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

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Immerwahr] writes in the manner of an entertaining and informative lecturer who cannot wait to tell the class his latest discovery from the archives . . . Gore Vidal was fond of referring to Imperial America, and not in an approving way. Were he alive to read this book he would probably endorse it, perhaps only regretting that he had not written it himself." —James Michael, Times Literary Supplement In the long years that followed, Campos soon realized that America's imperial dreams did not align with his own. They had no intention of granting Puerto Rico freedom, nor did they intend to help it rebuild. Over time, his once-hopeful attitude grew bitter, concluding that the U.S. had reneged on its commitment to bestow autonomy on Puerto Rico.

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. The National Guano Act of 1856 authorized citizens of the United States to take possession of and exploit unclaimed islands, reefs, and atolls containing guano deposits. The islands had to be uninhabited and not within the jurisdiction of another government. The act specifically referred to such islands as possessions of the United States. The expedition did little to temper his disdain for frontiersmen. He recorded that their clashes with Indians had incited “murders, and general dissatisfaction.” They “labour very little,” he harrumphed, and the merest “touch of a feather” would turn their loyalties away from the United States. i124675657 |b1130003762386 |dpc |g- |m231128 |h9 |x0 |t2 |i3 |j2 |k190224 |n07-12-2023 20:29 |o- |a973 |rI33 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.The book opens as Immerwahr introduces the concept of the "logo map" of the United States—a familiar representation of the mainland U.S. that excludes the country's imperial possessions. He argues that this conventional map is symbolic and fails to account for the numerous overseas territories and military bases that have significantly influenced America's economic and political power around the world. i125385900 |b32104000122778 |dpran |g- |m |h7 |x2 |t0 |i4 |j2 |k190514 |n12-21-2022 21:44 |o- |aHISTORY / US Louisianians protested their disenfranchisement. “Do political axioms on the Atlantic become problems when transferred to the shores of the Mississippi?” they asked on a trip to the capital. Jefferson shrugged his shoulders and did nothing. Ernesto Bassi, An Aqueous Territory: Sailor Geographies and New Granada’s Transimperial Greater Caribbean World (Duke 2016) ; Pablo Sierra Silva, Urban Slavery in Colonial Mexico: Puebla de los Ángeles, 1531-1706 (Cambridge 2019) ; Rebecca Scott, Degrees of Freedom: Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery (Belknap Press of Harvard UP, 2005). A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire

My book manuscript is titled “Fight for an Impossible Progress: Workers, New Deal Labor Reform, and Populism in Puerto Rico, 1937-1941.” My work on U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico and on colonialism and decolonization in the Caribbean more broadly includes: “Birth of the U.S. Colonial Minimum Wage: The Struggle over the Fair Labor Standards Act in Puerto Rico, 1938-1941,” Journal of American History 104:3 (December 2017), 656-680; “Towards Decolonization: Impulses, Processes, and Consequences,” 475-489 in Stephan Palmié and Francisco Scarano, eds., The Caribbean: An Illustrated History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); From Colony to Nation: Women Activists and the Gendering of Politics in Belize, 1912-1982 (Lincoln: Nebraska, 2007); “Citizens vs. Clients: Workingwomen and Colonial Reform in Puerto Rico and Belize, 1932-1945,” Journal of Latin American Studies 35:2 (May 2003): 279-310. 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).American Samoans do not yet have statutory birthright citizenship. A late 2019 court decision that would pave the way for this has been put on hold by the very judge who issued it pending the federal government’s appeal. See: https://www.npr.org/2019/12/13/787978353/american-samoans-citizenship-status-still-in-limbo-after-judge-issues-stay Not all American Samoans want U.S. citizenship: https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/02/not-everyone-born-in-samoa-wants-u-s-citizenship/ How to Hide an Empire is a breakthrough, for both Daniel Immerwahr and our collective understanding of America’s role in the world. His narrative of the rise of our colonial empire outside North America, and then our surprising pivot from colonization to globalization after World War II, is enthralling in the telling — and troubling for anyone pondering our nation’s past and future. The result is a book for citizens and scholars alike." —Samuel Moyn, author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal Age the United States honed an extraordinary suite of technologies that gave it many of the benefits of empire without having to actually hold colonies. …these technologies weaned the United States off the familiar model of formal empire. They replaced colonization with globalization. Why it Matters: The settlers' relentless push westward, transforming from squatters to pioneers, reshaped the nation. But it also turned it into a violent empire that displaced Native peoples. Boone's journey and that of his followers embodied the idea of "manifest destiny," claiming a divine mission to overspread the continent. The chapter explores how the dynamic interplay between population growth, westward migration, and territorial governance shaped the United States into a rapidly expanding empire. Chapter 2: Indian Country What Happens: HTH cites some of the best sources by metropole-based scholars for understanding the non-incorporation doctrine, but Immerwahr does not seem to have absorbed the radical implications of their arguments and evidence. [24] HTH does not engage works by Puerto Rican legal scholars Efrén Rivera Ramos, law professor and former Dean of the Law School at the University of Puerto Rico flagship campus in Río Piedras; Judge José A. Cabranes, presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review and member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals since 1994; and Judge Juan R. Torruella, a member of the First Circuit Court of Appeals since 1984. [25] Finally, in chapter four HTH implies that colonized people were absent in immediate post-1898 debates over what to do with the new insular possessions, something disproved in the case of Puerto Rico by law professor and legal historian Sam Erman’s 2010 dissertation, now published as a monograph, and by earlier Puerto Rican historians. [26]