A complex multinational megaproject with layers of government corruption and massive government funds. A separatist movement created and sponsored by the US. A chunk of territory carved out of an existing country for imperialist use. Workers exploited to death. And a shining imperialist possession at the end. We talk about the creation of Panama and the Panama Canal, another prototypical imperialist operation that offers many warnings for the next 120 years.
Category: The Americas
Civilizations 37d: Yankee Imperialism pt4 – Puerto Rico’s thwarted autonomy
Through their own efforts, Puerto Rican revolutionaries won a charter of autonomy from Spain and were on their way to winning independence. Then Spain handed its colony over to the US, and the US has colonized it ever since. We talk about how the US invented the concept of “odious debt” to avoid paying Spain’s colonial debt, then promptly saddled Puerto Rico with an odious debt of its own.
Civilizations 37c – Yankee Imperialism pt3 – Cuban Independence vs the US Empire
We tell the story of Cuba’s movement for independence from Spain following the remarkable career of Jose Marti from his teenage years to his unlucky demise. We pick up the story of the Spanish American War in Cuba from the USS Maine incident (“To Hell With Spain! Remember the Maine!”) and the possibility that it was faked. Part 3 of our series on Yankee Imperialism.
Civilizations 37a: Yankee Imperialism pt1 – the Robber Barons
At the end of the 19th century the US acquired a substantial overseas empire – Hawaii, Samoa, Guam, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Cuba, as well as imperialist relations all around the world. In this miniseries we look at this Yankee Imperialism, focusing on the Spanish-American War. But first, the post-Reconstruction domestic situation in the US – the robber barons, the violent strikes, and the racial apartheid that fueled the American system. We use two books that are two sides of the same people’s history coin: Dave reads from Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States; Justin from J Sakai’s Settlers.
Civilizations 26c: Canada pt3 – Canadian colonialism: reserves, pass system, residential schools
By 1885, the Indian Act was in place, most Indigenous people were forced onto reserves, and the nadir of Canadian colonialism (so far) was set. Part 3 of 3 our series on Canada takes us through the residential school system and the racialist ideologies openly expressed throughout this phase of Canadian history.
Civilizations 24: Jamaica 1865 – Morant Bay Uprising shakes the British Empire
In 1865, Paul Bogle led an uprising in Jamaica that was repressed with extreme violence by the British, led by Jamaica’s Governor Eyre. The reaction was disproportionate and the story was big news in Britain, leading to a committee questioning Eyre’s brutality and a counter-committee forming to defend him. Both committees have some big names from Britain’s past: Darwin and Mill on one side, Dickens and Tennyson on the other – and many more.
Civilizations 23d: American Civil War pt4 – the Rise and Fall of Reconstruction
We conclude our 4 part series on the American Civil War following WEB Du Bois’s book Black Reconstruction in America, talking about the brief, glorious moment of potential for genuine racial equality in the United States. In some ways, despite the gains made a century later, we still live with the consequences of the fall of Reconstruction. In the Civilizations Resources page I show how WEB Du Bois divided his bibliography.
AEP 75: The Dec 6 Venezuelan Legislative Elections
Maria Victor and I talk about the December 6 legislative elections in Venezuela. Turnout was low at 31%, but that’s normal for legislative elections* in a pandemic (Romania had around the same turnout on the same day, as others have pointed out). We talk about the electoral system in Venezuela, why it’s more fair than you’ve been led to believe, the disgraceful role Canada continues to play in trying to foment a coup in Venezuela, and what the new legislature is likely to do.
*Correction: Maria refers to the previous legislative elections in Venezuela as having a turnout of 25% – the 2015 legislative elections actually had a turnout of 75%. The 2005 legislative elections, however, had a turnout of 25%.
Civilizations 23b: “This question is still to be settled”: John Brown and the Civil War pt2
John Brown routed 75 men with 14, defended Lawrence from raiders, wrote a manual for the Underground Railroad, and began the war that ended slavery.
Frederick Douglass, talking about Brown’s actions in Kansas, wrote that one could not read the history “without feeling that the man who in all this bewildering broil was least the puppet of circumstances – the man who most clearly saw the real crux of the conflict, most definitely knew his own convictions and was readiest at the crisis for decisive action, was a man whose leadership lay not in his office, wealth, or influence, but in the white flame of his utter devotion to an ideal.”
This episode of Civilizations is all about John Brown – relying on W.E.B. Du Bois’s 1909 biography. Du Bois’s maps of Harper’s Ferry and Brown’s strategy are on the Civilizations Resources page.
Civilizations 23a – American Civil War Part 1: Abolition and distant causes
Civilizations begins our study (at least four parts) of the American Civil War. We start with the abolitionist movement in the decades before the war, and the conflict between the British Empire and the United States over abolition. This episode relies on (among other sources) Kellie Carter Jackson’s book Force and Freedom, and Gerald Horne’s book Negro Comrades of the Crown.