 |
North America |
Contents:
- Introduction
- Civil War
- Economics of World War II
- General
- Imperialism in North America
- Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex
- U.S. Wars
- War and Big Government
The U.S. government’s attempts to maintain the entire continent of North America as a sphere of hegemonic influence are longstanding and varied. They included repeated interventions in Mexico, with several direct military incursions. In 1846, after annexing Texas and making plans to take California and New Mexico when offers to buy the territories from Mexico were declined, U.S. forces took actions that were perceived as provocative by the Mexican government. By late 1847, the U.S. military forces were in Mexico City. In the peace settlement, the U.S. government acquired two-fifths of Mexico’s territory.
The next major act of interventionism on the continent was President Abraham Lincoln’s successful violent effort to prevent the southern states from seceding from the union and establishing one or more separate countries. The Civil War occurred despite the fact that before and after the war, slave emancipation in other countries throughtout the rest of the Americas was sucessfully pursued without resorting to war. The war radically changed the conception of the United States from a confederation of sovereign states to a unified state with provinces subordinate to a central government. The campaigns to eliminate or relocate Native American tribes are also examples of the U.S. government’s intention to impose its will on the bulk of North America. Then, the Spanish-American War (1898) netted the U.S. government control of Cuba and Puerto Rico (along with Guam and the Philippines).
This continental hegemony was reinforced by virtually every subsequent administration--usually under the guise of responding to a war or economic crisis, such as the Great Depression. With policy precedents set during previous U.S. wars, interventionist programs with names such as the Square Deal, New Freedom, New Deal, Fair Deal, New Frontier, Great Society, along with myriad unnamed schemes from Democrats and Republicans alike, enabled the U.S. government to impose increased dependency (e.g., nationalized old-age pensions, medical care, unemployment insurance, education, highways, western land holdings, etc.) on the citizens under its jurisdiction. Moreover, preparation for and involvement in wars (including the “war” on drugs) have fostered the growth of a national-security garrison state with its attendant centralized economic power, armed-to-the-teeth posture, and intrusions on privacy and other civil liberties. The U.S. government’s achievement of military, especially nuclear, global reach exacerbated tensions, providing further justifications for controls on the domestic population, leading to today’s USA PATRIOT Act and other measures.
Every aspect of this imperial ambition curtailed the liberty not only of targeted populations, but also of the citizenry under the control of the government in Washington, D.C. Heightened levels of taxation and limits on civil liberties have been considered essential elements of this interventionist program.
Also, click here for Bibliography for Crisis and Leviathan.
Bensel, Richard Franklin. Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859-1877. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
DiLorenzo, Thomas J. “The Great Centralizer: Abraham Lincoln and the War between the States,” The Independent Review, Vol. III, No. 2 (Fall 1998), pp. 243-271.
—. The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War. Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 2002.
Engerman, Stanley L. “Review of the book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War by Jeffrey Rogers Hummel,” The Independent Review, Vol. II, No. 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 129-132.
Higgs, Robert. “The Bloody Hinge of American History,” Liberty (May 1997).
Hummel, Jeffrey Rogers. Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company, 1996.
McElroy, Wendy. “The Abolitionist Adventure,” Future of Freedom Foundation, July 2003.
Higgs, Robert. “From Central Planning to the Market: The American Transition, 1945-1947,” The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 59, No. 3 (September 1999).
—. “The Myth of U.S. Prosperity during World War II,” The Freeman, January 2003.
—. “Regime Uncertainty: Why the Great Depression Lasted So Long and Why Prosperity Resumed after the War,” The Independent Review, Vol. I, No. 4 (Spring 1997), pp. 561-590.
—. “Wartime Prosperity? A Reassessment of the U.S. Economy in the 1940s,” Journal of Economic History, March 1992 (Vol. 52, No. 1).
—. “Wartime Socialization of Investment: A Reassessment of U.S. Capital Formation in the 1940s,” Working Paper No. 45. Oakland, Calif.: The Independent Institute, 2003.
Harrison, Alferdteen, ed. Black Exodus: The Great Migration from the American South. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991.
Higgs, Robert. “Some Other Costs of War,” The Free Market, March 1991.
—. “A Strong Defense Against Whom?”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 6, 1995.
McElroy,Wendy. “War’s Other Casualty,” The Freeman, July 1999.
Raico, Ralph. “FDR: The Man, the Leader, the Legacy,” Future of Freedom Foundation, 2001.
Stoler, Mark A. and Marshall True. Explorations in American History, Vol. 1, Vol. 2. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987.
Sumner, William Graham. War and Other Essays. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911.
Twight, Charlotte. Dependent on D.C.: The Rise of Federal Control Over the Lives of Ordinary Americans. New York: Palgrave St. Martin’s Press, 2002.
Ambrosius, Lloyd E. “Turner’s Frontier Thesis and the Modern American Empire: A Review Essay,” Civil War History, XVII, Vo. 4 (December 1971), pp. 332-339.
Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1992.
Calvert, Peter. The Mexican Revolution, 1910-1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Cocker, Mark. Rivers of Blood, Rivers of Gold: Europe's Conquest of Indigenous Peoples. New York: Grove, 1998.
Drinnon, Robert. Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building. New York: New American Library, 1980.
Filler, Louis and Allen Guttmann, eds. The Removal of the Cherokee Nation: Manifest Destiny or National Dishonor? Boston: Heath, 1962.
Gardner, Lloyd C. A Different Frontier: Selected Readings in the Foundations of American Economic Expansion. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1966.
Haley, P. Edward. Revolution and Intervention: The Diplomacy of Taft and Wilson in Mexico. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1970.
Hietala, Thomas. Manifest Design: American Exceptionalism and Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.
Jackson, Helen Hunt. A Century of Dishonor: A Sketch of the United States Government's Dealings With Some of the Indian Tribes. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Jacobs, Wilbur R. “National Frontiers, Great World Frontiers, and the Shadow of Frederick Jackson Turner,” International History Review, VII, 2 (May 1985), pp. 261-270.
Knowlton, Clark S. “Land-Grant Problems Among the State’s Spanish-Americans,” New Mexico Business (June 1967), pp. 343-346.
LaFeber,Walter. The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Comstock Publishing Association, 1998.
Liggio, Leonard P. “Americans: Redskins or Palefaces,” Left and Right, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Autumn 1966).
O’Shaughnessy, Hugh. Grenada: An Eyewitness Account of the U.S. Invasion and the Caribbean History That Provoked It. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1984.
Paolino, Ernest N. The Foundations of the American Empire: William Henry Seward and U.S. Foreign Policy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973.
Rothbard, Murray N. Conceived in Liberty, 4 Vol. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000.
Schmidt, Hans. The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915-1934. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1971.
Smith, Robert Freeman. The United States and Revolutionary Nationalism in Mexico. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972.
Smith, Wayne S. The Closest of Enemies: A Personal and Diplomatic Account of U.S.-Cuban Relations Since 1957. New York: Norton, 1987.
Tompkins, E. Berkeley. Anti-Imperialism in the United States: The Great Debate, 1890-1920. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970.
Weinberg, Albert K. Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansion in American History. Gloucester, Mass: P. Smith, 1935.
Wood, Gordon. The Radicalism of the American Revolution. New York: Vintage, 1991.
Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex:
Brady, Robert A. Business as a System of Power. New York: Columbia University Press, 1943.
Cook, Fred J. The Warfare State. New York: Macmillan, 1962.
Eisenhower, Dwight D. Farewell Address. The Independent Institute.
Fitzgerald, A. Ernest. The High Priests of Waste. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972.
Giddens, Anthony. The Nation-State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987.
Higgs, Robert, ed. Arms, Politics, and the Economy: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. N
—. “Beware the Pork-Hawk: In Pursuit of Reelection, Congress Sells Out the Nation’s Defense,” Reason, June 1989.
—. “Hard Coals Make Bad Law: Congressional Parochialism Versus National Defense,” Cato Journal, Spring/Summer 1988.
—. “World War II and the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex,” Freedom Daily, May 1995.ew York: Holmes & Meier for The Independent Institute, 1990.
Hogan, Michael J. “Corporatism,” Journal of American History, 77, 1 (June 1990), pp. 153-160.
Hoppe, Hans-Hermann. “Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, IX, 2 (Fall 1990), pp. 80-93.
—. “Banking, Nation States and International Politics: A Sociological Reconstruction of the Present Economic Order,” Review of Austrian Economics, 4 (1990), pp. 55-87.
Kaufman, Richard F. The War Profiteers. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972.
Lane, Frederic C. “Economic Consequences of Organized Violence,” Journal of Economic History, Vol. XVIII, No. 4 (December 1958), pp. 401-417.
Lens, Sidney. The Military-Industrial Complex. Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1972.
McCormick, Thomas J. “Drift or Mastery? A Corporatist Synthesis for American Diplomatic History,” Reviews in American History, Vol. 10, No. 4 (December 1982), pp. 318-330.
McNeill, William Hardy. The Pursuit of Power: Technology, Armed Force, and Society Since 1000 A.D. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Melman, Seymour. Our Depleted Society. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965.
—. Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. New York: McGraw Hill, 1970.
—. The Permanent War Economy: American Capitalism in Decline. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
Nef, John U. War and Human Progress. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1950.
Rothbard, Murray N. Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy. Burlingame, California: Center for Libertarian Studies, 1995.
Sklar, Holly. Reagan. Trilateralism, and the Neoliberals: Containment and Intervention in the 1980s. Boston: South End Press, 1986.
Tilly, Charles. “War Making and State Making as Organized Crime” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
von Mises, Ludwig. Nation, State, and Economy. New York: New York University Press, 1983.
—. Omnipotent Government. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1944.
Besiner, Robert L. Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists 1989-1900. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968.
Denson, John V., ed. The Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999.
Foner, Philip S. The Spanish-Cuban-American War and the Birth of American Imperialism, 1895-1898. New York: Monthly Review, 1972.
Hoyt, Edwin. America’s Wars and Military Excursions. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987.
Raico, Ralph. “American Foreign Policy: The Turning Point, 1898–1919,” Future of Freedom Foundation, February 1995.
Stromberg, Joseph R. “The Spanish-American War: The Leap into Overseas Empire,” Future of Freedom Foundation, December 1998.
Weigley, Russel F.The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978.
Zimmerman, Warren. First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power. New York: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2002.
Barnett, Richard. Roots of War: The Men and Institutions Behind U.S. Foreign Policy. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1973.
Brewer, John. The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989.
Ekirch, Jr., Arthur A. The Decline of American Liberalism. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967.
Higgs, Robert. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
—. “Crisis and Quasi-Corporatist Policy-Making: The U.S. Case in Historical Perspective,” The World & I, November 1988.
—. “Crisis, Bigger Government, and Ideological Change: Two Hypotheses on the Ratchet Phenomenon,” Explorations in Economic History, Vol;. 22 (1985).
—. “Crisis-Induced Losses of Liberties,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2002.
—. “Defending the Homeland,” The Free Market, May 2002.
—. “How War Amplified Federal Power in the Twentieth Century,” The Freeman, July 1999.
—. “In the Name of Emergency,” Reason, July 1987.
—. “War and Leviathan in Twentieth-Century America: Conscription as the Keystone,” from The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John V. Denson. Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1999.
Higgs, Robert and Charlotte Twight. “Economic Warfare and Private Property Rights: Recent Episodes and Their Constitutionality,” Journal of Private Enterprise, Fall 1987.
—. “National Emergency and the Erosion of Private Property Rights,” Cato Journal, Winter 1987.
—. “National Emergency and Private Property Rights: Historical Relations and Present Conditions,” Journal of Private Enterprise, Fall 1996.
Hülsmann, Jörg Guido. “Political Unification: A Generalized Progression Theorem,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 13, 1 (Summer 1997), pp. 81-96.
Kennedy, David M. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
McElroy, Wendy. “World War I and the Suppression of Dissent,” Fairfax, Virginia: Future of Freedom Foundation, 2002.
Nisbet, Robert A. The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America. New York: Harper & Row, 1988.
Polakoff, Keith I. Political Parties in American History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.
Porter, Bruce. War and the Rise of the State: The Military Foundations of Modern Politics. New York: The Free Press, 1994.
Twight, Charlotte. “Watching You: Systematic Federal Surveillance of Ordinary Americans,” The Independent Review, Vol. IV, No. 2 (Fall 1999), pp. 165-200.
Vagts, Alfred. A History of Militarism. New York: Meridian Books, 1959.
Van Creveld, Martin. The Rise and Decline of the State. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.