Review of A Nation Among Nations by Thomas Bender
America not as a city on a hill, but as one among many
As a history enthusiast, I have grown tired of the US penchant to regard our experience as exceptional: separate from, and superior to, the rest of the world. For example, the Civil War is portrayed as an idealistic struggle for freedom – either of the slaves’ or states’ rights – rather than a local example of the world-wide struggles associated with the establishment of the modern administrative state. How does the US fit larger patterns? What really is unique? To my delight, I discovered Prof. Bender’s book: it puts the US into global, comparative context, arranged around 5 major themes.
First, the discovery and colonization of the Americas coincided with the moment that the oceans were no longer insuperable barriers but open, when the world suddenly became one in a global trade economy. North America entered the scene as a lesser example of the great plantation economies, selling cotton (which replaced the silk trade) as well as “mildly addictive” drug crops like tobacco and sugar; this transformed luxury goods into items of everyday consumption. While there were other aspects like utopian communities and freedom of religion, Bender argues that the essential experience was economic: it created the slave trade for the brutal, deadly labor of clearing the land for the establishment of plantations.
Second, with a period of relative peace in the first half of the 17th Century, colonies in the Americas were able to develop themselves under “benign neglect” while they ensconced themselves in the transatlantic trade network and concentrated their political action into local representative assemblies. However, with the Seven Years War, the seats of empire began attempts to mobilize resources and consolidate power at the colonies’ direct expense: soon, their taxes and other requirements provoked resistance movements. According to Bender, this led to the age of revolutions, in which individuals (read white males) strove for equality and autonomy. North America was just one example of these. What is unique is that we were able to end monarchical privileges without the disruptive social revolutions that occurred in France and Haiti. Finally, the Confederation of States was able to negotiate their independence because the great powers found themselves occupied in global struggles elsewhere.
Third, with the US divided into political stalemate between north and south over slavery, a conflict that developed between nationalism and personal freedom. This too was reflected in movements all over the world, as embodied in the ethno-linguistic and nationalist revolutions of 1848, the emancipation of slaves and serfs, and the expansion of constitutionally mandated civil freedoms. Unfortunately, towards the late 1870s, these inchoate “rights” began to give way to a new force, nationalism as embodied in the modern administrative state, which emphasized the consolidation and control of territorial and imperial resources for purposes of power, through a mix of industrialization, education, natural endowments (oil, minerals, agriculture), and militarization. Anything or anyone that stood in the way of the drive for “national unity” tended to be suppressed, from former slaves to recalcitrant linguistic minorities and religious groups. This was the time of Jim Crow laws, the rise of organized antisemitism in Europe, and the suppression of minorities in the Ottoman Empire, Japan and Brazil. What distinguished the US was the issue of race, which trapped 1/5 of the population in an inferior status of disenfranchisement.
Fourth, though anxious to deny it, America became an empire right alongside the UK, France, and Germany as they carved up Africa and Asia. In contrast to those imposing direct administrative and political domination (aside from the Philippines and a few other territories), the US created a kind of neo-imperialism that was based on trade, finance, and missionaries. In addition, Bender argues that the US in effect colonized the North American continent in a paroxysm of ambition and acquisitiveness. The American style was to proceed with a lethal combination of complete confidence in its own superiority and a near-complete inability to understand the “culture, ideas, and aspirations of other peoples”. In spite of our rhetoric of individual rights and freedom, we assumed that very different nations would either naturally want to emulate us in order to gain what we had or that our “efficiency and decency” entitled us to take. If they failed to conform, subject peoples were either eliminated or brutally suppressed for as long as the military machine could dominate them. This would later become the “liberal world order”, as advanced by Pres. Wilson, an “ideological fusion of American economic self-interest” with an internationalist idealism that just happened to be American-dominated.
Fifth, with industrial capitalism under the threat of socialism, all developed nations undertook similar measures: an expanding sphere of governmental action, larger bureaucracies to implement policies, and regulation, i.e. concrete steps to remedy problems associated with laissez-faire. It was a movement to carry democracy into the social and economic spheres, to better the conditions of the underclass. Their measures would regulate working hours, safety, and unemployment insurance; it was a proto-welfare state. This required a revolution in the social sciences. Economics moved from deductive precepts and almost romantic ideals to statistical measurements and observation, bringing rigorous evidence that culminated in policies and an international network of functionaries to implement them. For example, as industrial accidents became statistically predictable, state action was legitimized. The US differentiated itself by the weakness and patchiness of its policies - laissez-faire retained more of its ideological legitimacy here than elsewhere and remains at the center of policy debates to this day. (This may have been due to the early focus on the family and home as well as race-oriented rights rather than factory and farm.)
Bender’s narrative ends in about 1920. It is a plea for a more cosmopolitan perspective over the parochial mindset that presumes the US is uniquely, self-evidently better. But he also warns that in concentrating on historical context and global developments, his perspective should not be used to justify the American-led liberal economic order.
Though I was aware of many of these developments, Bender drew them together and placed them in a context that I needed to complete the picture. Many things became clearer and I began to see American history more as an organic whole with the rest of the world. It is a masterpiece of exposition that every American student should read. Bender’s prose is elegant and precise, a great pleasure.
Recommended with the greatest enthusiasm.
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