In class, I say:
“By the 1890s, Spain was a crumbling old Empire that was barely managing to hold on to the remnants of its imperial possessions. However, at this time, there was a country that had accumulated enough economic and military resources to enable it to declare its intentions to become the new world power. This country attacked the Spanish Empire in a highly symbolic gesture that inaugurated the beginning of a new world order. This country would become a new empire that will dominate the politics of the XXth century with its imperial aspirations. What country am I talking about?”*
The only students in both sections who knew the answer had names like Esteban Garcia and Josefina Vasquez. The rest of the students suggested Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.
Draw your own conclusions.
* I know the language sounds bombastic and very different from the way I normally speak. But the lecture was in Spanish, and I’m trying to translate what I said as closely as possible to the original.
Clarissa's Blog 
The US?
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Ah, so there is an American who knows. 🙂
Once again, I wish you were among my students. 🙂
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I’m honestly surprised that so few of your students knew the answer. It’s the Spanish-American War! It played a huge role in determining American foreign policy precedents! Everything we did there has had some lasting impact on current policy. All American high school students should have learned that at some point.
As for the other countries named, the twentieth century saw the British empire in pieces, neither France nor Italy ever really had an empire that I can recall, Germany’s attempt at imperialism was shut down, and Russia is just so geographically isolated from both Spain and its colonies, it wouldn’t make sense to just up and attack Spain. Perhaps they were thinking of World Wars I and II? Those two get drilled into kids’ heads for years while everything else seems to be ignored.
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I would not have gotten the answer right, but then, I was not thinking hard enough about WHERE the Spanish Empire was located (as opposed to where Spain is located)
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“new empire that will dominate the politics of the XXth century with its imperial aspirations.”
This is utterly clear!
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You’d think so, but then again, you are not American. 🙂
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Don’t go ’round using the word “imperial” to describe America too much, Clarissa. You’ll begin to sound like a communist. 😛
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I was planning to introduce the idea of the Cold War as a struggle between the two empires later on in the course. I hope that makes things better. 🙂
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Imperial is a highly unfair word to use for america … i know.. i know… I suspect their will be many accusations of me being a dunce… but i will describe why I don’t think history supports this claim later tonight.. just had to comment with my vehement disagreement right now!
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Make sure you remember the difference between the “old” empires (that invade, conquer, and make the conquered space officially part of their own territory) and the “new” empires that dispense with such formal way of taking possession.
I highly recommend Zygmunt Bauman’s Liquid Modernity that explores this distinction.
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I will have to read Liquid Modernity to see that theory.. because you are certainly right the US was DEF. not the modern empire:
Just a few examples:
WWI: Woodrow Wilson was practically dragged into the war late (1917).. Isolationism was the US stance
WWII: The US was brilliant with rebuilding Europe (Marshall Plan) and Japan as well.. very anti-empire
Korea & Vietnam were proxy wars in the ultimately successful US war against USSR & communism.
I know I may sound like an American just beating our chest.. but I think I have proven over the last few months that I am rational and a serious thinker, and I do think the US has done a lot wrong… but it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to think of another nation who has done more right!
There are more examples I can give, but that is sufficient to show the US is impossibly far from the historical imperialism.. but I will reference the new theory you mentioned.
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“I do think the US has done a lot wrong… but it is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to think of another nation who has done more right!”
– I can think of many. Say, Costa Rica. Barely invaded anybody, dropped no bombs on anybody, never unleashed nuclear weapons on anybody. Or Ukraine. Again, never invaded a soul. Put up with a lot of mistreatment but did not lash out in violence and anger against anybody in return. Or New Zealand. They just sit there, minding their own business. I don’t think we can find even 2 nations who have serious grievances against the countries I just listed.
(I might be wrong on New Zealand, so feel free to correct me. I confess that my knowledge is limited.)
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Clarissa, can you or someone give me a brief idea of how Liquid Modernity applies to imperialism?
From the first few summaries I read it appears to be a critique on the changing, dynamic, “cut-throat” and capitalistic world we live in..
I don’t see the connection (but perhaps I am just dense .. 🙂 ) lol
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If not for the US do you really think Ukraine would even be its own country today?
And without the mighty US either Japan or Germany might be ruling the world in an utterly horrifying way.
I guess we just see the world differently…
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What does Ukraine have to do with the US??? Thank God, you folks never invaded us, at least. 🙂
Ukraine was its own country until 1665 and then between 1918 and 1921 and again from 1991. Our national identity started way before the US identity.
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And without the mighty US either Japan or Germany might be ruling the world in an utterly horrifying way.(Matt)
Well I guess its a good thing you decided to come to the party. You do realize some of us were at it quite a while before you. 😉
Here is a little reminder of how great you really are.
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“And without the mighty US either Japan or Germany might be ruling the world in an utterly horrifying way.”
– WWII was won by the Soviet Union while the Americans sat by, scared like sad little babies. 🙂
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Now, now Clarissa. My family was right in there too. In fact, I think we Canadians made quite a showing in both of the Big Wars. 🙂
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It seemed pretty obvious you meant the U.S., but the “highly symbolic gesture” made me think it was a trick question, since wanting and getting Puerto Rico and the Philippines seemed more tangible than symbolic. So I started questioning my correctness and wondering if there was some really big event in the 1890’s that I had totally forgotten about.
And although it was just a blog post, I was worried about embarrassing myself by even thinking the U.S. and being wrong. It is funny how being away from schools and test fors decades, how easily I slip into my poor test taking habits like talking myself out of the correct answer.
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As a Californian whose Grandmother’s ancestors grew up there under the Spanish and Mexican flags, I have no trouble answering that question!
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I knew the answer, but I thought the Spanish Empire started collapsing in the 1580’s.
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You are absolutely right, it started declining pretty early but still managed to drag it out until the first decades of the XIXth century when colonies started liberating themselves rapidly..
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I’m not an American, but I would guess that the failure to respond accurately has more to do with the fact that most Americans are not used to thinking of their country, for all of its power, as being an “empire” than it does with any particular historical illiteracy on their part.
In fact, many of them seem personally offended when foreigners refer to their country in ‘imperial’ terms–even if the foreigners in question are intending this as a compliment (see, for example, this post on Niall Ferguson: http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.ca/2012/08/niall-british-empire-is-over-accept-it.html )
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” I would guess that the failure to respond accurately has more to do with the fact that most Americans are not used to thinking of their country, for all of its power, as being an “empire” than it does with any particular historical illiteracy on their part.”
– You are absolutely right. These students all know about the Spanish-American war because they’ve been hearing about it for years in a variety of courses. It was the word “empire” that threw them.
“He seems to have been especially enchanted by that magic moment in 2003 and 2004, when it seemed that under George W. Bush and the neoconservatives, America was finally taking up the mantle of empire.”
– FINALLY taking? The ignorance is daunting.
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“FINALLY taking? The ignorance is daunting.”
The author must be talking about official rhetoric rather than actions, because otherwise this statement makes no sense.
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Does anybody even doubt that Roosevelt was an imperialist, and a very outspoken one, too. He fully subscribed to the “white man’s burden” and was unapologetic about it. Of course, I’m guessing this is not taught in American high schools.
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I would guess that the failure to respond accurately has more to do with the fact that most Americans are not used to thinking of their country, for all of its power, as being an “empire” than it does with any particular historical illiteracy on their part.
I think that not thinking of the U. S. as being an empire is precisely what constitutes historical illiteracy in present day America.
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This is a very good point, David.
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Please, can someone describe how the US is an empire? Have yet to see very good examples of it. Even Iraq, which while a bad war to get into.. was not an empire-like activty.
We spend $1 trillion.. lose life.. and then leave? How is this an empire?
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Read this book, it might be an Eye opener.
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“A new consciousness seems to have come upon us—the consciousness of strength—and with it a new appetite, the yearning to show our strength…. Ambition, interest, land hunger, pride, the mere joy of fighting, whatever it may be, we are animated by a new sensation. We are face to face with a strange destiny. The taste of Empire is in the mouth of the people even as the taste of blood in the jungle…. .”
This is an excerpt from an editorial that appeared in Washington Post before the Spanish-American war. So when I refer to the US as a country that panted to become an empire at that time, I only repeat what the media in the country said openly. Those who want to argue should go argue with historical evidence.
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Definitiely an interesting quote.. and perhaps that was the sentiment of some (or maybe many… I truly don’t know)…
But… for the next 40 years the US was known for its isolationism… I don’t want to seem like I am trolling.. but I really think I am right on this one.
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I’m tired right now (this new heat wave will finish me off!), so I’ll just offer a few quotes from Greg Grandin’s book Empire’s Workshop:
“Latin America has long served as a workshop of Empire, the place where the US elaborated tactics of extraterritorial administration and acquired its conception of itself as an empire like no other before it. The Western Hemisphere was to be the staging ground for a new “empire for liberty”. . . Unlike European empires, ours was supposed to entail a concert of equal, sovereign democratic American republics, with shared interests and values, led but not dominated by the US – a conception of empire that remains Washington’s guiding vision.”
“It was during these first decades of the twentieth century, as the United States developed the rudiments of its exceptional, nonterritorial conception of empire, that the idea that national security, overseas capitalist development, and global democratic reform were indivisible goals began to seep into the sinews of American diplomacy.”
“The Good Neighbor policy was the model for the European and Asian alliance system, providing a blueprint for America’s “empire by invitation,” as one historian famously described Washington’s rise to unprecedented heights of world power. But even as Washington was working out the contours of its kinder, gentler empire in postwar Western Europe and Japan, back in the birthplace of American soft power it was rearming. Latin America once again became a school where the US studied how to execute imperial powers through proxies. . . By the end of the Cold War, Lat. Am. security forces trained, funded, equipped, and incited by Washington had executed a reign of bloody terror – hundreds of thousands killed, an equal number tortured, millions driven into exile – from which the region has yet to fully recover..”
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Maybe it will be a good idea to post my thoughts for the lectures on Lat. Am. conflicts I will be giving this semester.
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