Empires Apart - A History of American and Russian Imperialism

514 Pages·2001·3 MB·English

by  Landers Brian

EMPIRES APART
EMPIRES APART
A HISTORY OF AMERICAN AND RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM
BRIAN LANDERS
PEGASUS BOOKS
NEW YORK
‘There are now two great nations in the world which, starting from different
points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the
Americans. Both have grown in obscurity, and while the world’s attention was
occupied elsewhere, they have suddenly taken their place among the leading
nations, making the world take note of their birth and of their greatness almost at
the same instant. All other peoples seem to have nearly reached their natural
limits and to need nothing but to preserve them; but these two are growing.…
Their point of departure is different and their paths diverse; nevertheless, each
seems called by some secret desire of Providence one day to hold in its hands the
destinies of half the world.’
Alexis de Tocqueville, De la Démocratie en Amérique (1835–40)
‘The one duty we owe to history is to rewrite it’.
Oscar Wilde, Intentions (1891)
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
FOREWORD BY ANDREAS WHITTAM SMITH
CHAPTER 1: RURIK’S LAND
The Influence of Champagne
West and East Divide
The Coming of Christ
Russian History: True or False?
CHAPTER 2: AMERIGO’S LAND
Spanish Exploration and Conquest
Before Columbus
The Scramble for America
The English and Civilisation
Slavery
CHAPTER 3: LEGACY OF THE MONGOL TERROR
The Mongols
From Novgorod to Kulikovo
Ivan the Terrible
Russia after Ivan
CHAPTER 4: LEGACY OF THE MYSTIC MASSACRE
Frying Natives
Thanksgiving
Pilgrims and Puritans
Between God and Slave
CHAPTER 5: RUSSIA BETWEEN WEST AND EAST
Yermak Timofeyevich: King of the Wild Frontier
The Eastern Frontier
Life in the Wild East
Empire
The First Romanovs
CHAPTER 6: AMERICA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST
The Rule of Law
French America
Prelude to Revolution
The American Rebellion
Thomas Paine and Tadeusz Kosciuszko
CHAPTER 7: THE EMPIRES GET GOING
Enlightenment: Russian and American Style
Territorial Aggrandisement
Tadeusz Kosciuszko and the Polish Question
Napoleon and Alexander
The 1812 Overtures
CHAPTER 8: DETERMINED OPPORTUNISM AND CONQUEST
King Andrew
A Time for Guns
Manifest Destiny: Chechnya to Cuba
The Road to Civil War
CHAPTER 9: MORE CONQUEST
The War Between the States
Slaves and Serfs
To the Little Bighorn and Anadyrsk
Empire Marches On
CHAPTER 10: SOUL SEARCHING
Dissidents
The Soul of Industry
New Model Empires
Territory Belonging to the United States
CHAPTER 11: COMMUNISM AND CORPORATISM
Bolshevism Arrives
Come the Revolution
Communism Arrives
Corporatism: A Digression
Ideologies in Transition
CHAPTER 12: EMPIRES OLD AND NEW
The New Tsars: Lenin and Stalin the Terrible
The Bolshevik Empire
The Red Menace
Corporatism v. Communism
The Invisibilisation of Empire
CHAPTER 13: HOT AND COLD RUNNING WAR
Allies Apart
Empires Re-Emerge
Bipolarity
Regime Change
Russian Regime Change – The Death of the Ultimate Tsar
CHAPTER 14: WINNING THE WAR THAT WASN’T
Hot War, Cold War, Phoney War
Monroe Marches On
The Use of Force
More Dissidents
The End of the Russian Empire?
CHAPTER 15: PAX AMERICANA
American Democracy
American Justice
American Efficiency
America Delivers
From Invisible Empires to the Neo-Empire
The Lessons of History
BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It may seem perverse to start by thanking a rival publisher but this book would
never have seen the light of day without the support, advice and practical
assistance of my colleagues at Penguin. So many of them have contributed in so
many ways that I cannot begin to thank each of them by name - thank you all.
Despite the numerous introductions my colleagues provided I have no agent
to thank. With the exception of the one who considered this book ‘approaching
the wild borders of Chomskystan’ all the agents who read my manuscript came
out with the same response: love the book but as you’re not a celebrity,
politician or academic the big bookselling chains won’t stock it. I hope they are
wrong and feel incredibly lucky to have stumbled across a publisher, Corinne
Souza at Picnic Publishing, who responded so eagerly to my manuscript.
Corinne has patiently guided me through the intricacies of an industry I quite
erroneously thought I knew. My editor Simon Fletcher was equally patient in
making me completely rewrite the middle third of the book to produce a far
more coherent narrative as well as stripping away the distracting footnotes and
obsessive capitalisations with which I had littered my original text. John
Schwartz produced a cover I love and Judith Antell and Alex Hippisley-Cox
helped ensure that once produced the book hopefully will have an audience.
My greatest debt must be to all those writers whose works I have devoured
and regurgitated in forms that they may or may not recognise. I have listed all
the sources at the back of the book and comment on some of the most influential
texts on the website www.empiresapart.com. I especially appreciate permission
to quote from the following verbatim: Niall Ferguson, Empire (Penguin Books
Limited, copyright © Niall Ferguson, 2003); Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford
History of the American People (Oxford University Press, 1965, by permission
of Oxford University Press, Inc.); Peter Neville, Russia, the USSR, the CIS and
the Independent States (published in the UK by the Windrush Press, a division of
the Orion Publishing Group and in the US as A Traveller’s History of Russia by
Interlink Books, an imprint of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.; text copyright ©
Peter Neville, 2001); and Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, a division of The Orion Publishing Group).
Finally for far too long my wife and family have put up with me spending
weekends and holidays buried in my notes. My thanks to my wife Sarah, son
Joseph and daughters Catherine and especially Alex, who obliterated my own
feeble attempt at a website and substituted her own creative flair.
Writing is a thoroughly selfish pursuit, I hope that some readers feel as
challenged as I have been by the prospect of encountering new ways to interpret
the past, understand the present and prepare for the future.