REVIEW BY STAS MARGARONIS, RBTUS
THE IMPORTANCE OF HISTORY
In an era when world leaders and companies communicate through Twitter and Facebook, it is not surprising that some U.S. universities and colleges are cutting back on the teaching of subjects such as history.
As part of today’s commercial reality, it seems out of fashion to seek truth through historical facts that don’t seem relevant to the goal of making money. So, the value of history as a means of understanding our past, present and future is losing its value as institutions of higher learning seek to make education more “relevant.”
Nevertheless, the understanding of history makes people more educated about truth versus fiction and fake news versus real news. It is critical to citizenship everywhere.
EMPIRE BUILDING AND THE UNITED STATES
The example of AMERICAN EMPIRE: A GLOBAL HISTORY, is instructive.
A.G. Hopkins’ history focuses on parallels of imperial and territorial expansion by the United States that follow European examples, mostly notably Britain and the British Empire. He also argues that American territorial expansionism developed at about the same time as slave-owning states of the South supported anti-democratic provisions within the U.S. constitution to protect slavery and keep the federal government weak. The intent was to support states’ rights, which seemed innocent enough, until we see that some of these states supported racist and elitist interests that continue to undermine U.S. democracy to the present day.
A.G. Hopkins, a retired Commonwealth History professor at Cambridge University, who also held a history chair at the University of Texas at Austin, has written a 738-page history which begins with a brief history of Britain’s invasion of Iraq in 1915 and ends with the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. In both cases, he says, Britain and the United States were motivated by failed attempts to impose their values on Iraqis He cites the two experiences “as a parable on the rise and fall of empires” in which the United States has followed in Britain’s imperial footsteps.[1]
In 2003 when the United States invaded Iraq, Hopkins writes that American “confident assertions were wholly mistaken. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no post war plan, either. The Pentagon had assumed, wrongly, that Iraqis would welcome their liberators and that the removal of Saddam Hussein would be sufficient to turn Iraq towards its prescribed democratic destination. Yet, the second anniversary of the destruction of Saddam Hussein’s statue saw a massive demonstration in Baghdad against the U.S. occupation. The “insurgency” was underway. By the time the United States withdrew its troops in 2011, 4,488 soldiers had been killed and 32,000 wounded. The cost of the operation was heading toward U.S. $ 3 trillion.”[2]
Hopkins makes the imperial parallel by going back to the early days of the United States when U.S. troops invaded and acquired Native-American lands, invaded Mexico and annexed territories including California. The United States also annexed Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Only the Philippines has become independent.
He argues that the United States was motivated by the same Anglo-Saxon Protestant ideology of white supremacy that motivated British Imperialists to invade and acquire colonies in Africa and Asia. Even so, Britain abolished slavery in the British Empire in 1833, thirty-two years before the United States.[3]
These are disquieting reminders to the self-image Americans have of their country being anti-colonial, supporting democracy and self-determination for countries around the world.
So maybe there is a value in studying and teaching history?
SLAVE-OWNING STATES OPPOSE A STRONG FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Hopkins takes us back to the establishment of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 to show that the United States began its life accepting constitutional provisions that protected the interests of slave-owner dominated states:
“The Constitution provided the minimum condition for viability by creating what has been called a ‘peace pact’ among the constituent states. Despite considerable differences and mutual suspicions, the states compromised because a federation was preferable to the likelihood of interstate conflict and the menacing prospect of re-annexation by foreign powers. The federal government was designed, not as the basis of a national government, but as the means of insuring stability and harmony among the Republic’s diverse constituents. The continuing sense of insecurity was heightened by populous protest against taxation, fears in Southern states about their ability to control slave revolts, and concerns about the evident determination of Native Americans to halt westward expansion.”[4]
Hopkins notes that the U.S. constitution was “one of the great political compromises of the modern era. It established a federal government with the power to collect taxes, contract sovereign debts, regulate interstate and international relations, and raise an army. The reach of the federal government, though greatly extended, was also checked by provisions that confirmed the right of constituent states to decide their internal affairs. The Constitution provided for a president, two houses of Congress, and a judiciary headed by a Supreme Court. The president was to be selected by an electoral college rather than by popular vote. Membership of the Senate was determined by the number of states, which were allocated two seats each irrespective of their size……… Seats in the House of Representatives were apportioned according to the size of the population….”[5]
CONSTITUTIONAL PROVISIONS AID SLAVERY
The compromises in the Constitution had the real effect of aiding pro-slavery interests:
“ As a result, Southern states had disproportionate influence on the presidency, the speakership of the House, and the Supreme Court in the period prior to the Civil War. Along with this must be considered the number of slave and free states, which remained mostly equal until 1850, safeguarding the Southern bloc in the Senate as well as Electoral College votes.” [6]
Southern slave interests pioneered the gerrymandering of federal elections by enacting a key provision in the U.S. constitution allowing slave-owning states to count slaves as “three fifths of all other persons.”
The provision was found in Article 1, Section 2, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution:
“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”[7]
This situation caused Alexander Hamilton to charge:
“Much has been said of the impropriety of representing men who have no will of their own…. They are men, though degraded to the condition of slavery. They are persons known to the municipal laws of the states which they inhabit, as well as to the laws of nature. But representation and taxation go together…. Would it be just to impose a singular burden, without conferring some adequate advantage?”[8]
When slavery was abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in 1865, the Three Fifths provision was effectively eliminated.
The control exercised by slave-owning states was aided by the U.S. constitution’s provisions for the “Three-Fifths” rule, the limited representation within the U.S. Senate and the Electoral College whereby the president is elected by state representation and not the direct election of American voters.
QUASI-SLAVERY: THE COMPROMISE OF 1877 AND THE WEAKNESS OF THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
The anti-democratic nature of the Electoral College could be seen in the 2016 election. Donald Trump was elected President of the United States with 304 votes from the Electoral College compared to his opponent Hilary Clinton who won 227 votes, but Clinton won the popular vote of Americans by beating Trump with 2.8 million more actual votes.[9]
Under the leadership of President Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses Grant, the North defeated the South in the Civil War of 1861-1865. Slavery was abolished. Unfortunately, after 1865, northern efforts during post-war Reconstruction aimed at assuring freedom for African-Americans in the southern states were not successful.
Without a popular vote provision, the 1876, the presidential election was deadlocked in the Electoral College. The result was the Compromise of 1877, which continued the last vestiges of slavery until the 1960s:
“Immediately after the presidential election of 1876, it became clear that the outcome of the race hinged largely on disputed returns from Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina – the only three states in the South with Reconstruction-era Republican governments still in power. As a bipartisan congressional commission debated over the outcome early in 1877, allies of the Republican Party candidate Rutherford Hayes met in secret with moderate southern Democrats in order to negotiate acceptance of Hayes’ election. The Democrats agreed not to block Hayes’ victory on the condition that Republicans withdraw all federal troops from the South, thus consolidating Democratic control over the region. As a result of the so-called Compromise of 1877 …. Florida, Louisiana and South Carolina became Democratic once again, effectively marking the end of the Reconstruction era.”[10]
The result was quasi-slavery and segregationist laws were imposed on African-Americans and people of color throughout the South that lasted until 1964.
In 1964, following years of civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King and others, President Lyndon Johnson, a conservative Democratic U.S. Senator from Texas, prevailed upon Congress to enact the 1964 Civil Rights Act that made discrimination illegal. Johnson subsequently prevailed in passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed African-Americans and all people regardless of race, color or creed the right to vote. This ended discriminatory voting practices.
Or so it seemed. In the years after 1964, opponents of the Civil Rights Act, mobilized white voters from the South and other states to coalesce around a new conservative Republican coalition that has grown more aggressive in attacking and undermining civil rights and voting rights and the role of the federal government.
FREE TRADE AND ANTI-FEDERALISM POLICIES CONTINUE U.S. DEPENDENCE ON BRITAIN
Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, was a supporter of the French Revolution but also a slave-owner. As a writer, politician and president, Jefferson sought to keep the federal government from obtaining too much power. While president, he was successful in doubling U. S. territory through the 1803 Louisiana Purchase, but he also pursued a policy that “was to make the Republic more, not less, dependent on commercial relations with Britain, the former colonial power and major trading partner, and to diminish the prospects of securing economic independence.”[11]
In contrast to Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, “founded the First Bank of the United States, established the national debt, a federal tax system, a monetary union based on a uniform dollar currency, a securities market and drew up plans for developing domestic manufactures.”[12]
Hamilton outlined his ideas for subsidies to support American manufacturing and greater U.S. economic independence in his 1791 “Report on Manufactures.” Hopkins described the report as a “pioneering work” in national economic development strategy that included tariffs on foreign imports. These provisions and, especially high tariffs, were opposed by Southerners. Jefferson feared Hamilton would encourage investing in free labor manufacturing in the North to compete with slave labor in the South.
In 1832, Democratic President Andrew Jackson’s loyalty to fellow Southerners led him to abolish a later version of the Bank of the United States by refusing to extend its charter and transferred government deposits to various state banks instead. Hopkins says Jackson followed the Jefferson tradition of hostility to the Bank and hostility to higher tariffs that Hamilton had promoted:
“Unlike Jefferson, however, Jackson was not opposed to all banks: his objection was to what he saw as the unchecked growth of a national corporation that had become a rival power center with roots in the North. Taxes on local banks boosted state revenues whereas a federal bank contributed to the federal government. Jackson’s triumph, however, was short-lived. The removal of the Bank of the United States led to a competitive boom among state banks that contributed to a major financial crisis in 1837, which in turn cost Martin Van Buren, Jackson’s chosen successor, his chance of being re-elected in 1840.”[13]
Hopkins shows that Britain maintained a close relationship with southern slave-owning states, because the southerners supported lower U.S. tariffs. southern cotton exports supplied British textile mills that produced the clothing and material that were sold back by Britain to United States competing with northern U.S. textile producers. Lower U.S. tariffs, that Jackson helped facilitate , helped British producers undercut Americans, just as Hamilton feared.
In addition, the United States depended on Britain for trade and finance of infrastructure, such as railroad building up until the conclusion of the Civil War in 1865:
“…Britain was the ‘Indispensable Nation.’ The former colonial power was the main source of external finance, the principal foreign market, and the defender of last resort. Britain’s demand for cotton supported the wealth and political dominance of the South…”[14]
CONCLUSION: WHY HISTORY IS ESSENTIAL
Hopkins argues that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was not an isolated incident but part of a history of military actions mounted by the United States as it has sometimes tried to solve international disputes by force and territorial expansion, based on a sense of superiority to people of color. Hopkins cites instances where Americans invaded Native-American lands, Mexico and the Philippines to impose values modeled on the British and other European imperial examples.
Hopkins provides us with the origins of anti-federalism and racism in American history. In so doing, he has given us the context in which a man such as Donald Trump, who holds extreme views on race and immigration, can be elected President of the United States without the popular vote of the American people.
As we have seen, Trump’s election energized some states who have tried to turn back the clock on the Civil Rights Act and deny African and Hispanic Americans the right to vote.
We also learn that Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury, sought to strengthen the role of the federal government to help make the United States economically independent from Britain after the United States won its independence. His 1791 “Report on Manufactures” provides a blueprint for how the federal government can stimulate economic development and jobs. His views were opposed by southerners such as Jefferson.
With the election of Donald Trump and the federal government shutdown of 2018-2019, Americans saw the willingness of a U.S. president to place crucial federal government functions and federal employee livelihoods at risk to try and force Congress to build a wall to keep people south of the U.S. border out.
The economic and social consequences of this anti-federalism remain a destructive force that threatens the viability and well-being of the United States and its people.
Thus, the study of history is crucial for all of us. A democracy needs values that complement making money and supporting a livelihood.
History provides us the vision of what our best instincts can achieve.
[1] Hopkins, page 5
[2] Hopkins, page 734
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_Abolition_Act_1833
[4] Hopkins, page 125
[5] Hopkins, page 124
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise,
[8] Ibid
[9] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election
[10] https://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/compromise-of-1877
[11] Hopkins page 151
[12] Hopkins page 131
[13] Hopkins, page 156
[14] Hopkins, page 238