Law, Policy and Empire with Daniel Immerwahr
The Lawfare Podcast
The Lawfare Institute
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
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Summary
Most of us don’t think of United States history as an imperial history, but the facts are there. The law and policy surrounding westward expansion, off-continent acquisitions, and a worldwide network of hundreds of bases reveal much about how and why the United States grew as it did.
Last month, David Priess spoke with Daniel Immerwahr, associate professor of history at Northwestern University and author of “How to Hide an Empire.” They talked about everything from what the Constitution says about lands west of the thirteen colonies, to the critical role of the Guano Islands in U.S. history, to the famous Insular Cases, to how military access agreements and long-term leases help the United States avoid a truly territorial empire.
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Transcript
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| 0:25.6 | no bull and the aftermath. |
| 0:32.6 | California, it's like two years, right? |
| 0:35.2 | I mean, it's because of the gold rush, there's all these white settlers coming in, but I |
| 0:38.6 | currency the numbers and the average time from annexation of lands to the admission of |
| 0:43.9 | that land as a stake in the United States is 45 years, which means that for every |
| 0:49.2 | California, there's like an outlier on the other's way on the other side and Oklahoma is |
| 0:54.1 | a great example because it's been formerly in the interitory. |
| 0:57.4 | Oklahoma, that land of Oklahoma is part of the United States for more than a century before |
| 1:03.4 | it becomes a state. |
| 1:04.6 | So that means that that land under various names is a territory of the United States for |
| 1:09.9 | longer than the French hold in Do-China, longer than the Belgians and King Leopold hold |
| 1:15.4 | the Congo. |
| 1:16.4 | I mean, this is like a more than a century of this native inhabited land being subordinate |
| 1:22.2 | to political space before enough whites come in that they can make a state. |
| 1:26.8 | I'm David Prius and this is the LawFair podcast, May 2nd, 2020. |
| 1:32.8 | Most of us don't think of United States history as an imperial history, but the facts are |
| 1:38.2 | there. |
| 1:39.2 | The law and policy surrounding westward expansion, off-continent acquisitions, and a worldwide |
... |
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