Writings on Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden

Writings on Manifest Destiny and the White Man’s Burden
By Kurt Schulz


The basic premise of United States foreign policy since the outset of their expansion beyond the Appalachian Mountains is that of manifest destiny, which means that the expansion of the government in Washington to control all lands from Atlantic to Pacific, and eventually all of North America, was both obvious and inevitable. The nature of manifest destiny lies beyond the United States. It has been employed in ancient times, and continues to be the cornerstone of empire building by the United States and elsewhere to this day.
Manifest destiny is, at its core, a code based on three conclusions. One, that the American people and their institutions (i.e. government, military and state power) are virtuous. Two, that the United States must take as its mission spreading their institutions and to a lesser extent their people across the world to remake it in the image of the US. Three, that manifest destiny is a divine mandate from God, who wants the bastion of liberty (America) to exert itself across the world for the benefit of all of mankind…or at least of the righteous ones in the home country.
These principles can be found in the world’s ancient empires, from Persia to Britain and from Rome to Spain. All of these nations saw their leadership and their ethnic brethren to be of a pure and righteous breed. They may not have seen it as a burden to bring their cultures to other nations, but they certainly saw it as their God-given right to conquer and dominate. In fact, one might be hard-pressed to find an empire in the past that hasn’t taken some, if not all, of manifest destiny’s principles and applied it to their imperialist dreams.
A lot of what is found in manifest destiny is similar to its kissing cousin, the “White Man’s Burden”. Rife with Eurocentric racism, the White Man’s Burden assumes a more anthropological view of imperialism than does manifest destiny. That is to say, those subscribing to the ideal of the White Man’s Burden believe it to be the task of the white man to bring “civilization” to the “savage”. It is what prompted the Scramble for Africa: the idea that if European powers took over the world’s continents and instilled their technology, culture and way of life in the locals, the world would be a better place for all. It involves, in its most bare form, the invocation of sympathy among the general populace for those poor naked wretches biding the pelting of pitifully backwards cultures, so little taken care of by the righteous and ingenious white man.
Whereas manifest destiny is a matter more related to political annexation, while the White Man’s Burden is a far more cultural ideology, the similarities are striking. Both concepts came to prominence in the mid-1800s when the industrial might of Europe and America both took off, making exploring the world and overtaking the spear-and-arrow-wielding nations far easier. Subscribers to the White Man’s Burden saw it as their mission to bring their technology and political-economic systems to the savages. Manifest destiny advocates saw it as God’s will that the United States should expand beyond the Atlantic coast and across the Americas, ultimately bringing about sweeping changes to the globe.
At the core of both the manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden theories is an ideology that prompted Europe and the United States to become arrogantly self-righteous enough to promote a set of principles that placed them and their institutions/social structures at the top of the world. The audacity of the twin evils comes from another set of divisive and often murderous tracks of thought: racism and nationalism. To understand the roots of manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden, one must uncover the very nature of racism and nationalism.
Such a way did the world work at the time when both were developed that industrialism had exploded onto the scene in both countries. The United States and Europe alike had now harnessed nature for themselves and were using it to produce mighty machines that would allow them to conquer the world. Their motivation to do so, of course, was the very thing that came to taint the Industrial Revolution: greed. The desire, the uncontrollable craving for more and more, and more exotic is what led the powers of Europe to scramble for African colonies. It is why the Americans were not bound by the Appalachian Mountains and why Canada filled the West up with cheap Eastern European labour. It is because capital cannot exist without land, and in order to continue the economic growth that Euro-American capitalism sees mythically as eternal more land must be acquired. The connection, therefore, between capitalism and imperialism is the greed that fuels both.
Yet it was quite a few decades before either manifest destiny or the White Man’s Burden showed any signs of slowing down as a component of Euro-American foreign and domestic policy. Bringing civilization to the savage and acquiring their land in the process was the centerpiece of every offshore move that either sphere of the West made. It is the notion that non-European races were savages that allowed the Euro-American Empire to expand and conquer virtually the world.
Of course, the so-called savages were far from savage. Such civilizations labeled as such include those that themselves used to be technologically superior empires, such as Egypt, Persia/Iran, China, Abyssinia, the Aztecs and the Incas. Complex political systems in North America and Africa were toppled in place of European- or American-style governments. Many of the tribes and nations conquered – and often subsequently murdered – by the Anglo-American white men were fully functioning governing units, not dissimilar to either a democratic body (such as the Iroquois Confederacy) or a monarchy (chiefdoms across the Americas, Africa and Asia). Even if one does not consider their way of life or institutions to be significant enough evidence to remove the savage label, consider that the term savage was used to place non-Europeans on a scale of humanity, often likening the natives of Africa and the Americas to primates. In straight truth, there is no scientific evidence that even entertains the idea that one race is inferior to another in any sense.
So, where did the notion that one race is inferior to another come from? Simply, it would appear that the evaluation of the world’s respective cultures had much to do with it. While America and most of Western Europe were indulging in telecommunications, factories and grand architecture, African and American natives were dancing around fires and hunting with spears. With a cynical eye and a closed mind, the Europeans came out believing that the society they had built was far superior, and that any race that hadn’t developed to their level yet was inferior intellectually. An interesting position, to say the least, considering that China and the Middle East considered the Europeans to be scientifically lagging behind, that the Native North Americans were able to survive the harsh winters yet the “civilized” European settlers perished in great numbers, and that pyramids were on the banks of the Nile and at the foot of the Andes, none of them built by Europeans. In fact, scientific evidence is abundant to prove that the human race originates in Africa, essentially meaning that the earliest ancestors of the homo sapiens were black. Supposedly, these immense and ancient cultures are “savage”. Yet it seems perfectly clear that without the white man’s intervention, the world’s cultures could have done just fine. Any assertion otherwise is likely the product of the Eurocentric view that white European culture is superior. Just because any Third World country has Western-style “democracy” does not mean they are better off than if they had been left on their own.
Of course, it is easy to see that no culture or people like to be told that the way they are doing things is wrong and that it must change. It is from this perspective that one can bear witness to the nature of xenophobia. North Americans and Europeans fear immigration, and it comes from a historical context. Both of these imperial spheres have for centuries been expanding, conquering, moving in and either expelling the original residents or demanding that they change their way of life. Suddenly, immigration provides them with a taste of their own medicine, having foreign cultures arise in what is supposedly their land. While there are numerous complexities about the indigenous nature of Europe, one can assert with no error that North Americans have some nerve in proclaiming anything along the lines of “America for Americans”. Was it not early European settlers who arrived in northern North America (Canada and the United States) who kicked the Natives off of their land, murdered millions of them, and attempted to assimilate the survivors? Americans and Canadians as nations are as native to their land as the visible minority immigrants that they wish to block or kick out.
As big as the wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric has swept over North America and Europe in the wake of the dubious War on Terror is it is nothing new. While today it is Muslims and Hispanics who are the target of xenophobia, it was the Irish in the 19th Century, the Germans from the 1840s to the 1920s (and during and after World War II), the Chinese in the 1870s and the Italians and Polish in the 1920s. There is an illustrated and completely evident history of “nativism” in the United States, an idea that those born in the United States were better than immigrants of various backgrounds. The sad irony is that even to this day it exists, embodied in such classy individuals as Patrick Buchanan (an Irishman).
What this goes to show is that the societies emerging from Europe are historically, and to radically varying degrees presently, Eurocentric, xenophobic and imperialistic. It is illustrated in images of three white sheep kicking a black sheep off of a Swiss flag; in white men who are ascendants of immigrants protesting immigration (were their ancestors legal?); in the manifestations of mainstream fascism, the British National Party and the French Front National; and in the frustratingly patronizing demeanour of rich white men and celebrities who wish to bring their philanthropy to the Third World by introducing Western society to them.
Were the White Man’s Burden and manifest destiny a thing of the past, perhaps all of this would be unnecessary. Yet both are thriving to this day. In the case of manifest destiny, it is a specifically American concept and to this day is as manifest to Americans as ever. One needs to think only of the War in Iraq as an example. Recall the three themes of manifest destiny: American institutions and people are virtuous, the world must be remade in their image, and it is all the will of God. The wars in the Middle East are built around these three principles, and not in any way discreetly. Why else would George W. Bush insist that American-style democracy – which is highly undemocratic and has led to autocratic rule by the elite ruling class – is necessary for Iraq and the world. He may say “democracy” without adjectives, but it is quite clear that it is American-style liberal democracy that he intends. He furthers his conviction of the righteousness of the American people and their institutions through his hogwash, flag-waving rhetoric that passes as speech. He has convinced a nation of three hundred million people that the terrorists hate them because they are “free”, when in fact it has nothing to do with that. His espousals of American virtue combine with his desire to remake the world in America’s image, done through war and aggressive diplomacy to either pressure countries to accept America’s reign in the world or face invasion. The most telling evidence that America is in an age of neo-manifest destiny is the conviction that God is on America’s side. If it’s not George W. Bush’s rhetoric that God instructed him to send invaders to Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s the sheer presence of religion in American life: eighty per cent of Americans self-identify as Christians; “In God We Trust” has been on all coins and bills since 1938; and while only fifteen per cent of French citizens, ten per cent of UK citizens and twenty-five per cent of Israeli citizens attend religious services regularly, forty-one per cent of Americans do. Clearly, manifest destiny’s religious aspects are firmly rooted in the stranglehold that organized religion has on American society.
Sadly, a modern adaptation of an old ideology is not limited to manifest destiny. The White Man’s Burden survives in two forms today, one that is related to manifest destiny and another that is not.
The first kind is the one that shares an imperialist drive: basically, the desire to move into the “savages’” land and give them Western governments, economies and cultures. The World Bank and the IMF are the personification of the economics of the White Man’s Burden, wherein no part of the world is civilized if they do not adapt to capitalist globalization. The political-military component of the imperialist White Man’s Burden is witnessed in Iraq, which includes characteristics of manifest destiny as well, but also in Venezuela, Cuba, Grenada, Iran, North Korea, and Vietnam (in days past). All of these countries have faced or are facing invasion by the United States simply because the Americans and their allies felt it necessary to change the way things worked in those countries, which in their view was not up to the civilized level of a capitalist democratic society. This kind of political-economic imperialism draws on the White Man’s Burden as a means to make the population of the aggressor nation favour war. Take, for example, George W. Bush yet again: “I believe that you're going to see the rise of democracy in many countries in the broader Middle East, which will lay the foundation for peace.” This is strangely similar to the civilization envisioned for natives in Africa and the Americas.
The second kind of White Man’s Burden is that adopted by the richest people in the West. It is a thought process that reasons that since the West is so rich and has so much money, it is up to them to spread the wealth across the world. Theoretically a good and kind-intentioned idea considering that so many of the world’s people live in absolute poverty. The core problem with this sort of mentality – the kind that delivers such programs as Make Poverty History and LiveAid – is that it works within the global capitalist system. What good is one hundred million dollars raised for Africa if the starving tribesmen have no use for money? It is the same mindset that convinced the colonial powers to allow their colonies to become successor states, which only perpetuated the divisions in Africa, for those countries were drawn up based on what was best for imperial Europe, not the African people. Such is the case that internal strife and external conflict have erupted in virtually every African country since their respective independence. Now, after introducing a political system that has failed millions of Africans, the white man is throwing money – a concept of our own – at them. Helping a tribe to make a device to pump ground water out of a well is one thing: attempting to bring a Western way of life to them is another.
Lastly, the hard fact is that the problems created by manifest destiny and the White Man’s Burden will not go away with all of the African states dissolve, nor if the West continues to try to remake the continent in its image by choosing which governments to “support”. The challenges facing North American and Australian Aboriginals will not be solved if everybody of non-native ancestry evacuates those lands, nor if any attempt is made to assimilate the natives into the dominant culture. It is time for the white man to learn what he has frustratingly failed to learn time and again: live and let live. Allow the world’s civilizations, cultures and societies to grow in their own image, not yours. There are enough troubles in the lands where the white man dwells, the last thing that is needed are more pompous celebrities condescendingly trying to raise money for or take kids from the Third World.
The shackles of imperialism that bind those who are the victims of the ideology and those who mindlessly and oh-so-thoughtlessly subscribe to it must be cast off. The provincialism that separates mankind because of race or region must end, but not with one culture emerging as a leader of another, but with all cultures emerging as equal partners.