Abstract
This chapter depicts the transformation of the American state, its territorial expansion, and its imperial conflicts, and the consequent overall impact on citizenship rights and privileges. The American empire has always been justified with the notion of Manifest Destiny, but for the most part it has flourished and has been sustained in denial as the powers exercised to manipulate markets and political leadership in various countries were clandestine rather than overt. Historically, with each territorial acquisition, the power of the state has grown not only outward but also inward, changing many citizenship rights, simultaneously expanding some and contracting others, all the while maintaining the logical inconsistencies in American values on both the domestic and global fronts.
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Notes
- 1.
For an excellent analysis and comparison within various territories, refer to Ediberto Román, The Other American Colonies: An International and Constitutional Law Examination of the United States’ Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Island Conquests (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2006).
- 2.
A number of Southern states consider the Confederate flag a part of their proud heritage, even though it signifies a dark mark in American racial history. It has been used as a tool against school segregation protests. South Carolina displayed the Confederate flag atop its state house from 1961 until 2000. In 2003, Democratic presidential contender Howard Dean was severely criticized and forced to apologize for using the notion of the Confederate flag to describe Southern voters and appeal to them (http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/01/elec04.prez.dean.confederate.flag/). In 2014, the state of Georgia approved a specialty license plate featuring the Confederate battle flag, keeping the fight to define American identity alive (http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/confederate-flag-ga-car-plates-22577493). The state flag of Mississippi still contains the image of the Confederate flag.
- 3.
Mark S. Weiner , Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 67–8.
- 4.
The dream of expansion spread from the tip of Florida all the way to Canada. The French and Indian War led to the occupation of land and the formation of the Ohio Land Company, in contrast to the British battles with Native Americans which often ended only in peace treaties. Jim Hanson, The Decline of the American Empire (Westport: Praeger, 1993), 53–6.
- 5.
Rosemary Radford Ruether, America, Amerikkka: Elect Nation and Imperial Violence (London: Equinox, 2007), 73–97.
- 6.
George C. Herring , From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 180–1.
- 7.
Daniel Walker Howe , What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 41–3.
- 8.
Michael H. Hunt , The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 28–41.
- 9.
George C. Herring , From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 107–8.
- 10.
Ibid., 110–15.
- 11.
The problematic aspects of British heritage were resolved within a few decades of the American Revolution , and Anglo-Saxon ethnic identity was once again celebrated in the mid-nineteenth century. This also paved the way for cultural homogenization, and the Spanish, Dutch, French, Swedes, and Germans, and later the Irish , Italians, and Jews , all had to go through periods of discrimination and distrust to earn the right of entry into mainstream society. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 15.
- 12.
Ibid., 184–7.
- 13.
Ibid., 189–94.
- 14.
Jim Hanson , The Decline of the American Empire (Westport: Praeger, 1993), 56–7.
- 15.
Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 13–7.
- 16.
David Goldfield, America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 360.
- 17.
Ibid., 79–81.
- 18.
Rogers M. Smith, “The ‘American Creed’ and American Identity: The Limits of Liberal Citizenship in the United States,” The Western Political Quarterly, 41, no. 2 (June 1988): 231.
- 19.
Richard D. Brown, “Modernization and the Modern Personality in Early America, 1600–1865: A Sketch of a Synthesis,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2, no. 3 (Winter 1972): 205–7.
- 20.
William Appleman Williams, ed., From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations (New York: Wiley, 1972), 137.
- 21.
Michael H. Hunt , The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 50–1.
- 22.
Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 201–2.
- 23.
Ibid., 279–85.
- 24.
The My Lai Massacre, a mass killing of about five hundred unarmed civilians, took place in March 1968, and remains one of the most shocking episodes of the Vietnam War . Although it prompted global outrage and strengthened domestic opposition to the war, only one of twenty-six soldiers charged with a criminal offense was convicted, and his life sentence was commuted to three and a half years of house arrest.
- 25.
In US-occupied Iraq , prisoners held in Abu Ghraib prison were tortured with physical and sexual abuse, rape, sodomy, and murder by the US Army, Central Intelligence Agency, and private contractors hired by the army. The human rights violations were condemned at home and abroad, though the Bush administration claimed that these were isolated incidents. About thirty lower-level military personnel were charged with maltreatment, aggravated assault, or dereliction of duty, though the authorization of such torture came from high up in the military authority, including memos from then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
- 26.
The Guantánamo Bay detention camp was established by President George W. Bush’s administration in 2002 during the War on Terror. Located within Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba , war prisoners and alleged terrorists have been detained indefinitely without trial and several inmates have been severely tortured. This camp is considered a major breach of human rights by Amnesty International. President Obama failed to close GTMO, as it is often referred to, but reduced the number of inmates held there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp.
- 27.
George C. Herring , From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 131–2.
- 28.
The peace treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom that ended the war of 1812, whereby the United States got back approximately ten million acres of territory near Lake Superior and Lake Michigan and in Maine.
- 29.
Daniel Walker Howe , What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 25–6.
- 30.
Michael H. Hunt , The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 15.
- 31.
Mark S. Weiner , Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 25–6.
- 32.
Charles S. Hyneman , The American Founding Experience: Political Community and Republican Government (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 33–7.
- 33.
Mark S. Weiner , Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 40–2.
- 34.
The Dawes Act authorized the President of the United States to survey American Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians. The Act provided that the government would classify as “excess” those Indian reservation lands remaining after allotments and sell those lands on the open market, allowing purchase and settlement by non-Native Americans.
- 35.
Ibid., 37.
- 36.
Michael H. Hunt , The American Ascendancy: How the United States Gained and Wielded Global Dominance (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 15–7.
- 37.
Under US constitutional law, plenary power is a form of power that has been granted to a body, or person, in absolute terms, with no review of, or limitations upon, the exercise of that power. The assignment of a plenary power to one body divests all other bodies from the right to exercise that power, where not otherwise entitled. Plenary powers are not subject to judicial review in a particular instance or in general. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plenary_power.
- 38.
Ediberto Román , The Other American Colonies: An International and Constitutional Law Examination of the United States’ Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Island Conquests (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2006), 93–8.
- 39.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806) opened up the Oregon Trail, and from the early to mid-1830s the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by about four hundred thousand settlers, farmers, miners, and their families.
- 40.
Daniel Walker Howe , What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 142–6.
- 41.
George C. Herring , From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 137.
- 42.
Ibid., 178.
- 43.
Ibid., 225.
- 44.
Ibid., 21.
- 45.
Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 33–4.
- 46.
Jim Hanson , The Decline of the American Empire (Westport: Praeger, 1993), 110–24.
- 47.
Ediberto Román , The Other American Colonies: An International and Constitutional Law Examination of the United States’ Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Island Conquests (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2006), 16.
- 48.
Jim Hanson , The Decline of the American Empire (Westport: Praeger, 1993), 58–62.
- 49.
Ibid., 51–52.
- 50.
Ibid., 37.
- 51.
Raymond Aron, The Imperial Republic: The United States and the World, 1945–1973 (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1974), 254–60.
- 52.
Daniel J. Elazar, “From Statism to Federalism: A Paradigm Shift,” Publius, 25, no. 2 (Spring 1995): 15.
- 53.
Methods varied from colony to colony, but generally bore some resemblance to the English practices of executive denization and legislative naturalization , and reflected some familiarity with established principles of allegiance and subjectship. Although the imperial government claimed the power to review colonial legislation and to prevent objectionable acts, the naturalization policies in the colonies developed locally without interference from England. For details, see James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 78–91.
- 54.
For details, see James H. Kettner, “The Development of American Citizenship in the Revolutionary Era: The Idea of Volitional Allegiance,” The American Journal of Legal History, 18, no. 3 (July 1974): 208–42.
- 55.
James H. Kettner, The Development of American Citizenship, 1608–1870 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 213–18.
- 56.
Ibid., 112–27.
- 57.
The conquests of Puerto Rico and the Philippines were welcome for the territory and for trade routes, but the “half-civilized” people in these territories remained inadmissible. Mark S. Weiner , Americans Without Law: The Racial Boundaries of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 72.
- 58.
Ibid., 67–68.
- 59.
The Fugitive Slave Law or Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 required that all escaped slaves were, upon capture, to be returned to their masters and that officials and citizens of free states had to cooperate in this law.
- 60.
Marta Tienda, “Demography and the Social Contract,” Demography, 39, no. 4 (November 2002): 602–3.
- 61.
Charles S. Hyneman , The American Founding Experience: Political Community and Republican Government (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 75.
- 62.
Evelyn Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality: Historical and Global Perspectives,” Social Problems, 47, no. 1 (February 2000): 4.
- 63.
The Chinese Exclusion Act prohibited the entry of Chinese laborers, the first law implemented to prevent a specific ethnic group from immigrating to the United States.
- 64.
John Torpey , The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 94–7.
- 65.
Catherine Collomp, “Immigrants, Labor Markets, and the State, a Comparative Approach: France and the United States, 1880–1930,” The Journal of American History, 86, no. 1 (June 1999): 44.
- 66.
In 1804, Congress had prohibited international and domestic slave trade in Louisiana, but in 1805 refused to renew this ban. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 107.
- 67.
Evelyn Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality: Historical and Global Perspectives,” Social Problems, 47, no. 1 (February 2000): 4–5.
- 68.
F. V. L., Jr., “The Nationality Act of 1940,” Virginia Law Review, 27, no. 4 (February 1941): 531–6.
- 69.
Evelyn Glenn, “Citizenship and Inequality: Historical and Global Perspectives,” Social Problems, 47, no. 1 (February 2000): 5.
- 70.
Linda K. Kerber, “The Meaning of Citizenship,” The Journal of American History, 84, no. 3 (December 1997): 833–4.
- 71.
Daniel Walker Howe , What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 57–8.
- 72.
George C. Herring , From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 282–4.
- 73.
Mae M. Ngai , “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” The Journal of American History, 86, no. 1 (June 1999): 91.
- 74.
Ibid., 91.
- 75.
Hiroshi Motomura, Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 39.
- 76.
Ibid., 41.
- 77.
John Torpey , The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 9.
- 78.
- 79.
- 80.
- 81.
Mae M. Ngai , “The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924,” The Journal of American History, 86, no. 1 (June 1999): 84–5.
- 82.
Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 95.
- 83.
F. V. L., Jr., “The Nationality Act of 1940,” Virginia Law Review, 27, no. 4 (February 1941): 537.
- 84.
Julie A. Reuben, “Beyond Politics: Community Civics and the Redefinition of Citizenship in the Progressive Era,” History of Education Quarterly, 37, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 408–10.
- 85.
Margaret R. Somers, “Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere: Law, Community, and Political Culture in the Transition to Democracy,” American Sociological Review, 58, no. 5 (October 1993): 589.
- 86.
Individualism emphasizes independence and self-reliance as the core values of society, while communitarianism emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community as the basis of social identity and social formation.
- 87.
Iris Marion Young, “Polity and Group Difference: A Critique of the Ideal of Universal Citizenship,” Ethics, 19, no. 2 (January 1989): 253.
- 88.
Jackson Lears , Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920 (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 21–22.
- 89.
The custom of shaking hands, a gesture of social reciprocity, had replaced bowing in America. Although the existence of the system of slavery points toward a rigid hierarchy in society, African Americans and other lowly races were not considered part of society; conversely, white propertied men believed in resolute egalitarianism. American republican ideology thus strengthened the yeoman farmer’s autonomy and suspicion toward all authority. Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 37–9.
- 90.
Julie A. Reuben, “Beyond Politics: Community Civics and the Redefinition of Citizenship in the Progressive Era,” History of Education Quarterly, 37, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 407.
- 91.
Daniel Walker Howe , What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 133–4.
- 92.
Robert E. Shalhope, The Roots of Democracy: American Thought and Culture, 1760–1800 (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1990), 113–7.
- 93.
Rogers M. Smith, Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 216–8.
- 94.
Michael Schudson, The Good Citizen: A History of American CIVIC Life (New York: The Free Press, 1998), 93.
- 95.
Julie A. Reuben, “Beyond Politics: Community Civics and the Redefinition of Citizenship in the Progressive Era,” History of Education Quarterly, 37, no. 4 (Winter 1997): 399.
- 96.
Charles S. Hyneman , The American Founding Experience: Political Community and Republican Government (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 135.
- 97.
The Bilingual Education Act, Higher Education Act, Title IX, and similar legislation paved the way for myriad federal regulations and associated bureaucracies. All the issues concerning public schools—enrollment, funding, textbooks, exams—became highly politicized amid the competing voices of the federal, state, and local governments, as well as school boards, and even parents bickered then as now about affirmative action, creationism, school prayer, and the like.
- 98.
One of the most spectacular experiments has been undertaken in the state of Louisiana. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina , one of the first reforms to take place was to convert its one hundred and seven schools (out of one hundred and twenty-eight) into charter schools. The charter schools have the authority to hire and fire their own faculty as well as design their own rules and curriculum. New Orleans has curtailed the school bus service to neighborhoods with sparse population, so parents without cars have a hard time if they can’t get their children into classrooms nearby. For heartbreaking details, see Kenneth J. Saltman, Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public Schools (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2007).
- 99.
Bruce Frohnen, The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996).
- 100.
John Gray, Post-Liberalism: Studies in Political Thought (New York: Routledge, 1993).
- 101.
There are roughly three contractors for each soldier in Afghanistan. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/05/18/private-contractors-are-the-silent-majority-of-obamas-military-mercenaries-iraq-afghanistan/.
- 102.
John Geddes, Highway to Hell: Dispatches from a Mercenary in Iraq (New York: Broadway Books, 2008), 49.
- 103.
Jennifer Mittelsadt, The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 2–3.
- 104.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, Empire of Capital (London: Verso, 2003), 21.
- 105.
Ibid., 140–1.
- 106.
Ibid., 5–7.
- 107.
For a detailed description, see George C. Lovewine, Outsourcing the Global War on Terrorism: Private Military Companies and American Intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
- 108.
Aidan Delgado, The Sutras of Abu Ghraib: Notes from a Conscientious Objector (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007), 74.
- 109.
Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2007).
- 110.
Blackwater came under extensive scrutiny after its employees were convicted of killing fourteen unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2009 and received meager punishment. The company changed its name to XE Services, then again to Academi, after coming in for severe criticism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academi.
- 111.
Betsy DeVos, the new education secretary in the Trump administration, is the sister of Erik Prince.
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Momen, M. (2018). Nation-Building: Nation-States Versus Empire. In: The Paradox of Citizenship in American Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-61530-1_3
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