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The American Empire
I. THE PROMISE OF 1776
1. _The American Republic_
The genius of revolution presided at the birth of the American Republic,
whose first breath was drawn amid the economic, social and political
turmoil of the eighteenth century. The voyaging and discovering of the
three preceding centuries had destroyed European isolation and laid the
foundation for a new world order of society. The Industrial Revolution
was convulsing England and threatening to destroy the Feudal State.
Western civilization, in the birthpangs of social revolution, produced
first the American and then the French Republic.
Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression,
despotism, tyranny--these and all other devils of the old world order
were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social
institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the
new order,--challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
1. _The American Republic_
The genius of revolution presided at the birth of the American Republic,
whose first breath was drawn amid the economic, social and political
turmoil of the eighteenth century. The voyaging and discovering of the
three preceding centuries had destroyed European isolation and laid the
foundation for a new world order of society. The Industrial Revolution
was convulsing England and threatening to destroy the Feudal State.
Western civilization, in the birthpangs of social revolution, produced
first the American and then the French Republic.
Feudalism was dying! Divine right, monarchy, aristocracy, oppression,
despotism, tyranny--these and all other devils of the old world order
were bound for the limbo which awaits outworn, discredited social
institutions. The Declaration of Independence officially proclaimed the
new order,--challenging "divine right" and maintaining that "all men are
created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."
- GenresHistory
274 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1922
About the author
Scott Nearing
333 books15 followersScott Nearing (1883-1983) was an American conservationist, peace activist, educator and writer. Born in Kittanning, Pennsylvania, Nearing is still viewed as a radical 20 years after his death. In 1954 he co-authored Living the Good Life: How to Live Simply and Sanely in a Troubled World with his wife Helen. The book, in which war, famine and poverty were discussed, described a nineteen-year "back to the land experiment" and also advocated a modern day "homesteading." Nearing's anti-war activities cost him two teaching jobs, and he was even charged under the Espionage Act for opposing the First World War.
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March 28, 2026
The American Empire by Scott Nearing was published in 1921. This is important. The book was thus written soon after the cessation of hostilities in World War I, after the Bolshevik coup in Russia and more than twenty years after the Spanish American War which provided the United States with one of vast overseas colony, the Philippines. Those three events, Scott Nearing argues, are crucial if his book’s argument is to carry any credibility.
Early on, Scott Nearing identifies four characteristics of empires. These are:
1 Conquered territory
2 Subject peoples
3 An imperial or ruling class.
4 The exploitation of the subject peoples and the conquered territory for the benefit of the ruling class.
Scott Nearing argues that these conditions had all been satisfied by the end of the nineteenth century in the United States and that the events that unfolded in the early twentieth century confirmed the reality of the empire and illustrated its world dominance.
For a twenty-first century reader, the author’s starting point might be surprising. He starts with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and thus with the United States still in the form of those territories in the north-east and along the Atlantic coast. He illustrates how during the nineteenth century the United States grew by amongst other things, the Louisiana Purchase, the Florida Purchase and the Mexican War to a size that the founding fathers would never have envisaged. He makes the point that this new territory was already occupied by indigenous people who considered themselves independent nations. He also makes the point that they collectively had a very different concept of “ownership” of that territory from the European settlers and their descendants. This allowed settlers and legislators to go west and south from New England and to claim “ownership” of that territory below the market value that capitalism would later ascribe to it and occupy it easily compared to the warfare and negotiated trading relations that the European powers had to endure in order to establish their own empires.
Scott Nearing, therefore, satisfies the first three points in the establishment of an empire before anyone had ventured outside of what we now recognize as the boundaries of the United States.
The ruling class which owned this potentially exploitable land were initially simply the landowners themselves. This changed into a property-owning plutocracy throughout the nineteenth century. The author argues that point 4 of his conditions for Empire was established also in the nineteenth century when the slave trade supplied many tens of thousands of workers who laboured to enrich the landowners without citizen rights.
.
The author’s analysis of the level of extraction of natural resources and the production of industrial products is nothing less than astounding. Commodity after commodity is listed with accompanying quantitative data to illustrate that the expanded United States, within its own sphere of influence, grew massively throughout the nineteenth century and especially after the Civil War. The Monroe Doctrine may have been conceived as a defensive measure, but the author argues that its enforcement effectively gave the western hemisphere to the capitalist class of the United States to exploit. This they did, knowing that the empires of France and Great Britain would not gain a foothold in their territory. Thus this allowed the United States to expand its production and dispose of its surplus without resort to the costly warfare that the other empires had to endure.
By the time the Spanish American war was fought in 1898, the United States was already globally so powerful that it already could not be challenged. The war also, as has been stated, gave the United States substantial overseas colonies. Scott Nearing would claim that imperial status was thus already achieved by the turn of the twentieth century.
But just fifteen years later, the European empires were at war with one another. An emergent Germany wanted to create its own imperial status and Great Britain, France and Russia resisted. This led to several crucial consequences. Russia dissolved into revolution and Bolshevik takeover. This gave Scott Nearing and other American communists an example of an ideal that could be worked towards. Eventual victory in World War I granted Great Britain control over many of the Ottoman positions, which meant that Africa, the Middle East and Asia were effectively under the control of the British Empire. But that empire, along with that France Italy had been bankrupted by the Great War. In addition, France and Italy now lacked the military power to sustain their empires and while Britain still possessed military night, it lacked capital. The United States had entered the war as late as 1917, had not expended much in the way of manpower or capital, and indeed, via loans and grants to the European powers was a major creditor to their debts that those powers had built up.
It has to be said that Scott Nearing’s analysis up to here was both sound and convincing. What follows is both repetitive and less than convincing, and involves much philosophising and moralising about the state of workers within the existing empires. He sees a bright future for Great Britain via the continued efforts of labour unions but warns that the plutocrats who control capital in the imperial structures already give the impression of being all powerful.
In a parallel to contemporary events, the author devotes some time to examining how the United States created an independent Panama around the construction of the canal by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. It was telling how the European powers did not try to intervene, either military or politically. The power of the United States was already unchallengeable.
For a contemporary reader, Scott Nearing’s analysis will ring very true if that reader is sympathetic with global socialism. A confirmed free marketer will feel frustrated at every point the author makes, because it is stating the obvious, and that obvious is desirable. The author’s analysis, however, does anticipate a time when the United States would “go it alone” and belittle the contributions offered by once allied states.
Scott Nearing’s The American Empire is worthy of contemporary reader’s attention, even if that reader is likely to disagree. Indeed, as an analysis of the way Americans think about the actions of their government, it is still relevant. Early on Nearing states that the “American people are, for the most part, unaware of the imperial position of their country. They still feel, think and talk as if the United States were a tiny corner, fenced off from the rest of the world to which it owed nothing and from which it expected nothing.” One wonders what might have changed in a century.
Early on, Scott Nearing identifies four characteristics of empires. These are:
1 Conquered territory
2 Subject peoples
3 An imperial or ruling class.
4 The exploitation of the subject peoples and the conquered territory for the benefit of the ruling class.
Scott Nearing argues that these conditions had all been satisfied by the end of the nineteenth century in the United States and that the events that unfolded in the early twentieth century confirmed the reality of the empire and illustrated its world dominance.
For a twenty-first century reader, the author’s starting point might be surprising. He starts with the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and thus with the United States still in the form of those territories in the north-east and along the Atlantic coast. He illustrates how during the nineteenth century the United States grew by amongst other things, the Louisiana Purchase, the Florida Purchase and the Mexican War to a size that the founding fathers would never have envisaged. He makes the point that this new territory was already occupied by indigenous people who considered themselves independent nations. He also makes the point that they collectively had a very different concept of “ownership” of that territory from the European settlers and their descendants. This allowed settlers and legislators to go west and south from New England and to claim “ownership” of that territory below the market value that capitalism would later ascribe to it and occupy it easily compared to the warfare and negotiated trading relations that the European powers had to endure in order to establish their own empires.
Scott Nearing, therefore, satisfies the first three points in the establishment of an empire before anyone had ventured outside of what we now recognize as the boundaries of the United States.
The ruling class which owned this potentially exploitable land were initially simply the landowners themselves. This changed into a property-owning plutocracy throughout the nineteenth century. The author argues that point 4 of his conditions for Empire was established also in the nineteenth century when the slave trade supplied many tens of thousands of workers who laboured to enrich the landowners without citizen rights.
.
The author’s analysis of the level of extraction of natural resources and the production of industrial products is nothing less than astounding. Commodity after commodity is listed with accompanying quantitative data to illustrate that the expanded United States, within its own sphere of influence, grew massively throughout the nineteenth century and especially after the Civil War. The Monroe Doctrine may have been conceived as a defensive measure, but the author argues that its enforcement effectively gave the western hemisphere to the capitalist class of the United States to exploit. This they did, knowing that the empires of France and Great Britain would not gain a foothold in their territory. Thus this allowed the United States to expand its production and dispose of its surplus without resort to the costly warfare that the other empires had to endure.
By the time the Spanish American war was fought in 1898, the United States was already globally so powerful that it already could not be challenged. The war also, as has been stated, gave the United States substantial overseas colonies. Scott Nearing would claim that imperial status was thus already achieved by the turn of the twentieth century.
But just fifteen years later, the European empires were at war with one another. An emergent Germany wanted to create its own imperial status and Great Britain, France and Russia resisted. This led to several crucial consequences. Russia dissolved into revolution and Bolshevik takeover. This gave Scott Nearing and other American communists an example of an ideal that could be worked towards. Eventual victory in World War I granted Great Britain control over many of the Ottoman positions, which meant that Africa, the Middle East and Asia were effectively under the control of the British Empire. But that empire, along with that France Italy had been bankrupted by the Great War. In addition, France and Italy now lacked the military power to sustain their empires and while Britain still possessed military night, it lacked capital. The United States had entered the war as late as 1917, had not expended much in the way of manpower or capital, and indeed, via loans and grants to the European powers was a major creditor to their debts that those powers had built up.
It has to be said that Scott Nearing’s analysis up to here was both sound and convincing. What follows is both repetitive and less than convincing, and involves much philosophising and moralising about the state of workers within the existing empires. He sees a bright future for Great Britain via the continued efforts of labour unions but warns that the plutocrats who control capital in the imperial structures already give the impression of being all powerful.
In a parallel to contemporary events, the author devotes some time to examining how the United States created an independent Panama around the construction of the canal by Theodore Roosevelt in 1902. It was telling how the European powers did not try to intervene, either military or politically. The power of the United States was already unchallengeable.
For a contemporary reader, Scott Nearing’s analysis will ring very true if that reader is sympathetic with global socialism. A confirmed free marketer will feel frustrated at every point the author makes, because it is stating the obvious, and that obvious is desirable. The author’s analysis, however, does anticipate a time when the United States would “go it alone” and belittle the contributions offered by once allied states.
Scott Nearing’s The American Empire is worthy of contemporary reader’s attention, even if that reader is likely to disagree. Indeed, as an analysis of the way Americans think about the actions of their government, it is still relevant. Early on Nearing states that the “American people are, for the most part, unaware of the imperial position of their country. They still feel, think and talk as if the United States were a tiny corner, fenced off from the rest of the world to which it owed nothing and from which it expected nothing.” One wonders what might have changed in a century.
Displaying 1 of 1 review