The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 [Paperback]

Fred Anderson (Author), Andrew Cayton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 29, 2005

With the great exceptions of the Revolution, the Civil War, and World War II, Americans seldom think about how military conflict has fundamentally shaped the United States. The Dominion of War offers a startling new perspective on American history. By moving America’s forgotten conflicts—its imperial wars—to center stage, the authors explain how war, above all else, has been the primary means by which people of North America have defined American society for the last half-millennium.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It can't be any mystery that "war and imperialism have powerfully influenced American development," as this book's authors say. But how powerfully did war and imperial ambition affect the U.S. when set against other factors? One wishes historians Anderson (author of the prize-winning Crucible of War) and Cayton (Frontier Indiana) had told us in this otherwise enterprising, readable work. Covering 500 years, they relate the nation's past through a narrative of colonists' and, later, citizens' determination to expand and secure by force their possessions. It's solid corrective history. Particularly appealing is the authors' organizing principle: they tell their tale through the lives and careers of such great military figures as George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses Grant, Douglas MacArthur and Colin Powell. The trouble is that by doing so, they often sacrifice analysis. They succeed in convincing us that wars and imperial expansion are fundamental impulses of the nation's history—arguably its central engine. But they overlook how those impulses may have grown out of the nation's immigrant origins, its democratic politics or its capitalist economy. That's too bad, because, in their telling, the U.S. looks a lot like other powerful nations, which may not be correct if these other, causative factors are taken into account. B&w photos, maps.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Two historians present an incisive, provocative account of the U.S. rise to global preeminence over five centuries. Central to their thesis is the assertion that military conflict has been essential in determining the cultural and political evolution of North America. It was imperial ambition rather than a love of liberty that led to British victory in the French and Indian War, ensuring Anglo-American supremacy in the eastern half of North America; parodoxically, that British victory led directly to the American Revolution. Similarly, our imperial ambition, which provoked the Mexican-American War, intensified our sectional rivalries, and the Civil War followed. Although the authors' views deserve to be challenged by those holding alternative visions, Anderson and Cayton have provided a well-written and important reinterpretation of our past. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143036513
• ISBN-13: 978-0143036517
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #261,967 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Imperialism and ideology, March 30, 2005

By 

John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (Hardcover)

This is a very insightful account of American history in the chord of imperial expansion, telling the story that doesn't quite appear in standard accounts. We are so habituated to the American narrative that we forget the terrible legacy of expansionism, and its endless betrayals and ethnic cleansing. One useful feature of the account is to start in the sixteenth century, and show the change that came over the relations of settlers and Native Indians. A further key is to include the complexities of the Seven Years War to that of the American Revolution, showing their direct connection (the same for the Mexican-American War and the Civil War). The story of William Penn and his pacifism and good relations with the Indians is like a forgotten echo, and, as with this case, it is important to see how much of our history is a story of the defeat of good intentions as the lowest common denominator of imperial conquest seems to take over. The case of Penn and Pennsylvannia is a reminder of what might/should/could have been, leaving no excuse for the teleological fallacies of the great American narrative.

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A readable and very important book, August 1, 2005

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (Hardcover)

As is well known, American leaders tend to justify wars by explaining them as operations in defense of liberty and democracy. This important book examines that notion through the impact of several historically key men on North America.

They include Samuel de Champlain, whose missionizing and choosing up sides in various Indian wars set the stage for "the most widespread and destructive warfare in North American history"; William Penn, whose sincere efforts to coexist peacefully with the Indians degenerated into the unapologetic expansionism of his heirs; George Washington, who foresaw so many of the dangers of military intervention abroad; the tempestuous and bullying Andrew Jackson, who owned slaves, relocated thousands of Indians west of the Mississippi, and set the stage for ongoing wars of conquest in the name of freedom and liberty (and who had the gall to argue that relocating the Indians was "not only liberal, but generous"); Ulysses Grant, reluctant participant in the land-grabbing war with Mexico, a man who clearly understood that such aggressive moves always bring punishing consequences; the grandstanding Douglas MacArthur, aging momma's boy and self-appointed missionary of Christianity and liberty, finally relieved of command by Truman for suggesting that the United States nuke China; and Colin Powell, whose highly distinguished military career ran parallel with a habit of doing what he was told while silencing his doubts--doubts that nearly always turned out to be realistically based. "I had been conditioned to believe in the wisdom of my superiors...."

The authors of this book tell a balanced tale without heavy-handed recourse to the lessons unlearned from history, but the lessons stand out anyway: the conquest of the Phillipines, for example, so many of whose citizens died in the American attempt to liberate them in a bloody, exhausting campaign that only ended when the occupation did. Concentration camps and torture inflicted by MacArthur's soldiers stained these attempts to mold a nation's fate from above, as did Roosevelt's propagandistic declaration that the insurrection was over (July 4, 1902) when in fact it would not end for many years.

A poignant event might well give food for thought: Woodrow Wilson's 1916 draft of a speech to Congress, which stated that "it shall not lie with American people to dictate to another people what their government shall be or what use they shall have or what persons they shall encourage or favor." Reviewing the speech, Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote: "Haiti, S. Domingo, Nicaragua, Panama" in the margin by way of comment (he might have added Cuba, Mexico, and the Phillipines), whereupon Wilson gave up on the speech, a decision that may well mark a significant difference between the politics of his time and our own.

19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An interesting thesis, January 6, 2005

By 

1. "John Henninger" (Littleton, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (Hardcover)

Anderson and Cayton make the controversial thesis that Americans use the themes of liberty and freedom for their own expansionist aims. The first two chapters of the book, the authors describe how the European powers cooperated with the Native Americans in order to acheive their aims. But after the Seven Years War, the colonists viewed British cooperation with natives as impeding their drive westward. During the Revolutionary War, Americans ethnically cleansed thousands of Native Americans in order to defend their individual rights to expand westward. George Washington tried tired to slowly assimilate Native Americans to embrace ideas of freedom and democracy, but his plans fell apart due to the violent actions by Scotch-Irish settlers and later by Andrew Jackson's policies in the western borderlands. Grant tried to implement Washington's program after the Civil War, but did nothing to prevent the expulsion of the Native Americans from their lands. The same policies that Washington and Grant used on the Native Americans expanded to the Phillippines and Cuba in which the interests of these citizens were subordinated to the wishes of the United States. MacArthur followed similiar actions in his dealings with the Japanese after the Second World War in which he repressed some Japanese publications because they were against the interests of the United States. The main weakness of this book is that the first two chapters of the book does not flow with the remaining chapters and that the authors don't compare the American empire with its European counterparts in the nineteenth century. Otherwise this book strongly disputes writings by the likes of William Kristol on the right, and Samantha Powers on the left, that advocate the use of American military force in order to spread individual freedom.