Summary of Niall Ferguson's Colossus

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The United States was designed from its very inception to be an empire. The Founding Fathers were very confident in their empire-building abilities, and they envisioned a country that would extend far beyond its initial boundaries.
#2 The American Empire was established in the 1760s, and by the 1800s, the vision of a continental empire was largely realized. Yet Morse’s prediction that America’s expansion would go beyond the continent’s two ocean shores was only very feebly fulfilled.
#3 The American expansion was easy, as the Native American populations were too small and technologically backward to offer any resistance to the hordes of white settlers swarming westward.
#4 After the American Revolution, the United States was able to acquire territory from European powers without having to fight for it. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the United States, including all or part of thirteen future states.

Sujets

• Political Economy
• Political Science

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 14 mai 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822510555
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Niall Ferguson's Colossus
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The United States was designed from its very inception to be an empire. The Founding Fathers were very confident in their empire-building abilities, and they envisioned a country that would extend far beyond its initial boundaries.

#2

The American Empire was established in the 1760s, and by the 1800s, the vision of a continental empire was largely realized. Yet Morse’s prediction that America’s expansion would go beyond the continent’s two ocean shores was only very feebly fulfilled.

#3

The American expansion was easy, as the Native American populations were too small and technologically backward to offer any resistance to the hordes of white settlers swarming westward.

#4

After the American Revolution, the United States was able to acquire territory from European powers without having to fight for it. The Louisiana Purchase in 1803 doubled the size of the United States, including all or part of thirteen future states.

#5

The acquisition of Texas by the United States was a major obstacle for the expansion of the country. Northern abolitionists saw the expansion as a way to increase the number of slave states in the Union.

#6

The American war with Mexico was fought over the price of Texas, as American citizens had claims against the Mexican government amounting to $6. 5 million. The Mexicans declined to recognize these claims, and the American army marched on Mexico City, capturing it in September 1847.

#7

The American frontier in the first century of its existence was limited to a line running north of the forty-ninth parallel. This illustrates the limits of American expansion.

#8

The United States had already mounted a number of small-scale naval expeditions in the period before the Civil War, but actual annexation of territory beyond the shores of the continent was another matter. It was clear that the Constitution did not allow for colonies or other forms of dependent territories, only new states.

#9

American imperialism in the late nineteenth century was similar to European imperialism in the same era. The United States acquired a world-class navy, and with this, the Monroe Doctrine gained credibility.

#10

Maritime power was justified in terms of overseas commercial interests. American businessmen had no thought for opportunities beyond the borders of the United States until the 1880s, when they began to realize that there was money to be made outside of America.

#11

Economic imperialism was the same in both the United States and Britain. The only difference was that the political base for imperialism was narrower in America, and the economic rationale of acquiring colonies was more open to doubt.

#12

The first American overseas possessions were islands desirable only as naval bases or sources of guano. The atoll of Midway, formally annexed in 1867 by Captain William Reynolds of the USS Lackawanna, was among the first of these maritime filling stations.

#13

The Hawaiian islands were annexed by the United States in 1898, but they did not become a state until 1959, because of a legal technicality that defined that strange limbo between independence and American statehood.

#14

The American occupation of the Philippines was a clear example of how the U. S. would engage in foreign affairs. It was impressively initial military success, followed by a flawed assessment of indigenous sentiment, a strategy of limited war and gradual escalation of forces, domestic disillusionment, and ultimate withdrawal.

#15

The Philippines War, which cost six hundred million dollars, aroused the initial domestic opposition to the war in the Philippines. The Anti-Imperialist League, which consisted of two former presidents, twelve senators, and eight former members of Cleveland’s cabinet, supported Filipino independence.

#16

Twain’s attitudes were similar to those of future generations of American antiwar intellectuals. He had begun by welcoming the liberation of the Philippines from Spain, but by October 1900 he had read the Treaty of Paris and concluded that the United States did not intend to free but to subjugate the people of the Philippines.

#17

The American occupation of the Philippines was a failure, and it was not the result of nationalist pressure. The first elections to the national legislature called by the Organic Act saw fifty-eight out of the Assembly’s eighty seats go to nationalists who had campaigned for immediate independence.

#18

The American approach to empire was different from European-style imperialism. Instead of occupying and running fully fledged colonies, the United States could use its economic and military power to foster the emergence of good government in strategically important countries.

#19

The American approach to Latin America was to establish Panama as an independent state in 1903, after the Colombian Senate refused to ratify an agreement leasing land for the construction of the canal. The strategic crux of American policy was the Central American isthmus and the long crescent of islands that separates the Caribbean from the Atlantic.

#20

In Cuba, business interests and strategic calculation pointed to intervention rather than annexation. American troops were there only briefly in 1898, and the country was circumscribed by an amendment that gave the United States the right to intervene if necessary for the protection of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty.

#21

The Dominican Republic and Haiti were both placed in a similar condition of political and economic dependence, just short of outright conquest. In 1905, the United States was given control over the collection of customs, the country’s primary source of revenue.

#22

The United States has had a history of intervening in Central America and the Caribbean that dates back to the 1920s. In the 1930s, the question was asked why the United States was in Nicaragua and what it was doing there.

#23

The most damaging allegation against American imperialism was that it was a Wall Street racket. It tried to export its political institutions to Latin America, but it had little success.

#24

The American government had a lot of patience with Venustiano Carranza, the leader of Mexico, in 1914. But in 1917, the new Mexican Constitution asserted that all subterranean mineral rights belonged to the Mexican nation, posing an implicit threat of nationalization to American oil companies.

#25

The American Empire was built on the idea of spreading American values and ideals, but in practice, it was very weak. The farther into the tropics the United States went, the weaker its grip became.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The United States was already a global power by the time the German submarine U-20 sank the Cunard liner Lusitania in 1915, killing nearly 1,200 people. The sinking forced the Americans to decide whether to safeguard American security by defense on this side of the water or by active participation in the lands across the oceans.

#2

American foreign policy in the three decades prior to 1947 was defined by the insistence of successive presidents that the United States could be a great power without behaving like any previous great power.

#3

The Americans did not want to be bound to the new postwar order, and the Europeans wanted the Americans to commit themselves to it. The Americans preferred to retain their freedom of action.

#4

The Second World War had a much bigger impact on American growth than the First World War. The years before the war were dominated by the most severe and persistent depression in American history, while the war more than doubled gross national product in real terms.

#5

The United States experienced denial during the war as well. Even before the country entered the war, Henry Luce, the founder of Time and Life magazines, had urged Americans to seek and bring forth a vision of America as a world power, which was actually American.

#6

Roosevelt’s anti-imperialism was especially influential, as it was based on his role in the postwar international order. He saw the British as colonial oppressors, and saw the Atlantic Charter as applying to all peoples living under British rule.

#7

Even as America was making war against the empires of their allies and enemies, their own empire was growing. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had drawn up an extensive shopping list of postwar bases to be leased or held under international authority.