The Empire of Liberty – Part 3 – 1914-1939

 

Introduction

This is the third in a series of posts outlining the history of the US empire since the founding of the first British colony at Jamestown in 1607 and its intimate relationship with white supremacy. The first was posted on May 6^th, the second on June 14^th, both last year, and you should check them out, if you haven’t already read them.

My personal experience in the anti-imperialist, anti-racist movement beginning in the mid-1960s, with my active opposition to the Vietnam War, and my study of history (both in college and while I taught US History to high school students in Montgomery County, Maryland) have deepened my understanding of anti-imperialism and white supremacy and my commitment to the struggle against them. Although I have witnessed many setbacks in that struggle, I continued to be buoyed by the credo of FRELIMO, the 1970s national liberation movement in Mozambique, "A luta continua, vitória é certa". A better world is possible and we must continue the struggle, “if not for ourselves, then for our children and our children’s children”.

The US response to the war in Ukraine and the failure of many progressive forces to understand the role of US imperialism in the conflict has energized me to write this short history of US imperialism and its foundation in the paradigm of white supremacy. In previous posts I have raised the question as to why the horrors of the war in Ukraine are paraded before us as war crimes, but not those being waged against people of color in the Global South. The answer, of course, should be obvious, but sometimes you need to state the obvious.

I have also been motivated by reading two books in the last few months – Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy by Stephen Wertheim, a former student of mine; and Cold War: An International History by Carole Fink, a friend here in Wilmington. More recently, I’ve been reading and discussing the book American Midnight by Adam Hochschild, which recounts the US entrance into WWI and the aftermath of that war, a period that is glossed over when it comes to teaching in this country. All three have helped me unmask some of the myths about our history with regard to foreign policy and its relationship to systemic racism.. And, of course, I owe a great deal to the dean of American historians, Howard Zinn.

I hope you will read the analysis and if it makes sense, disseminate it broadly. And please take the time to comment and criticize this and my other posts.

The War to End all Wars

In August of 1914, the capitalist nations of Europe were plunged into World War I, which would directly result in the deaths of more than 16 million people, 7 million of whom were civilians, and contribute to the deaths of 50 million more in the 1918-19 flu epidemic. While the causes of the war were complex, underlying all was the imperialist competition for empire, primarily between the British and their ally, the French, the reigning imperial powers (who had almost gone to war in 1898 during the Fashoda crisis, but ended up settling their imperial claims in central Africa as a result of their mutual fear of the ascending power of Germany) and the Germans, the “new kid on the block”.

The war followed 100 years of “peace” in Europe sometimes known as the Pax Britannica (although some might say the Pox Britannica), as capitalism developed and then spread unevenly across the continent, as well as in the US and towards the end of the 19^th century, in Japan. Increasingly, internal developments in the major capitalist powers (including periodic and worsening depressions, exhaustion of natural resources and the development of labor movements and a socialist left), led them to expand their reach beyond their borders into less developed areas in Europe and the Middle East, and in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In some cases, the expansion was accomplished through investment, in many through outright colonization and violent conquest.  Capitalism had evolved (or perhaps devolved) into what J.A. Hobson and later V.I. Lenin termed imperialism.

Accompanying the transformation of capitalism was the rise of nationalism. Unleashed by the Napoleonic Wars in the early 19^th century, it frequently provided a unifying force which bound together the capitalist class and the working class of each nation. In the advanced capitalist nations of Europe, this proved to be effective in suppressing class struggle and in marrying the two opposing classes behind the goals of the imperialists and ultimately in support of the slaughter of WWI. (Aside: In the post WWII period, nationalist unity would often serve a different role, providing a basis for the liberation movements in the colonies of European nations.)

The Empire of Liberty remained somewhat aloof from the 19^th century imperial competition, i.e., the land grab in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Having established its unquestioned imperial dominance in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific and having built a strong two-ocean navy under the tutelage of Teddy Roosevelt, who never saw a war he didn’t like, it had the luxury of following a policy of isolation from European conflicts, that is, as long as US trade was not affected and, perhaps just as importantly, as long on Britain, with whom the Empire of Liberty had a very special relationship, remained the strongest imperial power and could enforce the Pax Britannica.

But the Great War (WWI) endangered both US trade and British power, particularly by 1917 when the collapse of the Russian army on the Eastern front threatened to end the stalemate and allow for a German victory. As a result, the US entered the war in support of the Allied Powers (aka the Triple Entente), primarily Britain and France, to “make the world safe for democracy.”

This noble goal, which would be repeated over and over in the next 100+ years to justify US wars and military interventions in every corner of the globe, wasn’t enough to convince many young American men to sign up for the military or allow themselves to be drafted, so the Wilson administration, with the assistance of rightwing “citizens” groups, conducted major campaigns to round up and jail vocal opponents to the war and the draft, to make an example of them. Many prominent organizers from the labor movement and the Socialist Party spent years in prison, their crime being that they exercised their supposed freedom of speech.

The US role, as the supplier of weapons and fresh troops at a critical moment, allowed it to emerge from the war as a major political, economic and military world power and offered it a chance to assume leadership in a “new world order”. President Wilson went to the Paris Peace Conference with his 14 points, to argue for a just settlement, a peace without victors, and support for nationalist yearnings for political independence in Europe. His idealism (some might say arrogance) failed to sway the other victorious nations, who demanded reparations from Germany to pay for the war and who worked to dismantle the German, Hapsburg and Ottoman empires and gobble up as much of their respective territories as possible. (Note: While Wilson wanted the peace treaty to make the world safe for democracy, he had not problem with England, France, etc., maintaining and expanding their dominion over colonies in the Global South, and in one case, that of Ireland, in Europe.)

The failure of the Treaty of Versailles to establish a just peace and the US Senate’s decision not to ratify the peace treaty and join the League of Nations, pointed to a return for the US to isolation from European affairs and a refocusing on the Empire of Liberty’s domination of the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific.

Post War Foreign Policy: Isolationism of a Sort

While the period between the two world wars is generally characterized as isolationist, the US, having clearly emerged as a great power, attempted to use its new status to promote Wilson’s idealism on the world stage. It participated in, and in some cases initiated, efforts to establish a peaceful new world order. Notable among these were the Washington Naval Conference to limit navies of the major world powers (1921-22), the Dawes and Young Plans to stabilize Germany’s economy and the Kellogg-Briand Pact, which outlawed war. Much of the involvement might be characterized as making the world safe for US business and trade interests.

But, while the US tread softly in its relations with European powers, it continued its domination south of the border. From 1914 until 1932, the US intervened militarily on dozens of occasions, to protect American investments and to install dictators who would further those interests. Despite announcing the Good Neighbor policy in 1933, the Roosevelt administration continued the domination of Latin America. To avoid military interventions and occupations, the United States trained Latin American national guards and supported dictators, including Trujillo in the Dominican Republic (1930-61), the Somozas in Nicaragua (1933-79) and Batista in Cuba (1934-59).  Referring to Trujillo, FDR noted “He may be an S.O.B., but he’s our S.O.B.” And American corporations continued their exploitation of all of Latin America, not just the Banana Republics, unchallenged.

 

Jim Crow, Immigration Quotas and Consolidation of White Supremacy

This period in US history also saw the complete consolidation of white, Anglo supremacy at home. Prior to the war, the last vestiges of Reconstruction had been eliminated with the breakup of the multiracial political movement which had grown out of the agrarian protests of the post-Civil War era. The coup that ended the Fusion government in Wilmington, NC, the separate but equal decision in Plessy v Ferguson, President Wilson’s segregation of government offices, the movie Birth of a Nation, director D. W. Griffith’s violently anti-black blockbuster film of 1915, and white racist violence in the immediate aftermath of the war (for example, Red Summer, 1919, The Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa, 1921) provided the basis for the social and cultural conflict that resuscitated the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the 1920s and led to what many historians consider the most openly racist period in US history.

By the end of WW I Jim Crow was firmly established in the South. Whereas the original KKK was a violent, racist organization born in the post-Civil War South and directed toward maintaining white planter control over the Freedmen, the “modern” Klan was driven by somewhat broader concerns. Many white, lower middle-class, Protestant Americans in the North and Midwest were fearful that Blacks from the South AND immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were a threat to their traditional Anglo-American culture and to white supremacy.  They viewed Eastern and Southern European immigrants as inferior, and targeted Catholics and Jews as well as Blacks. It is important to note that the two states with possibly the largest Klan presence in the post WWI era were Indiana and New Jersey, not Mississippi and Alabama.

While this modern Klan could easily be as violent as its Reconstruction Era ancestor, it was more fraternal and social, though its brand of socializing was restricted to native-born, Protestant whites. It supported the recently enacted national prohibition on alcoholic beverages and opposed labor unions, immigration, and foreign entanglements such as the League of Nations. Drawing on the populist heritage of many of its members, the Klan leadership attacked Wall Street and big business. Said national Klan leader Hiram Evans, “Increasing economic inequalities threaten the very stability of society.” Unfortunately, much of this sounds vaguely familiar some 100 years later.

One result of this virulent racism was the anti-immigrant legislation known as the National Origins Act of 1924, titled “An Act to limit the immigration of aliens into the United States”. Immigration from Asia and Africa was effectively banned and immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe reduced to a trickle. White, Anglo supremacy was to be guaranteed by keeping “lesser races” out and preserving the racial purity of “native” white Americans. We can certainly see the origins of replacement theory in the turmoil following WWI.

In addition to the populist-based movements in support of maintaining white, Anglo supremacy, many US academics and intellectuals became adherents of the eugenics movement which emerged from England’s upper classes in the later 1800s. While the British eugenicists wanted to promote what they saw as the superior traits of the upper classes through selective breeding, the eugenics movement in the US quickly focused on eliminating “negative” traits. 

Not surprisingly, “undesirable” traits were concentrated in poor, uneducated, and non-Anglo populations. To prevent these groups from propagating, eugenicists helped drive legislation for their forced sterilization. The first state to enact a sterilization law was Indiana in 1907, quickly followed by California and 28 other states by 1931. At first, sterilization efforts focused on the disabled but later grew to include people whose only “crime” was poverty.

These sterilization programs found legal support in an increasingly conservative Supreme Court. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the state of Virginia sought to sterilize Carrie Buck for promiscuity as evidenced by her giving birth to a baby out of wedlock. In ruling against Buck, “progressive” Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes stated, “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.” California’s program was so robust that, after coming to power in Germany, the Nazi’s turned to California for advice in perfecting their own efforts. Hitler proudly admitted to following the laws of several American states that allowed for the prevention of reproduction by the “unfit”.

The triumph of nativism, white supremacy, and unbridled capitalist power in the early 1920s required something else – the weakening of the trade unions and the allied socialist movement. The suppression began in the period leading up to WWI, and focused on the more radical sectors of the labor movement, particularly the IWW, or Wobblies as they were known. The 1919 general strike in Seattle, in which the strikers literally took control of the city, scared the hell out of the capitalists, following as it did so closely on the triumph of workers' soviets in revolutionary Russia. The fact that Eugene Debs, trade union leader and five-time Socialist Party candidate for President, had garnered almost 1 million votes in 1920 while in prison for his opposition to the US entering WWI, added to their concerns. One response was the Palmer Raids utilized by US Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer to suppress radical organizations. They were characterized by illegal search and seizures, politically motivated arrests and detentions, and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals.

With the threat from the left and labor crushed and the return to normalcy after the election of Harding G. Harding in 1920, the Empire of Liberty embarked on the second Gilded Age, aka The Roaring Twenties. There is some truth to the image of this period as one of prosperity; for the 40% of the population whose income was greater than $2,000 a year, the age of mass consumption had arrived. But just like today, Black and white tenant farmers and sharecroppers along with migrants and immigrants, who crammed into tenements in the big cities, etc., were left out. One tenth of one percent at the top received as much income as 40% of the families at the bottom (sounds familiar, doesn’t it) and each year 25,000 workers were killed on the job. Two million New York City residents lived in buildings condemned as firetraps.

In October of 1929 the party (for some) ended. In the next several years the US and much of the world entered the Great Depression, a crisis of capitalism so deep that it resulted in a massive response which took three forms in the US:

1.       The rapid growth of the labor movement, in particular the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and various other forms of collective organizations among the working class;

2.       Political support among some members of the capitalist class for the development of a broad social safety net for significant sectors of the working class (non-whites and women were often left out of the net or received far fewer benefits); and

3.       An attempt to regulate the most egregious actions of capital to prevent another great depression.

Under the pressure of the massive labor movement with strong left leadership and which reached even into the deep South; and spurred by the fear that American workers might look to the socialist Soviet Union, which had escaped the worst ravages of the Great Depression, the capitalist class made concessions that opened up avenues for ordinary Americans to survive.

Despite the triumph of the reformers, the New Deal and Keynesian Economics did not bring the US out of the Great Depression. WWII did. But that’s a story for another day.