How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

“The British weren’t confused as to whether there was a British Empire. They had a holiday, Empire Day, to celebrate it. France didn’t forget that Algeria was French. It is only the United States that has suffered from chronic confusion about its own borders.”

The author establishes the parameters for his investigation in How to Hide an Empire. He discusses the dichotomy of Americans’ self-perception as a republic and the country’s expansion, first across the North American continent and then overseas. As a result, with some exceptions, Americans have generally shied away from using the term “colony” and instead relied on “territory.” This confusion not only underscores the lower status of these territories but also translates into the American logo map that often only includes the mainland, along with disregard for its one-time formal colonies like the Philippines.

“To realize their vision, the founders created a distinct political category for the frontier: territory. The revolution had been fought by a union of states, but those states’ borders became ill-defined and even overlapped as they reached westward. Rather than dividing the frontier among the states, the republic’s leaders brokered deals by which none of the Atlantic states would extend to the Mississippi, which marked the western edge of the country. Instead, western land would go to the federal government. It would be administered not as states, but as territories.”

American frontier experience and its westward expansion in the 19th century is part of the same trajectory as its later overseas reach into the Pacific and Caribbean. Both types of expansion used the term “territory.” In both cases, such territories raised the question of borders and their enforcement, as well as the government jurisdiction and other legal questions. In the case of some American possessions, such as Puerto Rico, these problems lasted well into the 20th century.

“In 1828 the state of Georgia declared the Cherokee constitution invalid and demanded the Cherokees’ land. President Andrew Jackson approved. An Indian nation ‘would not be countenanced,’ he declared. The Cherokees must either submit to Georgia’s authority or head west, to the territories. The Supreme Court declared Georgia’s actions unconstitutional. But high-court rulings meant little in the face of the squatter onslaught. Cherokee landowners watched with alarm as Georgia divided the Cherokee Nation into parcels and started distributing it to whites by lottery.”

This quotation typifies some aspects of the early American state’s expansion. On the one hand, the highest court attempted to put an end to state-level actions that sought to push out the Cherokees from their own land.