that’s without medical care or savings. Accordingly, families were forced to put everyone to work in order to get by. Children got jobs instead of schooling because their wages were necessary to their familial unit. For families, for employees and employers, and for local communities, this period was one of violent upheaval and want. This is not the picture of heroism or virtuous achievement. It was class war — workers vs. owners — pure and simple.
This is the difference between history and fiction and why our historiography is so important to value. Boosters rely on appealing fiction, but what people need to make realistic choices is knowledge of what really happened in our past. Free market capitalism sounds great in theory, but our actual experience of it was not so fine or beneficial. When making choices about what we want for our society today, we must bear that in mind. Nothing’s as good as its ideal.
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Dec 222009
I have a photograph of my brother and myself hand-in-hand off to our first day of kindergarten. We look so innocent. I have a bow in my hair and little sandals that match my feminine dress on my feet. My brother looks buttoned up and spit-shined. My mother groomed and pressed us and memorialized the grand moment when we would venture out into the world — our first foray into public life. Little did we know at the time, in our excitement over reading hours, recess, and playgrounds, that we were being sent off to be socialized in the American way. We did not know that we were being groomed into little capitalists. I wonder if my parents knew it. They probably didn’t think about it. Does anyone?
It’s not like you can do much to avoid it anyway. What with the truancy laws, your only option is to teach them at home, and who has the time and resources to home school, really? In most families, both parents work — and have to do so — and home schooling is a luxury in which they cannot indulge. Also, it’s likely that a number of them aren’t much interested in spending their days at home teaching their children anyway. So, they cart them off to schools — public and private — where they are molded into fans of the free market. That isn’t, of course, why you send them off to school — anymore than to teach them to be little pro-American automatons or knee-jerk patriots. But, it comes with the package.
Of course, the indoctrination is subtle. Children don’t stand at attention, saluting the flag with pledges like “All hail Capitalism” or “The Future is the Free Market.” Far from it. In fact, most students can’t tell you the difference between capitalism, socialism, or communism. Rather, “capitalism” is normative and familiar to them through unconscious exposure, and the message vaguely reinforces that, suggesting that other systems are anti-Christian or anti-American. Children don’t know what socialism or communism really is, but they sense that it’s dark and ominous — something to be feared and avoided. They know it’s bad from the way their books and teachers speak about it and infer from their economics classes — where they learn about playing the stock market from local businessmen volunteers, courtesy of the Rotary Club or other civic organizations — that the free market is what makes us great. It is the uncritical and unquestioned presentation of our economic system that serves to indoctrinate. To question that is to be an outsider or a deviant. Again, by refusing to suggest there are workable alternatives, educators direct you to embrace capitalism (as the only available/desirable option).
So, students go to their elementary schools as innocents and emerge as believers — if the schools do their jobs correctly. And, these institutions of learning are then political tools for the powers that be. The brick and mortar buildings that should serve as temples of learning become free market sanctuaries. And, the sweet encouraging woman who taught you to write your letters and work fractions was really a political propagandizer, in whose hands you were impressionable putty that didn’t stand a chance. In time, when you had become a good capitalist — who may or may not be able to read, identify the number of justices on the Supreme Court, or understand the principles of basic algebra — they gave you a diploma and set you free. Your time at the free market seminary was done.
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Dec 132009
On election day 2008, Barak Obama and I shared the dubious distinction of being labeled “socialist” by critics. I don’t know if it bothered the President (particularly since he won), but I didn’t so much mind because I was sure that the Bubba in the beater pick up truck who yelled the “insult” at me as he drove past where I held my campaign sign had no idea what a socialist was or what was so bad about them. I figured he — like most Americans — was a product of the socialization agenda at work in American public schools and the propaganda machine at work in the public discourse (well, not so much discourse as recourse to punditry). He’d been taught to believe that socialism was wrong and that covered everything that free-market promoters labeled as such.
When you ask these uber-capitalist advocates what’s so wrong with government intervention, they insist that the market knows best and that government interference does nothing but undermine innovation and growth. Left to its own devices, they claim, the market will find level and provide the most benefits available to the majority at the best cost. The government should not be involved in commercial exchanges and should remain neutral on price setting and sector development, they maintain. It sounds reasonable to believe that consumers and producers acting in their own best interests will reach a mutually acceptable balance, but theory is theory and in reality it’s bullshit — much like how in the abstract, the four way stop is an efficient traffic design.
In any economic system, the government plays a vital and defining role in making the system work. It is necessary, and no economy can function without a coercive political arm behind it, despite the claims of the free-market boosters. Their expectation that private exchanges provide the foundation of an effective system itself relies on a government to enforce it. I am not the first to note that without a legal system to compel compliance with contracts, private exchanges are only worth what the individual contractors have the power to obtain personally. If you contract with someone for a product — new overalls, say — and they renege on supplying that item, without recourse to the law, you can only collect said Ozark tuxedo through threats, intimidation, negotiation, or force. In a system where might makes right, large powerful parties dominate and the political system tends toward the oligarchical, or at least something other than substantive democracy. In any case, the free market system — where everyone has the freedom to contract and exchange as will — needs a government with coercive power to enforce the very terms on which private exchanges rely.
On a larger scale, how is one consumer to take on the Acme Corporation and have any semblance of equality under the system? It doesn’t happen. A group of consumers, however, has the numbers to balance the power and achieve their common ends. Similarly, employees may combine their demands to equalize the strength of their bargaining position. Additionally, sometimes smaller companies do this as well, in order to compete with big box stores. It often happens, however, that in trying to gain the upper hand — to ensure their own economic ends, as is their purpose in a free-market capitalist system — parties involved sometimes <gasp> act illegally or in extra-legal ways that give them an unfair advantage (like hiring thugs to harass strikers on a picket line in order to resolve a labor dispute). When this occurs, the market is circumvented and the only way to right it is to employ the power of government. Thus, in the real world, governmental intervention is often necessary to protect the market.
What’s more, sometimes a “neutral” government isn’t really neutral on economic issues after all. The government may choose not to take sides in a dispute between polluters and environmentalists, but that generally ensures more trash. The government hasn’t been able to make Exxon pay the full costs of cleanup for the Valdez spill yet; there’s no way the Sierra Club could do it. Meanwhile, the fishing industry suffers. Also, as Anatole France noted sarcastically, the law equally prohibits the rich and the poor from sleeping under bridges, but of course, the rich don’t need to sleep under bridges to escape cold winds and driving rains. The only purpose of that law is to further harm the poor — and for no economic benefit to the rich. In this way, a government that pretends not to favor one side over the other actually ensures the advantage go to the wealthier party. Governmental neutrality, then, tends to reinforce the advantages of the system and favor the rich.
Over the course of our history, our ancestors came to the conclusion that governmental intervention was a good thing, so as to protect us from the failures of the market in practice. They came to understand that a neutral government wasn’t completely neutral and that the best interests of the whole of the citizenry were only protected when the State intervened through regulation and financial controls. That history, however, is glossed over in history books, in order to comply with the demands of free-market advocates and their devotees. As long as they maintain control over public school textbooks, the history of the economic struggles in America will remained skewed and education, economic propaganda. Thus, public school historiography promotes the fallacy that a free-market is desirable and beneficial to our citizenry and that the government should stay out. People can believe then that the government is neutral and that this is a good thing. If only the history backed up the historiography.
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If you are to believe that our country is, and always has been, a capitalist nation, it is logically necessary to conclude that our Founding Fathers — those wise, benevolent drafters of our future course (when not busy having sex with slaves and ripping off Indians) — must have been devoted capitalists. How else could they have put us on the path of free-market fealty? If they were the priests of the sacred American faiths of democracy and private property, it is they who must be responsible for our economic ideology as well, you would think. The problem with that conclusion is that it isn’t so much, well, true.
Capitalism is a collection of economic ideas cobbled together into a general theory. Its origins developed over time and grew out of the contributions of several thinkers. However, its first real formulation came in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, written to critique the monopolistic and inefficient economic practices of his day. Smith’s work debuted in 1776.
That year, our founders were well occupied with certain domestic affairs. Even if copies of Smith’s work were immediately available to them — in a day before Fed-Ex shipping and paperback editions — it is unlikely that our fighting patriots had much down-time for reading in economic theory. I think it was probably not the case that Washington — or more properly, his slave — thought to grab the twelve hundred page tome for ballast for the crossing of the Delaware, although it may have provided kindling for five minutes at Valley Forge. When Thomas Paine was drafting Common Sense, I don’t believe he included a shout-out to A-Smith and the free-trade boys. And, what with all the bombs bursting in air and musket-drilling going on, I doubt that many of the revolutionaries had much time for thoughtful scholarly perusals. C’est la guerre.
After the war, it took a few years to get any kind of national economic theory working — in part because the founders were largely opposed to any kind of national anything. The Articles of Confederation were hardly a blueprint for free-market capitalism. It took us a number of years to even embrace federalism — that is the notion that a nation exists, and then, the “nation” didn’t warrant an anthem, much less a cohesive fiscal approach. For the first years of the republic, our leaders couldn’t agree on having a national bank, let alone a shared devotion to an economic cause. Moreover, whereas Smith was opposed to the protective tariff (because it discouraged specialization and free-trade), A-hole Hamilton — probably our foremost financial planner of the early years — thought it a good thing. TJ (0f Monticello) thought individual agricultural self-sufficiency was the key to true democracy and equality. He had no interest in Smith’s industries. And, of course, Smith objected to slavery — which was the foundation of the southern agricultural system, and he had no boosters on that point among the many southerners who served as our initial leadership and dominated the Oval Office early on.
Capitalism did not develop in the United States, then, because it was promoted by our devoted founders. In actuality, the overthrow of the monarchy left a bit of a vacuum that was filled by incremental, organic growth. Since there was no longer a crown to grant the East India Tea Company a monopoly over the tea trade in the colonies, it was kind of up for grabs to all of the mom-and-pops that sprouted up. Essentially, in the early years, everything was a start-up (or start over). While our leadership didn’t necessarily get in the way of the development of capitalism in our country, they were hardly ardent supporters of free-market theory. It is, then, possible to conceive of an America — and American patriots — where capitalism was not joined to the political ideal, and any suggestions to the contrary are rot and propaganda.
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There’s nothing so totalitarian as a public school board. These little central committees rule with iron fists — dictating what your children will learn, how they will learn it, and why. As the political winds change, they will mandate that your children study evolution, intelligent design, scientific know-nothingness, or some combination of these. They will stipulate whether kids will learn old or new math, read phonetically or not, and whether to paste fig leaves onto pictures in art books. When they aren’t busy debating what tomes to censor from school libraries, these dictators turn to creating good citizens — that is, the study of history and government. Textbook makers — who eat or not at the whim of the boards — cater to the politics of public education. No state board is more particular or censorial than Texas’. Accordingly, school book publishers aim to please Texas and then repackage that product for other states as well (to control costs). Every school in America, then, gets some version of the Texas historical canon. There, the political powers that dominate the state school board require a number of things of approved textbooks. Among these is the requirement that school texts teach that America is great because of our free market economic system. Leaving aside the fact that we do not have a truly free market in our country, there are serious problems with this mandate. The odiousness of it for historians can be unbearable, as it asks them to manipulate and obfuscate historical facts and evidence (it’s really hard to make the robber barons out to be heroes, for example).
Under the school board guidelines, students are taught to revere the Constitution while at the same time admiring free enterprise. The two faiths are not mutually exclusive; however, they are not necessarily mutually reinforcing either. Fortunately, schoolchildren are taught to admire and support the Constitution, but not to read it. If they did, they might discover that this grand document does not actually outline a particular economic system for our country. Capitalism is not enshrined there. In fact, capitalism didn’t come to the United States until well into the nineteenth century. Our best attempt at the free market came after the Civil War and it didn’t last long. The social and economic upheavals of the nineteenth century sold citizens early enough on regulation.
Textbooks gloss over this fact, in order to reinforce commitment to the economic system in our country. If you can’t conceive of another order, you aren’t likely to kick off the one you’ve got and try on another. Also, long-term commitment suggests perfection. If people think it’s always been this way, they aren’t much inclined to criticize the system or consider that there might be a better one. In other words, little children are being socialized to buy into our system and support it uncritically. To question capitalism is to question American virtue, hard work, or apple pie.
Now, you can’t outright lie about these things because that means you’re promoting propaganda. ”Truth,” however, is an entirely different sale. So, textbook authors just don’t explain what the economic system was like in the early part of our country’s history. They talk about mercantilism in the colonial period and then don’t go into economics (aside from issues like the tariff and the national bank) until they talk about industrialization. You’re not supposed to put two and two together and figure out there might be something in between. More importantly, you’re not to believe that from the git-go we weren’t committed capitalists and that the free market wasn’t as carefully crafted as our political system. Surely, the Constitution, which so particularly sets out the three branches of government and provides for checks and balances among them, weighs in on the way our economy should work. You’d think so, but it really doesn’t. You can get that impression though from the careful omissions in public school textbooks — and, really, the Texas school board insists that you do so.
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Nov 052009
You’d like to believe our dynasty has a noble purpose. You’d like to believe that there was something respectable about the expansion of our territory beyond the mainland United States. If Plymouth Colony was a city on a hill, you want the tentacles of the American empire to be equally special. This is why we lie to ourselves and pretend that we aren’t the descendents of opportunists and garbage collectors. So, we dress up our history and give it a higher purpose. We avoid embarrassment by constructing the epic. But, the building of the empire was not noble nor grand. It didn’t start out the story of the rise of a great superpower or the conquest of other peoples. Americans pushed outside the borders of our continent solely in search of shit.
In the nineteenth century, guano was a valuable necessity for fertilizing the rich expansive fields of American farms and for concocting the deadly gunpowder so needed by a warlike people. American explorers — sailors in the Pacific and Caribbean — stumbled on to untapped sources of guano on the islands and keys they skipped across in their travels. What claim had they to these treasures of turd, these piles of poop? None. But, Congress would not be deterred. We must have the guano. We must find a way to have it. Yes, precious. So, in 1856, it passed the Guano Islands Act, which states:
“Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.”
Yes, these fertile finds of guano would become territories of the United States. We will have our shit and we will protect it from all encroachment. How else could we obtain the Midway Atoll? For what other reason did we need Howland Island? These territories did not expand our citizenry. They did not bring us new trade or industry. They did, however, spread our fingers around the hemisphere, making us bigger, broader, and shittier. Yes, where once we only sought land we could steal from the Indian nations on which to farm and raise our families, now we sought an empire to fuel our firearms and fields — a great acidic dynasty spanning a rich hemisphere of which we are the masters. Poop and circumstance led our misguided nationalism to seize territories we did not need nor intend to inhabit and required that we build a navy to protect our interests. The French took Algiers and Vietnam. The British seized India and Hong Kong. And, America — that great and shining example of democracy and capitalism — we built an empire of shit.
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Ayn Rand’s been getting lots of press again lately. Accordingly, I’ve been subjected to various pontifications on her dedication to individualism and rational self-interest in the media. You could say there are similarities between me and Howard Roark, the hero of her book The Fountainhead. He is an idealist who rejects the conventional practices of his profession. I totally understand turning your back on the guild to stay true to yourself and your vision of your work. I left the historical profession some years back to become an independent scholar. But, whereas Roark is ultimately celebrated as a great master, I sort through lots of Russian and Chinese spam, have to work a day job, and have no patron to promote me. Roark and his ego offer little inspiration to me then, but I don’t need Rand’s fictional archetype. I have a better standard.
Angie Debo was a living, breathing intellectual visionary. Barred from a position as a professor at a research university because she was female, she worked a number of other jobs — in a museum, as a government researcher, and for a university library. On the side, Debo wrote a number of books that have become essential in the study of the modern history of Native Americans in our country. One of these, And Still the Waters Run, was originally withheld by the publisher because of its controversial nature. It described the systematic theft of land from American Indians by representatives of the U.S. government, despite the fact that treaties with the nations promised them their lands as long as the waters ran and the grass grew. Debo named names and in 1936, when the book went to the publisher, many of the figures involved were still alive. They threatened to sue, and the University of Oklahoma Press balked at putting the book out. It was four years before it was published by another press — largely through the efforts of its Director, who recognized the significance of the work. Debo’s history was infinitely different than the racist historiography that predominated in the profession then (and still stains our work today). This was in part because she dared to use oral interviews with surviving members of the Indian tribes as sources and she was critical of government bureaucrats who referred to the Indians as “savages” and looked down on their cultures. While the male-dominated profession talked of the destiny of white settlers to build a great country here, Debo described the exploitation of the Indians and the injustice done to them. Her work was unwelcome in the forties and fifties, when patriotism ran high and segregation was still the practice. In time, however, later generations recognized her innovative interpretations and admirable research. Now that she is no longer with us, scholars in the field recognize her fine scholarship and dedication to her work. What’s more, she’s remembered as a “warrior-scholar” who fought to help those she studied, because her work spurred her to do what she could to rectify the injustice that had been perpetrated against them. Service and scholarship were her virtues.
This is my role model. She never gave up doing her research and writing independently. The profession rejected her, but she found a way to continue on her own terms. In the end, she wrote classics that did nothing less than redefine the field in which she worked. The guild cannot ignore her work now. She forced a new historiography from the outside. This is my aim: I don’t want anything less than to write revolutionary work on my terms. The profession may not welcome me or my methods either, but I’m not interested in being in tight with them. I want to knock them off their feet like she did. And, I want to make a difference in our society with my work too. I want it to be useful as well as informative. I wish to be a “warrior-scholar.” Debo was the epitome of all to which I aspire. For me, she is the standard.
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