It Could Happen Here - How the United States Built its Colonial Empire, Pt. 1

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Journalist Carlos Berríos Polanco talks with James, outlining the United States' overseas colonial empire and how it was started by a quest for bird poop.  Sources: How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco A. Scarano https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23780231241274187 https://fortune.com/2026/07/27/hormuz-fertilizer-guano-islands-act-fertilizer-empire/  https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/article/navassa-island-the-uss-160-year-forgotten-tragedy https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2017-09-26/almost-half-of-americans-dont-know-puerto-ricans-are-us-citizens-poll  https://www.doi.gov/oia/islands/politicatypes  https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/30/puerto-rico-independence-movement  https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-CARIBBEAN/MILITARY-BUILDUP/egpbbnzyrpq/  https://www.nminewsservice.com/cnmi-covenant-united-states-50th-anniversary-explainer-timeline/  https://apnews.com/article/american-samoa-voting-citizenship-alaska-trump-eda6c32ce0fcdca6edb22efac26e403d  https://www.nminewsservice.com/cnmi-covenant-united-states-50th-anniversary-explainer-timeline/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/how-us-controls-iraqs-oil-revenues-2026-01-23/  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/17/magazine/venezuela-empires-colony.html  https://apnews.com/article/venezuela-us-state-trump-rodriguez-chavismo-silence-634203c885803b018ecd8ac012bb249d  https://time.com/article/2026/06/02/trump-annex-canada-51st-state-rhetoric-carney-us-partnership-message/  https://theconversation.com/us-territories-have-a-voice-in-congress-but-no-vote-heres-why-283547 https://www.usace.army.mil/Media/Fact-Sheets/Fact-Sheets-View/Article/4463352/154-the-longest-blackout-in-us-history-hurricane-maria/https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/trump-was-serious-about-trading-hurricane-stricken-puerto-rico-greenland-n1237336https://www.democracynow.org/2001/8/3/as_navy_pounds_vieques_with_largest“Nationals” but not “Citizens” https://www.aclu.org/news/voting-rights/nationals-but-not-citizens-how-the-u-s-denies-citizenship-to-american-samoansSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy.

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We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHart. Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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My name's Carlos. I'm a journalist from Puerto Rico. I'm here with James. Hey, how you doing? Hi, nice to have you on for this, James. Yeah. Let me ask. Have you heard about a little thing called imperialism?

I have during my education in the United Kingdom. It was an issue that they raised once or twice. So you would say you're quite knowledgeable about imperialism then. Sure. I think I have a little grasp of it, both from learning about it and teaching about it. There's a whole lot of imperialism, you know? I don't think I've covered all of it. So I'm excited to learn about some extra parts of it. Same, same. And actually, I would say so I'm from Puerto Rico. and as a subject of American imperialism, I'm very happy to share this episode today,

which is kind of a history of American overseas expansion, focused particularly on its colonies. There are several American colonies. Puerto Rico is the most populous one and the most known, but there are several others. So I want to start this episode by, by laying out some definitions and frameworks in case people aren't familiar with them. When people think of the United States, they typically only think about the contiguous United States, also known as the Lower 48.

This is how most people imagine the U.S. today, and maybe they include Alaska and Hawaii. This is what historian Benedict Anderson calls the logo map in his seminal book, Imagine Communities. essentially the way that it works is that if every country had merch, then this is the logo that would be on it. This is literal in some cases. For example, I saw a lot of America 250 shirts that only had the map with the lower 48 on it. The logo map, whether people mean it or not, is often a political statement. Whatever people imagine the logo map to be is what they consider the dominion of their government. For example, if you see an IDF or Russian soldier with a patch that includes,

Gaza and the West Bank in Israel or Ukraine as part of Russia, then you very likely know that person's thoughts on the territorial borders of their respective countries. However, what is included in the logo map is often just as important as what isn't included. In the case of the United States, which has continuously lied to itself about being an empire, the lower 48 logo map hides the country's former territories, Alaska and Hawaii if they're not included. its current territories like Puerto Rico and Guam, as well as a smattering of military bases that it owns across the world. This omission in its self-conception is an act of American exceptionalism,

giving visual credence to the fact that the country is one homogeneous polity, not a settler colonial state or a global superpower with overseas possessions, that it continues to colonize to this day. Yeah, I think America 250 with the lower 48, on it. It's a really fascinating image, right? Like, there is no historical argument. The countries on that map were not the United States 250 years ago, the places on that map. Absolutely. When people think in their mind of their imagined community that is America, that is what they think of. Even though I think very few of the T-shirt wearers with the 250 map would be like,

yes, and Hawaii and Alaska are colonies. And we should let them be, let alone discussing Puerto Rico Guam, and then you have all the Kofa countries, right? Like, the RMI. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I guess if you wanted to put them on a t-shirt, you'd need a really fucking big t-shirt to keep it to scale, right? Like, it is a vast global empire. Yeah.

And yeah, you have bases in Africa, bases in Greenland, bases all over the world. Absolutely. So at a time when Trump has made several overtures towards expanding the physical territory of the United States by either making Canada, Greenland, or Venezuela, or a bunch of other places, ostensibly, the 51st state. I think it's important that people know that the U.S. is not only a military and economic empire, but a literal one, with control over a series of territories and their people that spans the Pacific and the Caribbean, as well as the aforementioned military bases. So to start, I should say that that kind of ideological

game about the U.S. logo map is almost wholeheartedly ripped from the beginning of Daniel Imowars, How to Hide an Empire. Also, James, in the case of the shirt with all of the territories and colonies, there is a map in there that I will show you later. Okay. That we could put on a t-shirt. Oh, sweet. Okay, exciting. So how to hide an empire alongside colonial crucible edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Francisco Ascarano were monumental sources for these two podcast episodes that we're about to do. Anyway, James, I know that you've heard this term before, but I want to start out by defining the term, quote-unquote, insular area before I get to the meat of this episode.

When a place is an insular area of the U.S., it means that they are a U.S. associated jurisdiction but aren't states or the District of Columbia. This encompasses several different legal meanings in terms of sovereignty. free of the U.S. as insular areas, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau are independent nations that have compacts of free association with the U.S. This means that they have their own sovereignty, but certain things such as defense are in hands of the United States. I won't be talking about them too much, but if you want to learn more about them, you should go listen to James's series on the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Thank you. I was in the RMI when they were renegotiating with the United States. the Biden admin. They are a proud independent country, of course, right? And they have sovereignty

and a lot of issues. But also, like, the US didn't come at that equal to equal. You know, like the US, a country which nuked the Marshall Islands, which it never had any quarrel with, it's still not paying people in those places. Well, it said it would pay them for the damage it did by new kingdom when they were downwind. And like, even now when they negotiate, like, they cannot force the United States to treat them with, like really what one would assume would be basic dignity. Yeah, absolutely. And this is, you know, I think something that extends not only to the countries under the Compact of Free Association, but all of its colonies that when they are at the bargaining table, it is very clearly an incredibly unequal bargaining table with this like

global superpower and its colonies and they're trying to reach, the colonies are trying to reach, the colonies are trying to reach sometimes more independence or more federal funding or something or another. Yeah. So the other 14 insular areas are what the U.S. calls quote unquote territories. And I should say that 14 doesn't even tell the whole story, but I'm going to hold on to that fact for a second. These 14 are divided into 13 unincorporated territories and one incorporated territory. There's a complicated explanation for that that I'm going to explain in the next episode, But all you have to know for now is that people often talk about these territories as being part of the United States.

And while that is true on a conceptual level, right, when you imagine the United States, or maybe not when people going to the American 250 rallies imagine the United States. But when you map out the U.S.'s global borders, you include Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa as part of the United States. However, in a strictly legal sense, all of the unincorporated territories belong to but aren't part of the United States. So of these 14 territories, nine are uninhabited and five have people on them. The nine uninhabited territories are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll, which is the sole incorporated territory, Wake Island, and Navasa Island. There are also two other territories, Serranilla Bank and Bajo Nuevo Bank, that are claimed by the U.S., but administered by Colombia.

Meanwhile, Haiti has also historically laid claim to Navasa and still does. This is similar for Wake Island, which is claimed by the Marshall Islands, but is administered by the U.S. In the modern day, these remain mostly uninhabited, save for military or scientific missions. all of these little pieces of land are often grouped together as the U.S. minor outlying islands. Yeah. In the calculus of the U.S., they're like so meaningless that they're usually not even talked about by their names right. Right.

It's like a footnote of like existence. Exactly. Exactly. Even though they have been, as I hope to show, very important to the conception of the United States as an empire. Meanwhile, the five inhabited territories are Puerto Rico, where I'm from and currently located, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa. So this is going to be split into two episodes. The first is kind of giving a crash course on the inhabited islands and how the U.S.'s claims to the minor outlying islands created the skeletal framework on which the U.S. would expand its overseas empire. And then the second episode is mostly going to be about how the U.S. acquired those five uninhabited islands and how they kind of shaped the metropole in ways that people rarely conceive of.

However, before getting into that, I want to make a quick note about language. Up until now, I've been using the word, quote unquote, territory to describe these places just to talk about them in the same way that a U.S. history teacher might talk about them or how the president of the United States might talk about. them. But going forward, I'll be referring to them by the word, quote-unquote, colony, because that's what it's called when a foreign policy controls a place and its people. Yeah. The US, like the booktattle hints at has done a very good job of hiding its empire. But, like, I think part of that is because it's convinced people not to call it by its name because it hasn't called it by its name and then no one else does, then somehow it fits into this magical third space between independence and empire,

rather than just saying, oh, yeah, this is an empire, but they rebranded it. Yeah, absolutely. It's like of the however many empires that have existed throughout history, the only thing exceptional about the U.S. is that it doesn't conceive of itself as an empire. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode eight before you're done slicing the cute? Cucumbers. Get Bell purefiber internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.com for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers.

The show is famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes. and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere, too, right? What do you think it is now? It's images and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves Nova.

Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed. It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. I call, I don't.

I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobiesky. I don't think she was an American pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up. She was prominent around the same time. Then Mary Steenbergin. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game?

I just really. I get it. I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lee's Black Klansman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Tatoro, I deliver pizza from Prince

Street pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now? Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr.

I don't think I've ever met so. somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness. Delivering Happiness. Mariano Rivera. Oh, my God. And many, many more.

Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Totoro. And listen now. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotbe. If you know me, you know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools. to maximize joy. So this podcast lets us uncover those things together through meaningful conversations with fascinating people. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space

with you. You have something in your guts. You go with it. And Sean Johnson recalled the moment she realized her now husband, Andrew, was the one. He was just so unapologetically himself and knew nothing of Hollywood. He hadn't been on a plane before without his family. It was so pure. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So I'm going to assume that a lot of people don't know much about the U.S. colonies. So here's a crash course.

Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are in the Caribbean. while Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and American Samoa are in the Pacific. Between them, the five U.S. colonies have about four million people. Except for American Samoa, everyone born there is born an American citizen. People born in American Samoa are non-citizen U.S. nationals. If they want to become U.S. citizens, they have to go for the naturalization process. People in the colonies can't vote in federal elections, and we do. don't have voting representation in Congress. Instead, we have a non-voting representative

whose job is kind of just to squawk at other Congresspeople to convince them to do things. Politically, all the colonies, save for Puerto Rico, have the U.S.'s two-party system. I should say that American Samo's elections are nonpartisan, which means that while candidates do affiliate with the Republican or Democratic parties, they run the ballot as independent. In Puerto Rico, political parties are divided based on whether they want. Puerto Rico to become a state, independence, or remain in the colonial status quo. That has been that way for going on about 70 years now. Although some candidates in Puerto Rico do affiliate with U.S. political parties, they run

representing the Archipelago's political parties. A bunch of the sources I used, like the AP or the conversation, among others, are linked in the show notes if you want more details. Puerto Rico is probably the one that people most know about, right? and I'm also going to be focusing a lot on it throughout these two episodes because I'm from here. We're the most populated and largest in terms of landmass by several magnitudes. The archipelago really only comes into the American consciousness in times of crisis. For example, right now it's in the news because we're facing a pretty bad water crisis

with some people having gone more than 100 days with no or intermittent water service. this is common across all the colonies, only getting media coverage in times of crisis, and even then it's unlikely that they'll receive the same media attention as any state. Puerto Rico is often the one that's in the news just because it's the biggest, right? But when was the last time you heard a, let's say, like a CNN report about Guam or American Samoa, right? Right. In my experience, right, only talking about Puerto Rico, it's kind of a news desert in relation to other states, which I know, right, media has been affected everywhere,

but the colonies specifically, because of their kind of colonial status and how it has affected them, there's media blackouts from the metropole to them, and in them, they are sometimes a little bit of news deserts. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I would wager to say that the first time Puerto Rico

entered American consciousness in recent memory was in 2017 when hurricanes Irma and Maria destroyed the archipelago and its long-ailing electrical system, causing thousands of deaths and the largest and longest blackout in U.S. history. Shortly after that, a morning consult poll found that only about 54% of Americans knew that people here were also American citizens. And that's like after kind of once in a lifetime natural disaster. Yeah.

Right. That's been in the headlines. And Trump is there, like handing out toilet paper. True. Absolutely right. He was doing the kind of free point. meme photo that has become famous now. Yeah.

Yeah, handing out is a wrong word. Right. Sort of flicking toilet paper at people. Absolutely. And, you know, he also, like, and this is kind of a preview of what I'm going to talk about next episode or at the end of next episode, but he did remark that he wanted to trade Puerto Rico for Greenland. It's Denmark.

So, like, it would be the Danes who would administer Puerto Rico or who's he trading it with? Yeah, no, he's trading it with Denmark. He would trade Puerto Rico for Greenland, so Denmark would take over Puerto Rico and the U.S. will take over. Why not? Over Greenland. You know, we're just kind of there to be bartered with. Right, yeah. This is not a place where people live.

Exactly. I'm sure the Danes really embrace. I mean, yeah, fine, I guess. That is what Empire used to do back in the day, right? We'd just swap land around. Absolutely. I mean, the U.S. bought the Virgin Islands. from Denmark for a cool 25 million, right?

So there's precedent for it. Yeah, true. Yeah, and not so long ago, Alaska. True. So, like I mentioned, only appearing in U.S. media or receiving national attention is very common for the colonies. This is particularly the case of Puerto Rico, which has been suffering one crisis after another for the last two decades.

Our siblings and the other colonies receive even less media attention. If you're listening, and this is the first time you're hearing about these colonies, to be honest, this is what empire does to those it considers lesser than. Make them invisible in public life until it is sociopolitically expedient to use them for one purpose or another. Yeah. Like trading us for Greenland. And while I was writing, I really struggled to find a concise way of explaining the importance of the colonies to the formation of the United States as we know. it today. Today, we often talk about the imperial boomerang produced by several overseas U.S. invasions in the Middle East coming back to hauntus. We've seen the militarization of police

throughout the country, the rise of what any Latin American country would call, quote-unquote, manorura politics at home, and much more. Yet in the conception of the American consequences of imperialism, the literal colonies of the United States are often left by the wayside. But the current and former colonies have shaped the country in untold ways, of which I'm going to be talking about a few today. To quote from Colonial Crucible, quote, the United States held most of its larger colonies for just a few decades and governed only a few million people, yet empire left an indelible imprint on the United States. Colonialism was a crucible that plunged Washington's raw bureaucracy into the white heat of nationalist revolution and great power rivalry,

forging new heretofore unimagined state capacities. Indeed, the ramifications of this early American empire were far wider than anyone has yet imagined. A marked expansion in the role of the federal government for more activist domestic administration, and the formation of an agile transnational imperial state for more effective global governance. I think a lot about how, like, American self-conception has kind of changed. Like, I guess I think a lot specifically about Cuba, right?

And how, like, there is not an American politician who would not like to be compared to Theodore Roosevelt. Absolutely. Could be on any party, right? most of them would also like to be compared to FDR, which is a whole other interesting thing when you look at internment, but that's a separate topic.

Part of that is that he and his like rough riders, right? These volunteers went to Cuba and they charged up San Juan Hill. Like, at the time in America, there was this feeling that like empires are going to fall and we're going to help them. And we went from that, and some of that was like yellow press stuff, right?

like this sort of whipping up this popular sentiment of like, we are the Americans and we destroy empires to the Plata Amendment. Yeah. Right. And to effectively the United States de facto ruling Cuba, informal colonialism. Like what that says about how the United States conceived of its role in the world.

Even like, you can go back even further, right, and see Hamilton talking about a revolution in Haiti and the shit that didn't make it into the musical. where he is just wildly racist and believes the black people of Haiti to be incapable of self-government and suggest that they might want to appoint a king to like, I don't know, keep them under some kind of control, I guess.

Like I failed to follow the logic there, but I don't particularly care to try. But like it says a lot about this country, right? Which does it, it's saying like all men are created equal. Well, fuck, not in Haiti though. Yeah. Not in Haiti, not in the Caribbean, and not in land America, not anywhere, but the United States and maybe Europe.

Yeah, like from sea to shining sea is in fact, like those people are created equal unless they're indigenous to the place that we want, in which case we don't even fucking respect our treaties with them, let alone them. I mean, Britain did this too, but like just a jarring disjuncture between rhetoric and actions.

And like at the same time that that rhetoric could still be used to justify colonial actions, right? like when Hearst and the yellow press are whipping up this idea of like Spanish empire in Cuba and how unjust it is and how terrible it is and we shouldn't be allowing this in our hemisphere stop and pause and think about our hemisphere in anti-colonial terms. But like genuinely I'm sure that working people in America believe that, right? And some of the people who look volunteered to fight their genuine, we're like, hell yeah, we're going to liberate another country in the Americas like, fuck them all, burn it down.

We're going to bring the U.S. freedom and liberty to these people by crushing them. Yeah, like, we're the best country in the world, and we're going to share that with you all because you're our neighbors to, like, actually, like, we get to intervene how we want, when we want, whenever we want in your politics, because we like the stuff that you've got. Yeah, because seeing the colonizer from the colonized position, right, a lot of the U.S.'s approach to the rest of the world is either, right at the tip of a barrel or from a position of imperial and colonial arrogance. Like, we figured it out before you did, let me teach you how to do it. And if you don't follow everything I'm going to say, I'm going to force you to do it, right? And that's what defined this period of colonial expansion by the U.S. between like the early 1800s, arguably to now, honestly, right?

Yeah. Like, that attitude is indistinguishable from the attitude. that compelled Britain to create an empire all over the world. I love to show my students a white man's burden cartoon, right? I'm sure you've seen the one where he's like Uncle Sam is like carrying the peoples of like Puerto Rico Guam and Cuba, I think, up in a little basket up towards like civilization. Yeah, the shining mountain, the shining city on a hill,

carrying us to salvation. Yeah, and just like wildly racist caricatures. But I will show that, you know, I've shown that. undergraduates for getting on for 15 years. And it's always wild to see their responses to be like, I don't understand sometimes because I'm British, so look, I'm coming in there with a history of our own imperial crimes. But it's interesting to see them conceive of the United States that way

or try to wrap their heads around that way. They're like, no, that's not America. We didn't do that, man. A totally different thing. It's fascinating that they could come through 18 years at a high school system and not be asked to run. reflect on that or even be aware of it, you know? Mm-hmm.

And actually, speaking of colonial cartoons, I pulled it up right now, but I'm really partial to, have you seen this cartoon from Puck that I believe was made in 1900, where it's Uncle Sam teaching its newly acquired colonies, Hawaii, Philippines, Puerto Rico Q. I can send the link in the chat right now. Yeah, yeah. I think about it a lot, because I, growing up in Puerto Rico and being educated by the school system. I don't know about the American school system very much, or specifically how it's taught, but there was a critical lens to the way that we were taught about the U.S.'s kind of capture

and colonization of Puerto Rico. And that was mostly because I had a really great history teacher in my last senior year of high school. But this cartoon has really stayed in my memory for a very long time because it's like, it's how I view like the U.S.'s approach to so many foreign nations, right? You have so many, like, facets of this, right? You have the black population, which obviously the U.S. is historically oppressed and enslaved for centuries. You have the indigenous population also historically oppressed and killed for centuries by the U.S. government represented in the corner. And then you have these new states, which are, like, depicted as white people in colonial dress, being good students. And then you have Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii,

the Philippines up front, depicted as not in like the clothes the rest of the people are wearing, as if they need special attention to be taught the kind of education of freedom and liberty by Uncle Sam, right? I don't know. I think about this. Like anytime I'm like conceptualizing colonialism, this is it for me. They peaked here. Yeah.

That is wild. It's interesting that Alaska is amongst the like, I know what to call them. Like the older kids They're trying to portray like a civilisation savagery binary here right? Yeah

That's what's happening Alaska is up there with the civilized stage And then there's someone I know what's happening with this person outside the door is just like the Chinese Exclusion Act Like I believe so

Yeah I think that's what they're trying to To portray Yeah It's an excellent cartoon Yeah But it's a whole lot happening here Listeners

I know that this is an audio media but go Google, school begins and puck, and then you'll see it. It's really, I don't know if they were made this like purposefully racist or if they were just really good at depicting the U.S. is racism, but they, they popped off with this one. Yeah. We should teach this in every school, everywhere. Yeah, it's pretty, like, it gets right to the point. Yeah, exactly. So I want to be clear that the way that the U.S. was shaped by its colonies,

is not a uniquely American phenomenon. Paraphrasing from colonial crucible, every empire is shaped by the Promethean experience of the colonizer and the colonized, both empowering and eviscerating, yet mutually transformative and traumatic. The chain of continuity that now spans almost 200 years of seafaring colonization has profoundly shaped the American Empire, unleashing the catalytic forces that have shaped the formation of the American state up to this day. the lasting imprint of which is evident during Washington's recent misadventures in the Middle East.

And when they wrote that, it was 2009. So they were talking about the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. But 20 years later, it applies almost equally to the current war with Iran. With that out of the way, to start with how the U.S. expanded past the American continent and became a seafaring empire, We need to go back 200 years to the mid-1800s and talk about bird shit. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pasto survive the first bite?

Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Crave Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.ca for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements.

We host the podcast, Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their careers by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller. The definition of what is a movie has kind of changed anywhere, too, right? What do you think it is now?

It's images. and words being spoken, captured by some sort of technology. Danny McBride. He loves mouth. Oh, that's fantastic. And you make it on, you make your own. That's great. I call him Terro Reed.

It's a good name. They're all named after cast members of American Pie. Yeah. Oh, gotcha. I call, I don't, I never looked up if she was in this, but I call him Leachie Sobieski. Yeah. I don't think she was an American Pie, but I still like that. Haven't looked it up.

She was prominent around the same time. Yeah. Then Mary Steenbergen. Why are you guys talking to me? I'm worried. I'm worried. Why are you talking so down to me that you think I don't understand your little play game? I just really, I get it.

I'm trying to set you up for success here. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nick Titoro. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Least Black Landsman. But I'm also from Queens, which means I know pizza. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza from Prince Street pizza to a new guest. Are you delivering pizza now?

Then we sit down for a real conversation. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing, my belt? To Alex Rodriguez. Just to let you people know, we're talking to one of the goats here. To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up,

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Manifest Destiny had taken the United States on a genocidal campaign that displaced indigenous people and killed them from sea to shining sea. Meanwhile, the Monroe Doctrine, while still nascent and not completely enforceable by the American state, created the ideological. and legal framework for the country to overflow from its recently established national borders. In the midst of all of this, industrial agriculture was becoming the norm across the world and in the United States, which meant that there was a severe need for fertilizer to grow crops quickly. People were experimenting with different things, but the one fertilizer that everyone wanted was guano. Also known as white gold, guano is the accumulated poop of birds' back. and seals. It contains several nutrients that are very good for quick agricultural growth.

However, the thing about guano is that it mostly grows on far-off islands or caves. So the big problem with guano is that at the time, most of it was contained in islands off the coast of the newly independent state of Peru. And I'm talking about status in the nation state, the country, essentially, a country of Peru. And that was a problem for the United States. because they needed guano bad, but they didn't want to rely on a foreign country for it. And I should say that a lot of this comes from How to Hide an Empire and an article titled Guano and the Rise of American Empire by Mauricio Betancourt, published in Sage Journal. So, with a desperate need for guano, what is a fledgling empire to do but set sail and lay

claim to the islands that contain large deposits of guano? U.S. businessmen originally wanted the U.S. to take Peru's Lobo Islands for themselves so they could extract the guano, but Peru protested and the U.S. backed off. However, the American taste for guano was clear. And in 1856, the U.S. passed the Guano Islands Act, which allowed any U.S. citizen to lay claim to uninhabited islands that had guano on them in the name of the United States. American entrepreneurs set sale for poop-covered islands, and while the law specifically mentioned that they had to to be not claimed by other countries. That didn't really stop people from claiming islands

that were also claimed by other nations like Britain, Honduras, and Colombia. It's kind of like that meme from Arfer that says, a sign can't stop me because I can't read. Yeah. This is like the wildest period, maybe not, but like it's just this bonkers period of US history where you can personally expand

the imperial possessions of the United States. States, like on your own free will and volition. Right. So it's like, you know, I mean, that's like part of the American conception, right? You reached a place that was empty of people. You settled there and now you have brought the U.S. to it, right? That's the story that America tells itself, at least. Right.

Like, that's manifest destiny, like, writ large across the whole global map. Absolutely. So per how to hide an empire, by the time that last claim was filed in 1902, the U.S. had added 94 islands to its dominion. All of these were uninhabited, so they weren't quite colonies until U.S. industry moved to them, establishing guano mining outfits that used black laborers essentially induced to work there under false pretenses and horrible conditions. In more ways than one, the U.S. had essentially exported southern-style plantations beyond its continental borders to the edges of its empire. Nowhere was this more clear than a tiny island off the coast of Haiti,

called Davasa, that the U.S. still owns to this day. Workers there are mostly consisted of black laborers from Baltimore. Fed up with horrible conditions, the workers eventually revolted, and five white overseers died during the ensuing riot. For this, dozens of workers were charged with crimes ranging from rioting to murder. Free were given death sentences. And when their case eventually reached the Supreme Court, their defense rested on a Hail Mary play. Since Haiti also claimed Navassa, the U.S. did not have jurisdiction to prosecute them. And this was, to be clear, an extreme long shot. And the decision from this would define the U.S.'s legal approach to its colonies for essentially until now. The Supreme Court cited with the prosecution, laying it out

explicitly that the U.S. owned Navasa and other territories, and that American citizens there were working on American soil, even if it was a sort of corporal. fief them. President Harrison eventually commuted the deaf sentences to life sentences per a write-up in the History News Network, but raised the issue that the U.S. needed to better extend its government to these territories, ostensibly to protected citizens and its interest, no matter how far away their people or its land was. At time of recording, the 94 Guano Islands have diminished to less than 10 through various treaties and sessions. Nevertheless, the U.S. minor outlying islands still represent important footholds of U.S. military power and American sovereignty across the world,

particularly in the Pacific. So I started with these often forgotten islands because they have left a lasting legacy upon the American Empire. As highlighted by How to Hide an Empire, the first legacy is legal. Per the Guano Islands Act, these poop-covered rocks shall, quote, at the discretion of the president, be considered as appertaining to the United States. Appertaining is a strange word, right? It's mostly used as a legal term, but to simplify, it means that these islands belong to the United States. This word would come to define U.S. overseas possessions as legally belonging to, but not part of the United States, right? It's this appertaining. to me doesn't necessarily mean that it's part of me, but I own it.

But it's mine, yeah. It's like owned by the U.S., but not in the U.S. Yeah. In a strictly legal sense. Legal sense. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. It's just like the thing that's hard to explain about the U.S. colonies to some people

where they don't get how it can be owned but not in, but also part of. Yeah. Meanwhile, the second legacy is that the quest for guano, codified U.S. overseas expansion as being a quest of resource extraction. This kick-started U.S. imperialism past continental borders and showed how the U.S. government would encourage its industries to occupy and integrate themselves overseas in order to protect interest at home. These companies went off to farm to mine guano and then to send it back home.

We've seen this play out lots of times throughout American history, like during the so-called banana wars throughout Latin America, as well as the continued quest for oil that's played out throughout the 20th and 21st century. And the third legacy is that these Guano Islands, once rich in natural resources, are now part of one of the U.S.'s biggest exports,

military bases. Through the bases, the U.S. has established there, alongside the ones in the inhabited colonies, the U.S. has been able to project power outside of its continental borders because these tiny islands served or continued to serve as strategic military footholds in their respective regions.

This was particularly evident during World War II where there was a wave of military expansion by the United States throughout the world, but it remains true to this day. During World War II they called some of those islands in the Pacific, like unsinkable aircraft carriers was the way they would refer to it. Like still actually, in many of those islands,

there was a serious problem with unexploded ordinance, which I think gets to the difference between, like, being a place where the U.S. can put its military and being a place inside the U.S., right? The U.S. would not have left that many bombs and mines inside Ohio. Again, there are some areas with the U.S.O., including in San Diego, but, like, to nowhere near this extent, right? Yeah, absolutely right. And actually, to skip ahead a little bit, Puerto Rico during World War II is called the Gibraltar of the Caribbean because of how the U.S. operated. kind of its force projection in the region.

And actually, now that you mention the mines, there is an island municipality off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico called Piacas that the U.S. uses like a bombing range for many years. And there's still quite a few mines scattered throughout the island, I believe. Oh, wow. I should have included this. But there's about two thirds of the island municipality are still, you still can't walk on them because of the unexploided ordinance, right?

Yeah, it's like Quigelin. When you see like a missile has been tested, normally it's from Vanderberg Space Force Base right up in central California. That's where it's going. Like Quash is where Quijlino atoll is a toll in the Marshall Islands where the United States has a large base. And like that is where that missile is headed. Like still, we still do this, right?

We still test those. And we, of course, tested nuclear weapons inside the United States as well. But very quickly when we realized that those things were devastating and the land never recovers. We started to do that on land, which the United States controls, but does not consider to be of the same value. Let's land in the contiguous lower 48.

Absolutely. Bieches and its sister island municipality, Culebra, were used as bombing ranges for years. Viecas has a very high cancer rate compared to the rest of Puerto Rico. When I say decades, the Navy, quote unquote, left Vecas in 2003, right?

That is still within living memory for a lot of people, right? You know, the same people that protested the Navy's involvement there are still alive in kicking today in several different activist causes, right? And they only left because they accidentally killed a security guard that kind of incited the protest that were already going on, but that kind of kicked it into high gear. Actually, I don't know if Americans know this, but like RFK for a very long time was kind of a local Puerto Rican folkie. because he'd participated in the anti-Navy protest here, then he became what he is today,

although I guess he might have always been that. Yeah, I did not know that. He has been on a journey throughout his life, I think it's fair to say. But yeah, there were people who, like, doubted the state parentheses good, who have turned into people who doubt the state parentheses bad. He is one of those people. I was just thinking, too, about, like, this same time period is, like the same time period as the cannon air strike.

Are you familiar with the cannon air strike? Not at all. It's where miners in Mexico go on strike, right? They're in Sonora. And the owner of the mine, whose name I think was green, it's in Porfirio, right? So Porfirio Diaz is the president of Mexico. And it's like very pro-American investment.

And this is just before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. and it's a time when like the Americans are just like ruthlessly investing in Mexico is far too quite but they're exploiting Mexican resources right now taking those for American profit there was a I think it's called the Cannesare Consolidated Copper Company the workers there go on strike and this guy I think he's called Mr Green or Colonel Green maybe basically starts radio into America being like the workers are on strike strike, they're going to kill me, they're going to kill everyone. And they're not being particularly violent, right?

A fire starts hitting a strike, but it is not the workers, it is the guards who are armed. As often as the case. Yeah. And the fucking Arizona Rangers enter from Arizona. And I believe they're deputized on entering Mexico to intervene in this strike, right? Like the U.S. is like, Mexico is an independent country, but that's our mind, guys. eyes. Like, we'll be coming in here, like, along with, man, the guy's name Emilio or something, he was like a Russian emigre who became like a enforcer for Bofidio Diaz in Mexico.

But it just reminds me of the same thing. Like, the United States literally sending its cops into, like, invading a country. Yeah, to protect its, its U.S. business interests, right? Right. Like, don't fuck with our mind. In some ways, right, this was preceded or preempted by. the U.S. claims on the Guano Islands, which of course were uninhabited. So it made it easy for the U.S. to take control and establish them as mining colonies through its various industry companies. However, in modern times, resource mining has defined the U.S.'s imperialist ambitions.

While it's much harder to establish dominion over places that people live in permanently, that hasn't stopped the country from exerting its influence through gunboat and dollar diplomacy in places like Iraq and Venezuela, where it controls a significant part of their oil revenues. So this is the end of the first episode, but I'm going to talk a lot more about this phenomenon in the next episode, where we dive into how the U.S. occupies

and takes over the inhabited colonies through war and purchase. Any closing thoughts, James? Statehood's not independent. I'm sure we've got to touch on this. But I thought that was great. I enjoyed that very much. Thank you.

Thank you for being a guest. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. I'm Hoda Kotney, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotb.

You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space. You're hired to fill the space with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport.

And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Every episode we're trying to help our guests improve their creativity. by mainly focusing on how they can help us improve our careers. The show's famously super accessible so you can easily jump into any of our 650 episodes and understand what's going on. We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenberg. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nick Tutero. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, The Longest Yard, or Spike Lease Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Titoro, I'd deliver. a pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr. I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am.

And now we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness. Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. Our hometown is not a test tube.

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