How to Hide an Empire: A Short History of the Greater United States

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Christian G. Appy, “Empire Lite,” Catalyst: A Journal of Theory and Strategy 3:3 (Fall 2019): 133-53. ( https://catalyst-journal.com/vol3/no3/empire-lite) Jefferson’s appointed governor to Louisiana Territory, like Arthur St. Clair, griped about the “mental darkness” of Louisiana’s inhabitants. Allowing them to vote, he believed, “would be a dangerous experiment.” Carol Chin, Thomas Bender, Emily Conroy-Krutz, David Milne, Odd Arne Westad, and Daniel Immerwahr, “A Roundtable on Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States,” Passport: SHAFR Review 50:3 (January 2020): 8-16. i124675657 |b1130003762386 |dpc |g- |m231128 |h9 |x0 |t2 |i3 |j2 |k190224 |n07-12-2023 20:29 |o- |a973 |rI33 Immerwahr, Daniel (2019). How to Hide an Empire: Geography and Power in the Greater United States. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0-3741-7214-5– via "A poignant story" by Mano Singham at FreethoughtBlogs.

Hidden by Rand McNally, the Department of the Interior, and HTH is that the federal government does not want Americans to notice the non-incorporated territories or what their existence means about the character of the United States. The federal government and elements of the Puerto Rican political elite have invested a great deal in the illusion of decolonization via Commonwealth status. State governments, even in my home state of New York, have not included this history in K-12 social studies curricula. If most Americans learn nothing about this in school, how can they be ready to hear the truth if they somehow come across it in a bookstore, or on TV or a podcast? [39] The introduction highlights the importance of the territories in shaping the United States' history and identity. It challenges the conventional view of the country as a contiguous entity and argues that it should be viewed in its entirety, from mainland states to large colonies to tiny islands. How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr is a comprehensive and thought-provoking exploration of the often-overlooked aspects of American history—the story of the United States as an empire. Immerwahr's meticulously researched narrative challenges the conventional understanding of American history and, in doing so, sheds light on the country’s exploitation of colonies and territories on its journey to become a global superpower. By shedding light on these often overlooked territories, Immerwahr aims to reveal the country's imperial past—and the significant impact these territories had on the nation's development. In doing so, the book brings to attention the marginalization and suffering experienced by inhabitants of the colonies, illustrating the cost of mainlanders' ignorance and the nation's self-image as a republic. Chapter 1: The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone What Happens:Szalai, Jennifer (2019-02-13). " 'How to Hide an Empire' Shines Light on America's Expansionist Side". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved 2019-06-11.

Jefferson understood the sentiment. The people of Louisiana were as “incapable of self-government as children,” he judged, adding that the “principles of popular Government are utterly beyond their comprehension.” Rather than putting Louisiana through the normal Northwest Ordinance procedures, Jefferson added a new initial phase, military government, and sent the U.S. Army to keep the peace. By 1806, the Territory of Louisiana hosted the largest contingent of the army in the country. How could that happen? Why didn’t someone do something? Did the leading men of the country not know about Boone? They knew. Did they not understand what he represented? They understood. Paul A. Kramer, “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World,” American Historical Review (Dec. 2011), 1374-75. HTH is conceptually at odds with Greater Caribbean historiography. In prioritizing the “Greater United States” as its unit of analysis it asks only about Puerto Rico’s relationship with the metropole, a metropole that it does not conceptualize as part of the Greater Caribbean and whose economic and military interventions in the Greater Caribbean it largely excludes. Having obscured the relationship of non-incorporation and treated the logo map as explanatory, it then divorces Puerto Rico from its Caribbean context, and produces a problematic narrative of Puerto Rico’s history under U.S. imperial rule.In his response to Kramer, Immerwahr argued that he proposed “to define the United States broadly.” [27] This conceptual move collapses the colonial relationship of non-incorporation into a concept of “the Greater United States” in which non-incorporated territories become “part of the country … part of its history” and are grouped with incorporated territories and areas leased mainly for military purposes. [28] Immerwahr defends the use of “the Greater United States” as a “clarifying past concept” from the early twentieth century because it counters “those who would deny or minimize the United States’ territorial empire”. [29] But combatting such denialism does not require “understanding Puerto Rico to be part of the United States” or rejecting the “logic of the Insular Cases”. [30] Both such conceptual moves actually make it harder to see and understand the relationship of non-incorporation, which is to say that of colonization. Stuart Schwartz, Sea of Storms: A History of Hurricanes in the Greater Caribbean from Columbus to Katrina (Princeton 2015), xiv-xv. Sam Erman, Almost Citizens: Puerto Rico, the U.S. Constitution, and Empire (Cambridge 2019); Arturo Morales Carrión, Puerto Rico: A Political and Cultural History (Norton 1983). Yet Boone’s path was strewn with obstacles. The British had set the ridge of the Appalachians as the boundary to white settlement, making Boone’s journey west a crime. The end of British rule did little to improve Boone’s standing. The founders viewed frontiersmen like him with open suspicion. They were the nation’s “refuse” (wrote Ben Franklin), “no better than carnivorous animals” (J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur), or “white savages” (John Jay). George Washington warned, after the revolution, of the “settling, or rather overspreading the Western Country … by a parcel of banditti, who will bid defiance to all authority.” To prevent this, he proposed drawing a settlement boundary, just as the British had, and prosecuting as a felon any citizen who crossed it. This book changes our understanding of the fundamental character of the United States as a presence in world history. By focusing on the processes by which Americans acquired, controlled, and were affected by territory, Daniel Immerwahr shows that the United States was not just another 'empire,' but was a highly distinctive one the dimensions of which have been largely ignored." —David A. Hollinger, author of Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America

Puerto Rico’s disappointment with Wilson's inaction resonated with nationalist movements worldwide, fueling struggles for independence and self-government in India, Egypt, Korea, and China. These events set the stage for more radical resistance to U.S. imperialism and influenced the course of anti-colonial movements in the 20th century.However, there are other parts of the review that seem somewhat less convincing to me, a reader admittedly ignorant of a fair number of the details that the reviewer discusses. (Caveat that I just read the piece on the screen, which for a long review like this is less satisfactory than printing it out and reading in hard copy.) To call this standout book a corrective would make it sound earnest and dutiful, when in fact it is wry, readable and often astonishing. Immerwahr knows that the material he presents is serious, laden with exploitation and violence, but he also knows how to tell a story, highlighting the often absurd space that opened up between expansionist ambitions and ingenuous self-regard . . . It’s a testament to Immerwahr’s considerable storytelling skills that I found myself riveted by his sections on Hoover’s quest for standardized screw threads, wondering what might happen next." —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times The book is structured into two main sections. The first, titled "The Colonial Empire," delves into the history of the United States from colonial times up to World War II. The second, "The Pointillist Empire," explores American history from 1945 to the present day.