The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860-1898

"That’s another very good question. Whether you agree with him or not, LaFeber provides an impressive answer. We can understand LaFeber’s title and argument by linking him to Williams. Williams was the chief of the founders of the New Left branch of what’s become known as the Wisconsin school of history. A clutch of his students went on to have distinguished careers as historians. They were much inspired by the issues of the 1960s and ’70s we’ve referred to, and particularly by Williams’s arguments. Williams wrote a number of books, but it’s been said that he was predominately an essayist. I think that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s true that he put out the big ideas. What was needed was a set of studies that would exemplify, elaborate, qualify, or enlarge them. LaFeber’s book of 1963 did just that. His study is probably the most prominent and influential of the work dealing with US imperialism that emerged from the Wisconsin school. It retains its value today. “Whether you agree with him or not, LaFeber provides an impressive answer” What did LaFeber mean by the term ‘new empire’? He accepted the view that there were long continuities of expansion in US history but argued that 1898 saw the creation of a new form of empire. That’s the empire I, too, refer to: the overseas territories that were acquired by the United States after the war with Spain in 1898. It was new, not only because territorially the United States had not owned these places before, but also because of the causation LaFeber ascribed to it. This is where LaFeber built upon Williams’s rather more schematic generalisation to devise an argument that drew attention to the industrialising process in the United States from the 1870s onwards, the growth of towns, the accompanying concentration of people, and the urban unemployment that followed economic downturns. LaFeber took this materialist argument and applied it in considerable detail to the events of the 1880s and 1890s in particular. His special emphasis was on showing how the acute difficulties of the 1890s prompted business interests to push for expansion overseas as a means of restoring economic health and political stability at home. LaFeber’s work was not only very detailed, but also expresses its own originality at every step through the book. It’s carefully and fairly argued. As I said at the outset, LaFeber goes out of his way to express his admiration for Pratt’s book, although he disagrees with it entirely and stresses the role of business pressures rather than those of ideological impulses and missionary endeavour."