The Changing Relation between Nation and Empire

It may be helpful here to suggest some of the ways--interpretively--that A Nation Without Borders departs from many historical accounts of this period. The centerpiece of the book is the changing relation between nation and empire in the history of the United States. In this regard, most historians understand a certain sequence: the United States commenced its life as a nation, and over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries emerged as an empire too, as it became involved in overseas conquests and markets. A Nation Without Borders suggests something rather different. It argues that the model of governance inherited from the British was empire; that from the birth of the Republic the United States was a union with significant imperial ambitions on the continent and in the hemisphere, many pushed by slaveholders and their allies; that the United States only became a nation, a nation-state--as many others did--in the midst of a massive political and military struggle in the 1860s; and that the new American nation reconfigured the character of its empire, first in the South and the trans-Mississippi West before reaching overseas.

--Steven Hahn, A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830-1910, The Penguin History of the United States (New York: Viking, 2016), 2.

Send More Slaves to America!

It was in 1696 that the House of Commons received a petition objecting to the monopoly of this hateful trade in humans then held by the Royal African Company (RAC). The petition was signed by individuals referring to themselves as "merchants and traders of Virginia and Maryland," who argued that their "plantations" were "capable" of much greater profit and production and if they were "sufficiently supplied with Negroes, they would produce twice the quantity they do now"--indeed, "the shortage of slaves was hindering the development of the tobacco colonies." After wrangling, their prayers were answered, leading to spectacular increases in the number of Africans in chains crossing the Atlantic.

--Gerald Horne, introduction to The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 5.

The Entrepreneurial Class Enters the Slave Trade

The crucial turning point for North America--and arguably, the British Empire as a whole--emerged in 1688 with the so-called Glorious Revolution, which, inter alia, caused the monarchy to retreat and led to the ascendancy of a rising class of merchants. This, in turn, empowered the "private" or "separate" merchants--entrepreneurs--who wished to enter into the lushly lucrative market in enslaved Africans, to the detriment of the Royal African Company.

--Gerald Horne, preface to The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America (New York: New York University Press, 2016), vii-viii.

Responding to the Stamp Act: The British West Indies and the Mainland Colonies Go Their Separate Ways

The British West Indies diverged significantly from the mainland colonies in their response to imperial legislation during the 1760s. For example, Jamaica and Barbados complied with the Stamp Act even though it imposed the greatest tax burden on the Caribbean, not North America. Their submission was mocked by the patriots in North America, where none of the thirteen colonies that rebelled paid stamp duty (except Georgia, briefly). The British West Indies accounted for 78 percent of the colonial stamp revenues.

--Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American Revolution and the British Caribbean, Early American Studies (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 81.

George Washington's Empire

In 1783, the year the United States formally gained its independence from Great Britain, George Washington described the newborn republic as a "rising empire." He elaborated a few years later, as the fledgling nation struggled for viability under the restraints imposed by the Articles of Confederation and the constraints imposed by the European powers. America was but an "infant empire," Washington conceded to his former comrade-in-arms, the Marquis de Lafayette. "However unimportant America may be considered at present," he nevertheless predicted, "there will assuredly come a day, when this country will have some weight in the scale of Empires."

--Richard H. Immerman, Empire for Liberty: A History of American Imperialism from Benjamin Franklin to Paul Wolfowitz (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010), 1.

The Glorious Revolution

The Glorious Revolution plunged Britain into prolonged warfare with the French Empire, which sought to restore James II to power. To compete with mighty France, the English built a larger military managed by an expanded bureaucracy and funded by heavy new taxes. Prior to 1688, Parliament had held taxes down to keep the Crown weak. After casting its lot with William and Mary, however, Parliament had to fund their military survival. In return Parliament won control over expenditures, which provided new leverage over foreign and military policy, previously Crown prerogatives.

--Alan Taylor, American Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750-1804 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2017), 12.

Did Slavery Cause the Civil War?

The current emphasis on slavery as the cause of the Civil War is fraught with problems. It does not clarify the sequence of events, the divisions within the sections, or the policies and actions of the Republican Party. It is these problems that a new interpretation must address.

Clash of Extremes responds to these concerns. It argues that more than any other reason, the evolution of the Northern and Southern economies explains the Civil War.

--Marc Egnal, Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2010), 7-8.

The Despotism of Parliament

Hamilton answers by reviving the "internal" Royalist critique of the parliamentarian theory, familiar to us from the writings of Charles I, Digges, and Hobbes:

I will go farther, and assert, that the authority of the British Parliament over America, would, in all probability, be a more intolerable and excessive species of despotism than an absolute monarchy. The power of an absolute prince is not temporary, but perpetual. He is under no temptation to purchase the favour of one part of his dominions, at the expense of another; but, it is his interest to treat them all, upon the same footing. Very different is the case with regard to the Parliament. The Lords and Commons both, have a private and separate interest to pursue.

--Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 102.

Revolution Against Parliament

The American Revolution, unlike the two seventeenth-century English revolutions and the French Revolution, was--for a great many of its protagonists--a revolution against a legislature, not against a king. It was, indeed, a rebellion in favor of royal power.

--Eric Nelson, The Royalist Revolution: Monarchy and the American Founding (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2014), 2.

Indian Removal

As president in the 1830s, Jackson took Monroe's injunction to its harsh but logical extreme. With the authority granted him under the Removal Act of 1830, and by employing varying degrees of duress, Jackson swept the roving tribes of the Old Northwest beyond the Mississippi River. When southerners pressured him to open Indian lands in Alabama and Georgia, Jackson also uprooted the so-called Five Civilized Tribes--the Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, Cherokees, and Seminoles--and resettled them west of the Mississippi River in Indian Territory, an unsustainably large tract spreading over several future states, which was gradually reduced to comprise solely present-day Oklahoma.

--Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West (New York: Vintage Books, 2017), 14.

France and the Confederate States of America

More ominous for the United States was the idea that the success of Napoleon's Grand Design depended on an independent Confederacy to serve as a buffer state between the United States and Mexico.... Chevalier, obviously with Napoleon III's approval, blatantly announced that France's purpose was to help the Confederacy win independence, thwart US expansion, and shield Mexico from US interference.

--Don H. Doyle, The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War (New York: Basic Books, 2016), 109.

King Cotton

What was proven in 1857, Southern fire-eaters brazenly proclaimed, would be repeated in a civil war. "King Cotton" became a rallying call and source of Southern pride in the run-up to the Civil War. The economic power of cotton soon extended itself to politics and diplomacy. Not only could the "King" shield the South from the vicissitudes of the business cycle, but it could also dictate the policies of European powers. South Carolina Senator James Henry Hammond perhaps best articulated the "King Cotton" theory in 1858.

--Jay Sexton, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 136.

Was King George III Really a Tyrant?

In reality, George III had less power than virtually any other monarch in Europe. During the seventeenth century, Britain had had two revolutions of its own in which the supporters of Parliament successfully deposed Charles I and James II. After the execution of Charles I in 1649, Britain was a republic for eleven years, and following the fall of James II in 1688, Parliament negotiated a revolutionary settlement in what became known as the Glorious Revolution. It included a Bill of Rights (1689) and a Toleration Act (1689), which became the foundation of the British Constitution and ensured that the crown would henceforth govern through Parliament.

--Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 19.

The Men Who Lost America

The ten biographical subjects of this book were the key British decisionmakers who oversaw the conduct of the war for America. They include George III, who was portrayed in the Declaration of Independence as the tyrant responsible for the American Revolution; Lord North, the prime minister regarded as having triggered the war with his fateful decision to punish the people of Massachusetts for the Boston Tea Party through the Coercive Acts of 1774; General Sir William Howe and Admiral Lord Richard Howe, the brothers commanding the British army and navy in America during the first half of the war who are regarded as having missed the best opportunity to defeat the Continental Army in 1776; John Burgoyne, the general who surrendered at Saratoga (1777); Lord George Germain, the secretary of state for America and the chief architect of the American War in Britain; Sir Henry Clinton, commander of the British army in America during the second half of the war when he was accused by critics of inactivity; Lord Cornwallis, whose surrender at Yorktown effectively ended the British war for America; Admiral Sir George Rodney, one of the few commanders to emerge with his reputation enhanced from the war but who failed to prevent the French fleet of Admiral Francois-Joseph Paul, comte de Grasse, from entrapping Lord Cornwallis's army at Yorktown; and John Montague, earl of Sandwich, the first lord of the Admiralty, whom critics held responsible for the inadequacy of the Royal Navy.

--Andrew Jackson O'Shaughnessy, The Men Who Lost America: British Leadership, the American Revolution, and the Fate of the Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 5.