Dan Snow's History Hit - Lockdown Learning: The Rise of USA

Episode Date: February 12, 2021

For Lockdown Learning this week I am joined by Dr Fabian Hilfrich, head of American History at Edinburgh University. He takes us through from the late 19th Century to the beginning of the 20th century when America rose to challenge the old European powers on the world stage. We cover subjects such as American imperialism, industrial development and wealth distribution, the impact of immigration, how America viewed itself on the world stage and the evolution of the constitution during this period.Many thanks again to Simon Beale for creating this downloadable worksheet for students: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DOC7Qj3kxZ3iboMwIQ4xsCfYV0QZGLVZ/view

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History. We've got another podcast about America today, I can't get enough of them. Lots going on in America at the moment. But actually, this is a podcast requested by

teachers here in the UK. American history is an important aspect of the UK history curriculum. And lots of people got in touch. As you know, for the last three or four Fridays, we've been trying to produce podcasts that support history teachers in this difficult time. We had Professor Anna Whitelock talking about the Tudors. We had Dr. Mark Morris talking about the Middle Ages. That was a big one. With Helen Rappaport talking about the Russian Revolution. Now we have got Senior Lecturer, Head of American History at Edinburgh University, Dr. Fabian Hilfrich. He has been on the podcast before, and I hope he'll come on again. And he

is going to take us on a kind of gallop through American history. We have recently had an excellent podcast, if I don't say so myself, on Reconstruction, a period following the American Civil War. The catastrophe that unfolded for many African Americans living in the southern states as a corrupt bargain was reached, the attempts to imbue those people with their rights under the US Constitution was abandoned. And African-Americans for generations in those southern states in particular lived in a state of racial apartheid, racial subjugation.

We've covered that, so please go back and listen to that wherever you get your pods. So I thought we'd start in the late 19th century and we'd take it up to the years just before the First World War, a period in which by most measures the US economy overtook all of the old European powers and this young thrusting power appeared on the global stage with debates within it and outside it about the nature of American power. That's what I talk to Fabian about and I hope it is useful to educators

up and down the land and perhaps beyond as well. Remember, we are incredibly lucky to have the super teacher, Simon Beale. He's producing worksheets to go along with all of these lockdown learning podcasts. The link is in the information below, wherever you get your pods, I'll tweet it out as well. Again, as I always say, a huge, huge thank you, Simon, for doing that. If you want to go to History Hit TV, where we've got lots of US history, my goodness, we've got a lot on there, please head to historyhit.tv. It's like Netflix for history. You just go over there for a small subscription. You begin a lifetime journey through the wonderful world of history. We've got hundreds of hours of history documentaries, hundreds and hundreds of podcasts. Can't wait to see thousands, almost thousands of podcasts.

It's coming up. The big number's coming up. And we've got lots of big productions going on at the moment. So it's going to be an exciting year, 2021. Can't wait to share it all with you. So head over to history.tv. But in the meantime, here is Dr. Fabian Hilfrich. Fabian, thank you so much for coming on the podcast thank you for having me so now today

we're thinking about all these young people students students of all ages who want to learn more and think about the development of the american economic miracle and its military and political might as well we've recently had a very interesting podcast on reconstruction so let's start slightly later in the 19th century the usa was expanding rapidly at the end of the 19th century. Should we think about it as an empire at that point? I think probably when you look at the United States, you can think about it as an empire from its very beginning. Certainly its founders, Thomas Jefferson, first and foremost among them, thought about the country as an empire and thought that the real challenge for the country's development was how to keep a republican form of government

in a country that they always assumed would be very large and would be covering most of the North American continent. And so they thought about it, I mean, as Thomas Jefferson phrased it, an empire for liberty, so that presumably everyone that was considered to be part of the in-group would be free and participate in republican self-government. But they certainly also conceived of the country from the beginning as an empire. And you mentioned most of North America. Even that was up for debate at one point. Literally, in most of North America, there was a discussion around Canada and particularly Mexico, wasn't there, in the second first and foremost of slavery in the Civil War, that before that time, the country had no foreign policy and no foreign policy ambitions. And of course, I think that is very largely a misconception based on the assumption that everything that was going on on the North American continent was a domestic affair. And of course, it wasn't a domestic affair. First of all, in order to expand westwards, the United States had to deal, whether it was militarily or through negotiations with the empires of Spain, France, and of course, Great Britain. So there was definitely foreign

policy going on. And I think by now, most scholars would agree that it is appropriate to call the dealings with North American Native Americans foreign policy as well. They were certainly not domestic policy, the sort of genocidal tendencies to displace Native Americans all across the continent. And of course, most of those American generations did not think about Native Americans as participating in that republican form of self-government. and other powers sort of militarily, the US economy rapidly expands quicker than those older European economies. When does that process really begin? And how does that transform the US and particular parts of the US? Then we are probably talking after the Civil War, we are talking particularly about railroad expansion across the continent. And the railroads really being in many ways the motor of that development. They were a motor of that development, of course, because they created the infrastructure

necessary to cover and connect the entire North American continent. But at the same time, there were also gigantic enterprises, gigantic businesses that pioneered some of the business models that then later on drove other huge businesses in the United States. And all this development of industrialization, post-Civil War industrialization that takes place in the United States, all that development took place behind a very high tariff wall. And the high tariffs, they go well into the 1890s, and they enable the development of a native US-American industry to take place. Because otherwise, you know, in those earlier years, they wouldn't have been able to compete with the European powers, who at that point were still ahead in terms of industrial development. But it's probably fair to say, at least by the end of the 19th century, in many of the metric measurements that we have,

the United States had overtaken all the countries in Europe, for example, in steel production, in railroad coverage, but also still in agricultural output. It's also important, I guess, to think about how that explosion of wealth was evenly divided. How did it change American society and then eventually politics? Of course, you insinuate correctly, it was completely unevenly divided. And there was at that time hardly any mode for redistribution through the government. Federal income tax does not come until early in the 20th century, until 1910. There were local and there were state taxes, but they tended to be very low. And there also was on the part of these pioneering businessmen that are developing their gigantic companies like the

Scottish-born Andrew Carnegie, who becomes a former steel producer in the United States. And at the end, when he sells his business as the second richest man in the United States. And these people very strongly believed in social Darwinism, in the idea that as there was natural selection in biology, Darwinism, proper Darwinism, there was also the kind of natural selection happening at the social level as well. And so, in short, they believed that they had been destined to be these great captains of industry and that, therefore, there was not really any kind of reason for them to redistribute their wealth.

I mean, of course, we see this going hand in hand with the development of philanthropic enterprises. But what we also see in this era, which is called the Gilded Age in the United States, based on a novel by Mark Twain by that same name, we see a very, very uneven distribution of wealth. And we see there were no means to alleviate the plight of the working man and the working woman. For example, if you were unemployed, there was no unemployment insurance. If you got injured, there were no benefits to be paid out on account of injury. So really, workers in that time had no recourse to alleviate their plight at all. that time had no recourse to alleviate their plight at all. In parts of Europe, notably Germany,

but places like Britain and France too, you get the development of a kind of social democracy, or in some places, all-out socialism, in response to these new gigantic disparities of wealth and the new consciousness of the working class created by these industries. What happens in the US? Is it similar there or does it take subtly different forms? I mean, you really don't. I mean, of course, you have discussions going on about this. You have attempts by some reformers. You also have radical stirrings in the United States, you know, that some people in the United States are imported by immigrants. So you have attempts of this going on, but you don't really have until you get to the progressive era early in the 20th century, you don't have real attempts to regulate the market and to regulate big companies.

And that is comparable to Germany, where the effort to introduce social legislation is largely a conservative effort, a conservative effort to head off more radical reforms or even revolution. And that's very similar in the United States, only that it happens a lot later, roughly a generation later, early in the 20th century with the so-called progressive movement that introduces for the first time legislation, for example, early in the 20th century, with the so-called progressive movement that introduces for the first time legislation, for example, to regulate the working day to, as I said before, introduce a federal income tax, and so on and so forth. But it is never on the scale of the kind of legislation that, for example, we saw in a country like Germany.

So we touched on foreign relations at the beginning of the podcast. What about American expansion? There was a debate within America about imperialism at this point, their involvement in the Philippines, the canals, you know, in Central America, the Panama. How is American hard power being shaped and manifesting itself, showing itself in this period? That's a very good and very relevant question. So, of course, you had going back to basically President Monroe in the 1820s, who basically served notice to the European powers that the United States would look very unkindly on any attempts by European powers to reestablish their colonial empires in the Western Hemisphere.

Following on from that mandate, the United States always maintained an interest and a claim to hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. And after the Civil War, they start making good on that. They start injecting themselves also with at first short-lived interventions in that hemisphere. But what happens then is that, you know, ultimately they clash with the one old colonial power that is still there in the Western Hemisphere or the one significant one. And that is, of course, Spain. And they clash over the inability of Spain to hold on to its empire in Cuba. the inability of Spain to hold on to its empire in Cuba. And of course, Cuba, if we talk about geography,

Cuba is only about 60, 70 miles off the American coast. So there always was an interest in what was going on in Cuba. And what happens towards the end of the century in 1898 is that because Spain is unable to contain or even quell a rebellion in its Cuban colony, ultimately the United States intervenes. Although, and this is very interesting, even before the war, a debate starts in the United States about the wisdom and actually also the legitimacy of establishing an overseas empire. And there is a very strong opinion in the United States. There are, of course, those in the United States who, along with imperial powers, think that the United States, just like any other nation, has the right to establish an empire and to take colonies if it sees fit. But there is a very strong minority opinion that holds that because the United States

was a nation that had been conceived in rebellion against the empire, that it would be completely illegitimate to establish an empire. And so even as the United States goes to war against Spain, Congress passes an amendment, the so-called Teller Amendment, which very clearly says that Cuba is and of right ought to be free and independent. And so before that war starts, effectively, the United States forswears any attempt to take on Cuba as a colony after the war. And they don't. But in the same war, they fight Spain in its other really important possession at that time. And that was all the way over into the Pacific, that was the Philippine Islands.

And the United States, in that war, which one American politician called a splendid little war, beat Spain very quickly and decisively. And then the debate starts on what to do with the territories that Spain will now have to relinquish. And ultimately, the American government makes the decision that they will take the Philippines as a colony, always with an eye, and this was much more the interest of the United States at the time, always with an eye that the Philippines would be an ideal staging ground to penetrate the China market. would be an ideal staging ground to penetrate the China market. So not really conquer China in any shape or form, but to be able to trade with China. That was the big American wish and dream and desire in that period. And almost unnoticed in that same year as well, the United States also takes Hawaii as a colony. And there had already been long established American interests in Hawaii. There had been a naval base in Pearl Harbor before they took Hawaii as a colony.

But now they take Hawaii as a colony as well. And they also take the island of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. But that is the extent of the American empire as it grows after 1898. And again, you know what I already mentioned, that debate, that internal debate that was going on in the United States with a very strong minority opinion that was anti-imperialist, that debate arguably limits the extent of the American empire. And what we see afterwards, and this is very interesting, is that the United States expands its influence from now on, not in a formal manner, not by taking territory, not by taking colonies, but in an informal manner by exerting its influence. And one of the earliest examples of

that relates to Cuba, where the American Congress in 1902 passes the so-called Platt Amendment. And the Platt Amendment effectively becomes a rider to the Cuban Constitution, and it limits Cuban autonomy. It basically establishes the right of the United States to intervene if things in Cuba go wrong. And of course, what going wrong means is then highly up to the United States to decide. And of course, just as an interesting footnote to history, this is also the time when the United States takes Guantanamo Bay, which now, of course, is a prison camp for

reputed terrorists. This is the time when in the Platt Amendment, the United States also takes Guantanamo Bay as a naval base. But further expansion of informal influence we also see in China, where in 1899 and 1900, the United States publishes diplomatic notes to the other big foreign powers with an interest in China, and basically pleads for an open door. So an open door, meaning equal access in terms of trading rights, in terms of commercial rights for all the big powers. And at least nominally, the big powers agree. But once again, and here we return to your term of hard military power, Dan, But once again, and here we return to your term of hard military power, Dan, the way the United States sort of puts force behind what is effectively a plea in 1899 is that United States forces participate in putting down the so-called Boxer Rebellion, a nativist Chinese rebellion against the presence of foreign powers in 1900 and participates in what turns out to be a very brutal quelling of that rebellion. But from then on, also in the Caribbean, we see that the United States perfects measures of informal exertion of influence, although as a last resort, they are always happy and willing to use intervention, to use military

intervention and short and sometimes even long-term occupation, particularly in the Western Hemisphere, if they see fit and if they find it necessary. You're listening to Dan Snow's History Hit with a lockdown learning on the rise of American power with Dr. Fabian Hilfrich. More coming up after this. Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our

special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Let's return to the u.s domestically this is a period of gigantic immigration immigration from other parts of the world not just the traditional english-speaking route from england and the isles it's become of course so heavily mythologized this idea of a kind of melting pot the american dream the cities into which these people poured. I mean, can you just say a little bit about what American society would have been like and how it was evolving at

the end of this century and how big an impact that immigration was having on it? Of course, you're absolutely right. If we just look at the total numbers, the rate of immigration is absolutely staggering. It's fair to say from the 1890s or 1880s even to the 19-teens, absolutely millions and millions are immigrating. But as you already insinuated, this is the type of immigration that a lot of Americans have a problem with. And that relates very strongly to where these new waves of immigrants come from. immigrants come from. Even though there is still also large-scale immigration from Northern Europe, there is even larger-scale immigration from Southern Europe and from Eastern Europe, and also particularly on the West Coast from China. And so what we see growing since the 1880s is also a very strong nativist feeling that doesn't agree with where these people come from. And so

in 1880, you have for the very first time in American history, you have a law passed that prohibits immigration of one particular group, and that is the Chinese. And so from the 1880s onwards, Chinese immigration is banned. And we see that, but we also see a lot of prejudice towards Eastern and Southern European. It is prejudice that is based on religion. So, of course, the United States had been largely Protestant. Now, if we're looking at Eastern Europe, the immigration tends to be more Jewish. If we look at Southern Europe, it tends to be Catholic. Immigration tends to be more Jewish. If we look at Southern Europe, it tends to be Catholic.

The other reason is very often these new groups of immigrants enter as groups and they sort themselves into ethnic neighborhoods rather than what at least Americans believe to remember from the past, that it was individual immigration, that these people then individually refashioned themselves into Americans very quickly. And that is not happening in that new immigration from the 1880s onwards. In these ethnic neighborhoods, often these groups that immigrate precisely also because they do not find a particularly hospitable environment. And so they hang on to their traditions so they hang on to their traditions. They hang on to their language.

And of course, that makes them even stranger to the people who think they are the rank and file Americans. And so the problems fester all the way up until and beyond the First World War. And so particularly in the 1920s, you see the introduction of quota systems, quota systems for immigrants from parts of Europe that the WASPs, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite of the country, does not like or thinks is at least inferior to the stock that had immigrated from Northern Europe. For the Americans who are already there, it's a problematic

wave of immigration. And the melting pot very often is more a myth than a reality. At the beginning of the 20th century, before the two giant global conflicts that we've come to know so well, there was deep concern within the empires of Europe, wasn't there? Particularly Germany and Britain, there was a sense that they were being overtaken, that their period of hegemony might be over. Did it feel like it was inevitable this would be an American century? And were Americans excited about that? Or were they reluctant to step into the role of a global hegemon? I mean, they were definitely in the beginning of the 20th century. So this was the imperialist period. This was the period where the United States started to

experiment with methods of informal empire, if you will. But at the same time, and this is probably when we talk about isolationism, this is probably what we really are supposed to think about when we think of America standing aloof from the rest of the world. Isolation basically meant no entanglement, as the first and the third president, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, put it, no permanent alliances and no entangling alliances with any of the big European powers. And that was the sort of mantra. And that mantra, the United States and its statesmen still stick to in the early 20th century. So they don't involve themselves in the quarrels of the European great powers for fear of being drawn into these quar that the United States is happy to now act as what you might call an honest broker, ath century is the Treaty of Portsmouth, which gets negotiated

under American auspices, under Teddy Roosevelt's auspices, and that ends the Russo-Japanese War that had been taking place in the North Pacific. And one year later, Roosevelt is also able to mediate the first Moroccan crisis, which was between France and Germany and enraged over future control of Morocco. And Roosevelt is able to resolve that crisis in 1906 with the Conference of Algeciras. Now we remember him as someone who made very strong words and who also threatened the neighbors in the Caribbean with intervention and who actually also actively intervened. And of course, who took territory from Colombia to build the Panama Canal. So we usually associate him with what has become known as big stick foreign policy because of a

statement he once made. But when he was looking the other way, when he was looking at what he called the civilized powers, that's where he used means of mediation and so on and so forth. So to make a long story short, at the beginning of the 20th century, the United States sees itself maybe as a mediator in the struggles of the great powers, but definitely not yet as a participant, not yet ready to intervene militarily in the global struggles of the great powers. If you're asking, were Americans ready to assume this mantle or not? I mean, it's probably fair to say, and that debate about American imperialism is an indicator of that, that there was probably among Americans, there was as much expectation as there was trepidation about

what the future would hold. In the 1890s, in particular, if you look at literature, one of the favorite genres, and that's not only true for the United States, that's also true, of course, for the European nations, was a sort of utopian literature, but utopian literature that often, where the utopia very often was a dystopia and speculated about a fall similar to that of the Roman Republic. So definitely there was not just optimism in this period, that's for sure. I've got a bigger question for you to end on. There's a lot of discussion today around the US Constitution, well over 200 years old, proving very inflexible, if not now because of partisan politics, impossible to modify. What was the sense at the time, even at the

beginning of the 20th century, that was the Constitution fit for purpose? America had changed so radically since it was just those former colonies on the East Coast. And in a similar time period, the British Constitution had changed. We like to think of it as unchanging, but it changed hugely in that same period. Did Americans believe their constitution was up to the job? Well, first of all, they did believe, and there were similar struggles to today, whether you could do anything to the constitution. There were similar sides taken then, whether the constitution was almost a wholly enshrined document that you could never change anything about it. And then, of course, there were others who were exactly making the argument that you just made that the Constitution needed to be adapted to the times.

And, of course, the one means by which Americans of those generations are doing that is the constitutional amendments. Americans of those generations are doing that is the constitutional amendments. First of all, of course, in the Reconstruction period, the constitutional amendments that are supposed to take care of the equal rights of African Americans. And then in the progressive era that we now have largely been talking about, the constitutional amendments that introduce prohibition. So that's a constitutional amendment that passes that is then at the end of the 1920s, it is revoked because prohibition is by then seen to have failed. And of course, a very important constitutional amendment on the rights of women to vote, which takes to be ratified until 1920. So there are people who see constitutional amendments as a way to reform, as a way to keep the constitution and to move forward. But of course,

what you also saw when we return to foreign policy, and again, to mention that debate about imperialism and particularly about the war that followed the Spanish-American war in the Philippines. There were long discussions going on, and these are discussions that have been going on and still go on all the way through the ages of American foreign policy on whether the president has the right to unilaterally intervene in countries and to effectively start wars without Congress having declared them. And of course, you know, it is supposed to be Congress's right and duty to declare wars. But of course, the last declared war that the United States waged was the Second World War. Ever since then, no war has been declared.

The United States got into wars by other ways and means. And still today, there is a tussle between Congress and the president on the war powers. So also there, the Constitution is not as unambiguous as some people think it should be. So many of the debates that they were having at the end of the 19th, early 20th century are still being had today. So fascinating to hear that. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, these debates are still going on. And of course, the debate about American empire is ongoing and the debate about interpreting this period that we have talked about. Was it empire? Was it not empire? Some people argue because as formal colonies, there's

Hawaii, there's the Philippines, and there is Puerto Rico and the Philippines. Already in 1916, an amendment is passed that promises future independence to the Philippines. So more conservative American historians have argued and still argue that there was a brief moment of aberration and the United States never really had an empire. and the United States never really had an empire. Whereas other historians very strongly argue, of course, the United States had an empire because empire is not just about the formal establishment of colonies, but also about the exertion of informal influence. And of course, the United States perfects the means of exerting informal influence in this period, and ever since then takes domination and hegemony forward. And arguably, those are also tools of empire. Now, today, the interesting question is whether we see the sunset

on that American empire and whether new empires or new imperial powers will now contest American power. We'll look forward to that. Watch this space, folks. We had a historian on the podcast only a few days ago talking about the inevitability of war over Taiwan, Fabian. So exciting stuff. Thank you very much coming on the podcast and helping all these students out with a bit of an introduction, a wonderful overview to decades and decades of history. Fabian, people who want to take this further and learn more, tell us what your book's called. It's called Debating American Exceptionalism. And it is about that imperialism debate around the turn of the last century. So following the Spanish American War that I've been talking about. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

All right. Thank you very much for having me. I enjoyed it. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, bit of a favor to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money. Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favor,

it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcast. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, pur yourself give it a glowing review i'd really appreciate that it's tough weather that law of the jungle out there and i need all the fire support i can get so that will boost it up the charts it's so tiresome but if you could do it i'd be very very grateful thank you douglas adams the genius behind Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit.

Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.