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Anti-Imperialism in the 19th Century

Anti-Imperialism in the 19th Century


During the 19th century expansion of the United States, issues of imperialism hovered just beneath the surface of the Manifest Destiny zeitgeist. Although Thomas Jefferson insisted that "we should have nothing to do with conquest", the nation doubled in size during Mr. Jefferson's presidency. While the territorial contiguity and eventual incorporation into the union made the Louisiana Purchase less overtly imperialistic than future expansions, it did not come without controversy. Senator William Plumer, for one, felt that the Louisiana Purchase carried undertones of "a colonial system of government. It is the first the United States has established. It is a bad precedent".

The Mexican-American War, while continuing to expand the nation's borders in a contiguous manner, did involve annexing territory from a neighboring sovereign nation. Again, there were misgivings among the elite. John Quincy Adams feared that "the annexation of Texas and the seizure of Mexican land would make the U.S. a conquering and warlike nation…a large army, a costly navy, distant colonies and associate islands in every sea will follow in rapid succession".

Toward the end of the 19th century, the United States was confronting an unprecedented identity crisis. The industrial revolution, rapid urbanization and the resulting rise of the "lonely crowd", immigrants that did not descend from Anglo-Saxon stock, and the furious pursuit of colonies by European powers all left Americans wondering in a different context than ever before what it meant to be an American.

The United States has always been a nation bound by an ideology of gradually expanding civic inclusion and civil rights rather than ethnicity, religion, or historically populated territories and, as such, identity crises are a recurrent theme in the history of the republic. In addition to the factors mentioned above, the depression of 1893, the gradual disappearance of the romanticized archetype of the yeoman farmer, and unprecedented labor strife led many to entertain the notion that a foreign adventure could serve to rally Americans around a common cause and distract attention from festering domestic fissures. Theodore Roosevelt is the best-known proponent of using war as a bracing community builder rather than seeing it as an evil to be avoided at all costs. As America began to increasingly look beyond its borders, anti-imperialists closed ranks and urged restraint.

Its broad appeal and unlikely bedfellows characterized the anti-imperialist movement, much like its contemporary, the Progressive movement. Also, like Progressivism, the movement's diversity was an initial source of strength, but its contradictions and internal tensions may have been responsible for the collapse of the movement before the full achievement of its goals.

It is imperative to note that Progressives and anti-Imperialists were by no means aligned by their ideologies; Indeed, most Progressive members of the United States Congress consistently voted in favor of imperialist measures. Many Progressives betrayed the racism and chauvinism common among imperialists when speaking of the logic of colonial rule. Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana, champion of meat inspection, child labor laws, eight-hour workdays, and trust regulation, apparently left his altruism at the nation's borders. "The rule of liberty, that all just governments derive their authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government".

The varied membership of the Anti-Imperialist League, formed in November of 1898, is indicative of the many different grounds that were employed to articulate opposition to the pursuit of empire. Religious leaders bristled at the imperialists' tendency to associate the cross with the cannon. Labor leaders feared that colonies would be used to provide cheap labor, to the clear detriment of American workers. Military officers warned against the acquisition of distant territories that would be exceedingly difficult and expensive to defend. Politicians in both major parties, though mostly Democrats, feared that a pursuit of empire would mortally wound the very tenets and foundation of the republic. Lawyers and scholars were appalled by the idea of governing alien populations that would not be protected by the constitution and incorporated into the union. Still others worried that if foreign populations were accepted as full members of the union, savages and apostates would overrun the halls of congress. Among the League's several honorary vice-presidents were Andrew Carnegie, Grover Cleveland, and Samuel Gompers. Rarely, if ever, had such giants of industry, politics, and labor rallied around a common cause.

Proponents of empire asserted that there was a direct link between the westward expansion of the United States throughout the 19th century and the pursuit of an overseas empire after the domestic frontier was deemed "closed" in 1890. In other words, the imperialist expansion most clearly illustrated by the Spanish-American War was simply the logical continuation of the more traditional, and less controversial, embrace of Manifest Destiny on the North American continent. The anti-imperialists' rhetoric concentrated on pointing out the political, economic, and moral differences between expanding the nation's contiguous boundaries and colonizing foreign populations thousands of miles from its shores.

Much of Manifest Destiny's appeal centered on the dishonest, yet not wholly absurd, notion that the North American continent was sparsely inhabited when Europeans first settled it. While Native Americans may have taken exception to this idea, the fact is that there were few enough of them that the United States was able to displace, absorb, or wipe them out without fundamentally altering the size or roll of the federal government. This mythic concept of land for the taking clearly did not apply to the Philippines, for example; to conquer the Philippines, an expeditionary military force would need to be sent thousands of miles from home and would have far more "natives" to subdue. In addition, a permanent standing army and navy would now be needed, a drastic departure from American precedence.
Even if this subjugation and colonization were to come quickly and easily, the Philippines were hardly contiguous with the United States. The federal government would have to be tasked with defending territory far from its shores, another prospect with no precedent in American history. While consolidating the breadth of the North American continent into one contiguous nation could be argued to have made that nation easier to defend from external forces, the colonization of foreign territories seemed only, to anti-imperialists, to provide isolated American provinces that could more easily be attacked by potential enemies. From this perspective, colonies would serve to make foreign wars much more likely. Fervent imperialists like Senator Beveridge of Indiana felt that American might could transcend such geographical technicalities. "Cuba not contiguous? Porto Rico not contiguous? The Philippines not contiguous? Our navy will make them contiguous!…American guns, American heart and brain and nerve will keep them contiguous forever".

Imperialists forwarded a variety of justifications for the pursuit of empire. Prevalent among them were the economic fortitude of a newly industrialized nation, the urge to compete with the rapidly expanding European empires of the late 19th century, the pseudo-scientific theories of eugenics and social Darwinism that were in vogue with contemporary European colonialists , the further pursuit of Manifest Destiny, and the spread of Christianity. E. Berkeley Tompkins has called this array of motives "Darwinism, deity, duty, destiny".

The "deity" motivation drew especially vitriolic denunciations from anti-imperialists. Presbyterian minister Charles H. Parkhurst opined that, "it is a novel idea that the reign of Jesus is to be widened in the world under the protection of shells and dynamite". Bishop John Spaulding spoke of the populations of conquered lands. "To say that they are unfit for freedom is to put forth the plea of the tyrant in all ages and everywhere". William Jennings Bryan, populist, Democratic presidential candidate, and famed defender of biblical inerrancy, noted that, "imperialism finds no warrant in the Bible…Love, not force, was the weapon of the Nazarene; sacrifice for others, not the exploitation of them, was His method of reaching the human heart".

As for the "duty" argument, Bryan skewered this approach in a missive that deserves to be quoted at length.

Imperialism finds it inspiration in dollars, not in duty. It is not our duty to burden our people with increased taxes in order to give a few speculators an opportunity for exploitation; it is not our duty to sacrifice the best blood of our nation in tropical jungles in an attempt to stifle the very sentiments which have given vitality to American institutions; it is not our duty to deny the people of the Philippines the rights for which our forefathers fought from Bunker Hill to Yorktown…not to place shackles on those who are struggling to be free.

The economic exploitation of newly conquered territories was the aspect of imperialism that Bryan focused on most often. "Whether a man steals much or little may depend upon his opportunities, but whether he steals at all depends on his own volition".

Along with the opportunities that imperialism facilitated for the aggressive expansion of capital, the institution of a standing army also troubled Bryan deeply. Many anti-imperialists shared his conviction that the presence of a permanent military establishment would threaten fundamental republican tenets by strengthening the federal government, increasing taxes, and making war more attractive to the recipients of those monies. "Militarism is the very antithesis of Democracy; they do not grow in the same soil; they do not draw their nourishment from the same source". Bryan and other like-minded patriots felt that one of the most important checks on centralized power was to deny that power the presence of a standing, professional military force that could be called upon to do the bidding of said power; a situation in which the government's only recourse in times of trouble is to call upon its citizens to volunteer guarantees that the government must have a case for war which is compelling to the citizenry; such a government is far less able to engage in expansionist misadventure. In short, Bryan feared the specter of a mercenary army.

Aside from economic exploitation, which Bryan felt stood to benefit the business elite, and the fear of mercenary armies acting in the name of the republic, Bryan's third central theme was the coming-of-age of the nation as an international actor. Imperialists and anti-imperialists alike acknowledged that the magnitude of the moment was not random; the only reason imperialism was even on the table for discussion was that the nation had the newly acquired industrial might and territorial integrity that enabled it to pursue such a course of action should it be deemed justified.

While imperialists felt that such adolescent tenets as domestic primacy and diplomatic independence should be cast aside as the nation entered adulthood, anti-imperialists felt that the lessons and warnings of the founding fathers were more important at the turn of hthe 20th century than ever before. Drawing this metaphor out, Bryan acknowledged that newly independent young adults are wholly free to renounce their parents, reject their advice, and see how much they can get away with, but they could not erase the consequences of their actions. In Bryan's parlance, as powerful as the United States may become, it could never "annul the sentence, 'the wages of sin is death'".

While both imperialists and anti-imperialists generally took American greatness and goodness as objective certainties, they differed fundamentally on how best to employ those virtues. Anti-imperialists thought it righteous to lead by example and urged a course advocated by John Quincy Adams. On the 4th of July in 1821, Adams, then Secretary of State, spoke of America's role in the world. "She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own…She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. America's glory is not dominion, but liberty". Imperialists, on the other hand, thought it a crime to have such greatness and not "use" it proactively to spread the American dream to the more uncivilized corners of the Earth.

Perhaps the favorite rhetorical bludgeon of the anti-imperialists was George Washington's Farewell Address from 1796. Warning against becoming embroiled in the vagaries of colonialism or permanent alliances, Washington intoned that, "it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships and enmities…Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground?" The "her" to whom Washington referred in this context was Europe, but the anti-imperialists expropriated this limited sentiment and applied it to serve as a warning against any and all foreign entanglements.

Posted by: Helen P. Nash

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