Daniel Immerwahr | How To Hide An Empire, Forgotten History, & Colony Labs

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00:51 Which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. 1930s President Franklin Delano Roosevelt addressed the nation through a series of radio broadcast known as the fireside chats His aim was to reassure the common man that our society would recover from its troubled times. I'm Greg Carlwood These are the higher side chats.

01:29 Here we go people, lean mean and trying not to get crushed by the big machine. From sunny San Diego I'm Greg Carlwood And it's no surprise that the history of European expansion was a violent and bloody one That used an abused almost any indigenous culture they came across But outside those broad statements The details of that systematic steamroll are typically glossed over An if little uncomfortable truths can be skimmed past and downplayed They usually are But that mistreatment of the other expands much further than we might think, because the genocide of Native Americans and use of African slaves are not isolated incidents. And when you consider the expansion of the American Empire and forgotten territories around the globe that it does or has controlled, the disenfranchised are not a distant uncomfortable memory – they're essentially a staple of how the American empire has and currently does still operate

02:24 Well folks, it is these neglected colonies and territories that are the offerings on the higher side table today as they are also the subject of the latest book by today's guest Daniel Emmervar entitled How to Hide an Empire a History of The Greater United States. where he relays interesting aspects of history that don't often make it into the school books and details our complicated relationship with areas like Guam, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guantanamo Bay and the Philippines just to name a few. If you're unfamiliar with Daniel, he is a scholar of US and global history specializing in empire development and the history of ideas. Currently working as associate professor of the History Department at Northwestern University but he's also taught at Berkeley Columbia and San Quentin State Prison

03:13 So let's do the damn thing. The empire educator, forgotten history highlighter and advocate for the often forgotten Daniel my man welcome to the higher side pleasure to be here Hey this is a real treatment thanks for doing it i love your book how to hide an empire history of the greater united states and the audience knows i've been searching for something like this for awhile now because these are the sorts of stories in situations that i like to highlight here general abuses of empire on the big machine, but to fit so much of it in one book is really great to see you get this thing going what can you tell us about the genesis of this book and why you felt it was such an important wonder right. Yes so i have been teaching history for a while, i taught at berkeley and i thought that he said ten quentin prison and i tried the way that most people teach it

04:09 It was so standard that I could be sick for a day and say, can you cover me? We're doing the guild of age. And someone else could come in and they would pick up right where i left off is the kind of way that we know how to teach them. That's fine. And that's good. We work collectively historians have figured out this story for awhile. We all kinda talk about it. Then I was doing some research about something else. In the course of that research, I went to Manila in the Philippines I was just struck by the place and what to see there but one thing that really surprised me was i thought my god it just feels so familiar in a family resemblance kind of way, so i would see streets that were named after us presidents you know what up to isaac how are we bored on the transit system which is based on surplus us army jeeps. I would go to the university at the university and i would hear people speaking english

05:01 With an accent that wasn't too different from my pennsylvania accent and look i know the philippines have been a colony of the united states i totally knew that i had a phd in us history i could not be accused about knowing that but. I think there's a difference between knowing something and knowing it like really getting it fully understanding implications, can i say that i didn't really know what in that second sense i didn't really think about it a lot But when you're there standing in a street corner in Manila between like Washington and Madison Street, it's hard not to think about that a little more. And I got back and I realized that the way I've been teaching US history

05:39 Wasn't quite right because you know I'd make fleeting mention to the Philippines in 1898 when it's acquired and then i would talk about a war and then it just disappeared from my story. And it wasn't as the philippines like where was hawaii where was guam where is puerto rico, am i was telling us history but i realized that what i was doing with just telling the history of the states or the territories that became state and there's this whole other part of united states That wasn't in that story. It wasn't in that narrative So my goal here and writing this book was to tell us history, but where the United States isn't just the states or future states alone? It's the whole thing with some people at the turn of the 20th century called the greater United States Hmm well said yes We know the bullet points through a lot of this stuff But the depth of those bullet points and their implications are just not sat with often enough

06:32 And of course this is an audio show, so we don't have the visual component of the book or your previous presentations that I've seen. But i wanted to ask you about maps because even though the US controls or did control a lot of these places they don't make it on the maps as they should and that's a bigger deal than people might think talk just about the typical us map and really the psychological effects that can come from how their made in display Greg i wake up every morning hoping that someone is gonna ask me about maps and you know usually I'm disappointed but today's a good day and I want to thank you for that yeah. Maps, the visual representation of the country turns out really important if you asked most people in the United States or most people in the world to map this country in their heads just call them on what they think it looks like

07:28 There's a familiar shape that can come to mind and you know that it is the contiguous blob thing that is suspended between canada and mexico in the oceans. And no one people like alaska hawaii are part of the two but that usually how it looks at people and then that becomes the shape of us history u s history what happens within that map maybe with alaska hawaii after they become states, look i grew up in pennsylvania i studied history history college At no point did I see a map of the United States that had Puerto Rico on it. And i should have, Puerto Rico has been part of the United States for more than a century why isn't Puerto Rico on the map?

08:07 So I found myself as i was writing this book realizing that i wasn't trying to rewrite your sister and also try to remap the united states and learn how to make maps and then i like went back in a little bit of math is you seen it does not have a good look, and i did that i found out surprising myself with the united states looks different. Once you got it all mapped out correctly would equal area projections realize like how much land in the united states has not been part of the state's future states Right and the amount of people that are in these outside territories is quite large and surprising i would have thought obviously their inhabited but, i guess i just didn't realize to what extent because you've talked about kind of the numbers and it's a little shocking that periods the past i believe maybe. What is one eight people who were under the umbrella of the empire actually outside of the continuous blob

09:05 Yeah that's right so when i was preparing a book and talking with the others we are covered designer and i said to the publishers. It's important on the cover to see these other parts of the United States, places that don't always make it onto the maps. And you know cover design is a tricky business how do you show that? Do actually show them in map form or what and one of the early drafts was of the Philippines and American Samoa and Guam and Puerto Rico and they were all represented as little like New Yorker style islands with one palm tree coming up from them

09:40 And you know i think that's an image that's pretty common i think it usually to the degree that people in united states who are living in us mainland and not any places acknowledge, oh yeah there is guam yet of course guam is also place us virgin islands that's right they also exist. Usually the assumption is that these are really small places just little tiny geographical crimes and so small. Yeah there but what notes you don't have to think about it very hard except sometimes we news article but its not important if not central to me can tell the story of united states without those words and then you can tell the story in the united states without one, add a two things today when is just what you said it turns out

10:22 that the overseas territories of united states actually been quite popular and so in nineteen forty which is about the peak of the united states colonial empire if you add up. Everyone is living in your receipt territory outside of the state you get nearly nineteen million people, adjust as you said that's one in eight people who live in the united state so if u live somewhere in the united states not just a state you might want to philippines There's a one in eight chance that you're doing that because your colonists and just to be clear about that scope of those numbers. That means if you live in the United States in 1940, You are more likely to be colonized than you are to be African-American. That is how many colonize people there are in the country It also means that if you live in the United States in 1940, you're more likely to be colonized then you would be an immigrant. That's how many colonize people there are. That's huge population

11:15 The other thing that you can say in response to this notion that the Guams of the country are just footnotes is that it's not just a lot of people live in these places. It's that a lot of stuff happens in these places, and turns out that a lot of US history takes place in the periphery, in these places that are marginal, that are hard to see from the perspective of the mainland. Wars start there. Presidents sort of get crucial experience there. Important medicines are tested Places that are different and have different kind of laws or different kinds of spaces turn out to be really useful for the United States, to the point where it's actually hard to explain US history without the Philippines as part of this story.

11:53 Mm-hmm. Yeah depictions are so influential and often they don't match the reality I've actually heard about the Psychological effects of just the traditional world map talked about where the world, of course is a globe but the map we know has Europe and America featured prominently on top And the sizes are also warped to make them look bigger or not So dwarfed in size by Africa as the reality would show It's just crazy to think about the implications of that because they seem like small details but they just inform our entire world view in some cases, yeah and just a phrase you used worldview i mean that's a visual metaphor right there we think that way and the thing that helps us think that way is the picture of the world is the map.

12:43 And so to jump to a particular chapter of history that you talk about early on the book i was really surprised how little i knew about the events of what we call. Pearl harbor we know it as an attack on hawaii but were missing a lot as you say a lot of us history happens in these unincorporated areas and pearl harbor is a great example that isn't, Yeah, it's a great and so Pearl Harbor is such a key moment in US history I think if you were to ask people in the country which historical events do they know by date? So not just the year that they happen but literally the date. I think you'd probably only get three. So July 4th the signing of the Declaration of Independence September 11th attacks from 2001 And then the other one the date which will live an infamy December 7 1941 Pearl Harbor But here's the thing

13:35 Despite how important is to every telling of us national history usually when it gets told it's old and say wrong really misleading and confusing way so the story as i was tired what. Japan attack united states at the pro harbor naval base in hawaii i did great damage that pulled the united states into world war two And it was a tragedy and it was also the only time that us so i always attacked in the war. That's the story is i knew here what i wasn't hearing which is within hours japan also attacks, Wake island guam and the philippines and then meanwhile it also attacked the british colonies of hong kong and malaya independent kingdom thailand this wasn't just an attack on pearl harbor so was a sort of sweet the leg attack on european empires in the pacific because japan was trying to take other people's colony that what i was trying to do

14:33 And the Philippines is particularly important in this regard because the Philippines is, first of all the largest colony that the United States has. Hawaii's an overseas territory not a state at this point so as the Philippines and the army says that the damage done... The military damage done to the United States in the Philippines was as great as that done to US military in Hawaii but there's one really important difference which is that Hawaii was attacked but it was attacked Pearl Harbor It wasn't attacked again the war ensued the philippines got attacked again you got invaded it got occupied and for the bulk of the war in the philippines along with guam wake island and actually this happened a little later part of alaska became occupied japanese territory and endured a brutal war as they were under japanese colonial rule, end the war in the pacific. We think killed

15:27 More than a million Filipinos that's more than a million US nationals who die and not just you don't even hear about that because Hawaii was the only part of us soil. That was struck yeah, it's so interesting and Right the numbers 1.1 million Filipinos estimated or even one point six overall when you consider all the deaths that were involved in this area And that's as you say the death toll twice that of the Civil War is Yeah that's two civil wars, that the bloodiest thing ever happened in US history by far. And you know if you look at US history textbooks you might not see it all because despite the fact of this bloody thing that ever happened on us soil there is a confusion and textbooks about what exactly us soil is

16:15 And what places can in what place is done and that is really condition frankly by who lives in those places so the pinot us nationals but there's a persistent sense during the colonial period, and frankly after that filipinos despite being us national despite coming under the flag just like having a president as their commander-in-chief. Whenever we didn't really count as americans and therefore when you tell this story about united states you don't have to talk about the philippines cuz it's just yes technically it's part of the country but not really part of the country if you're telling history united states you don't need to fill up his private storage right is very sad that.

16:54 i mean the people who write the history books i guess they assume hey the book can only be so long let's just leave out the brown people entirely and that's no way to record history, end the way that roosevelt crafted his speech or is address to the people after the attack. I think that probably has a lot to do with how we perceive the events of bad day why you think he made the choices that heated this story incredible so First of all no one knows what to call the attack right because it happened in a lot of different places and its very confusing and people don't know how to describe it now we have a descriptor which is a pearl harbor and then you know what we mean that's that, but people didn't have that description back then took days for the first newspaper to describe the event to give them into the event and name was pro harbour.

17:43 You can see newspaper editors trying to figure out what the call and try to get with a Japanese attacked why he won, one paper has it japanese attack the philippines and hawaii is really not clear which target deserves more emphasis. Eleanor Roosevelt gave a speech before FDR's speech and that is what she said. She said, this is an attack on our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines And that actually how FDR initially drafted his speech when he was describing the targets He said this is an attack on Hawaii and the Philippines Then this really wild thing happens We know this because we have his first draft then we have his next draft then all of these successive drafts Then we have like handwritten notes where he'll cross things out and write things in

18:25 And what you can see FDR doing over the course of hours is crossing out prominent references to the Philippines and making the attack on Hawaii alone. There is still a reference later in the back part of the speech to the Philippines, but it's referenced all targets and it's not clear which ones are British or which ones are US and which one they're foreign and which ones they're not. But this speech as you know it is about an attack on Hawaii. It's a speech that Japan attacked United States at Hawaii And then you have this question of why what was going through your mind i think it's issue of what really counts as the united states are not we have a pinion paulson time and suggested people in the united states were really reluctant to see us military be used, send the philippines didn't really count as part of the country and they're thinking.

19:12 Hawaii was a territory to an even there it was kind of lovely but why had significantly larger number of white people wasn't majority but i did get a lot of white people in and i think that made easier for fdr and first audience to conceive of hawaii as american as us soil. Even after the speech it was a little you know, you can see sort of Wavering's as people are trying to talk about Hawaii doesn't really count. Is it foreign is domestic? But nevertheless It was the closest thing to quote-unquote America I think that FDR could imagine and so he rounded Hawaii up to America and then just thought I'm not gonna push it with the Philippines That's too difficult for my audience hmm

19:51 That makes a lot of sense and it is a fascinating story and its weird to think about the fact that hawaii alaska became states in nineteen fifty nine i mean my mom was seventeen, i guess i never considered how recent that really is as you talk about the book people are all kinda clamoring for their suggested flag but it was unknown if. if alaska and hawaii would both become states or maybe just one or even porto rico is being considered at that time to some degree, add i guess i would ask why you think porto rico didn't make the cut of course you mentioned it wasn't wide enough with any other factors besides that was a kind of the key unfortunate one. Yes so all the overseas territories alaska and hawaii becomes states

20:37 Puerto Rico never becomes one. Guam never becomes one, the Philippines become independent American Samoa is not a state and US Virgin Islands isn't And then so you have this question right? Why some and not others what's going on here Population maybe is part of it but I can't be the full explanation because Hawaii in Alaska are not the most populated Of the overseas territories Maybe it helps that Alaska is continentally connected even though if its not contiguous with the United States or with the U.S mainland I think the best explanation really is who lives in these places and who has lived in them in the 20th century. Hawaii and Alaska, unlike all of the other overseas territories have been significant sites for white settlements where white people have moved en masse to Hawaii into Alaska enough to make a sizable dent in the population and enough at various points have control over politics they don't have full control over it certainly not in Hawaii today but now

21:34 But nevertheless, that's like the magic dust that has always turned territories into states. And it's not just Hawaii and Alaska—the whole history of U.S. continental expansion within North America there has been this vexed question of when can territories become states? Yet again the answer is almost always been when they have enough white people in them Hawaii and Alaska kind of limit cases of that. They've never totally had full white settlement enough to sort of swamp the indigenous populations or in the case of Hawaii, the immigrant populations but nevertheless they've had a lot of white population influxes and that's been the thing that allowed them to become states

22:13 Man and so to read from your book jacket it says in how to hide an empire daniel emmerbar reveals that overseas possessions while often neglected have played an essential role, in america story enabling its rise testing its ideals and serving as laboratories and launch pads for critical and sometimes harmful innovations. And it is that last part i wanted to get into what can you tell us about this harvard trained rockefeller funded fella cornelius roads and his troubling work in puerto rico. Yeah cornelius roadside alright let's do this yeah so,

22:55 Can you start the doctor is trained in harvard and he's part of a group of doctors that are interested in studying me a lot of people in porto rico suffer from anemia, and so he goes there in the nineteen thirties and. It's really interesting what happens when it goes there and its really telling what happens when we go there because When cornelius roads hits the islands he becomes a different kind of doctor it's like cornelius rose on shackled unplugged or something like that whatever restraints you felt, as a doctor previously in his career just seem to evaporate and because he got patients who has a different kind of relationship with. He is not the only doctor to have this sense of unshackling but he said sort of big case of it

23:41 And so he just goes nuts. He does everything that you've always feared the doctors secretly wanted to do if they didn't care about patients, so... ...he has some patients who are suffering from anemia that he can treat and he refuses to treat them just because he wants to see what's going to happen to them. He has other patient in whom he tries to induce disease and does induce disease just again to see what's gonna happen. And then he writes a letter! It is one of the most jaw-dropping letters I have ever read historical sources that I've ever read He's writing to a colleague, to Boston colleague and it starts off with like really chatty letter. You know I can't believe this guy got the job he said you're sure how things are going well here in Puerto Rico it's beautiful island is gorgeous everything would be great here except for regions and then just let goes off like they're the worst there lazy that worse than the Italians my job here as public health but frankly I think that island will be better served by having them exterminated

24:37 And at this point you just like oh my god where is going and even still you don't expect where it actually goes to see them says. I killed a patient i'm ready to make sure that the same but i can't wait for patients and i'm trying to transplant cancer into others fingers crossed no luck yet, doctors just torture their patients here that's what we do it works out well hope your doing well back in boston you know basically give me best misses your sincerely cornelius rose it is like You don't even know what to make of a letter like this as an historian. And historians have argued, was he serious? Was he not... I mean what we do know about Cornelius Rhodes from his own admissions—not just the letter but from his published articles—is that he quite clearly treated Puerto Ricans as experimental animals in an island-sized laboratory. That was his basic attitude whether he killed them or not and we can get into that

25:30 The letter leaks the porto rican staff at the hospital find a letter and start circulating it and they freak out which understandably because i think their bosses murdering people in there are some ordering them out of racial hatred and is gonna be next this is serious and legitimate concern to have. and cornelius roach leaves the island goes back to new york and two things happen in both of them are really interesting. First of all it becomes a huge deal on the island and it's certainly not the only thing that spurs deported reagan nationalist independence movement but it's a big thing, add national security skype will be so compost are able to point to the letter like we told you this colonial actually want dead they're not here to help me need independence otherwise gonna kill us all

26:14 And we've got the letter to show it so that's one thing happens you know when it becomes a big issue in the island mainland appointed white governor investigates and then he sort of. Apparently you said another letter but he found yet another letter by cornelius road that was worse than the first one it was so bad like i can't even imagine what i would be worse than that one, but the government suppressed it we still have today we don't know what looks like because it seems like the governor or someone acting on his past destroyed evidence And on the basis of this investigation, Cornelius Rhodes even though he was not even there wasn't even tried. Was found to not have murdered anyone. That's one thing that happens it becomes an enduring issue in Puerto Rican politics people return to it again and again It's just like a thing you remember Of course it is because it's like totally nuts A that had happened and B that There was just this kind of trial that didn't seem really serious and then he just got away with

27:10 The other part of it is what happens to cornelius roads he goes back to the mainlands go to new york doesn't get fired can you make. Even if the letter is a joke even if he didn't kill doesn't get fired and you know what is fine becomes the vice president of new york academy medicine world war two starts he becomes a colonel. And worse when will work to start to become the kernel in the chemical warfare service these get very high ranking job his job is being medical officer overseeing these tests that the army wants to run up poison gas,

27:48 On their own subjects like on their own arms man just to see what is this poison gas work about this gas mask what happens if we use this mask and that gas what's gonna happen. The army tests its gases on at least 60,000 men uniformed man and a lot of them are Puerto Rican because the army is just like yeah they're not good for fighting but great for testing gases on. And so this really damaging program where the army is just taking it's man in gas sometimes putting him in gas chambers with gas masks to see what happens along making stand up sometimes put me in the field and gas overhead and seeing how long they can run around and do my battles And Cornelius Rhodes is right there basically just nodding his head being like yes, yes good good. Good we're learning a lot here he gets a medal for it and then

28:33 At the end of this, because actually the gases are turned out to be sort of chemically and medically interesting. One of the things they do is it can be used to fight cancer and Cornelius Rhodes figures this out he's not the only one who does but he figures it out He takes this he runs with it And then becomes first director of Sloan Kettering Institute He basically becomes a founder of chemotherapy On the mainland Cornelius Rhodes is revered and commemorated as a hero doctor one of the guys who helps get cancer under control and despite having this mango like history on the island. None of that sticks on him and for decades he is remembered in the medical community only, providing cancer and this whole thing is a little pre career so little dalian see how to put it just goes away from what happens in san juan stays in san juan

29:25 Yeah that is a fascinating story and i know it's one of the things that this audience is gonna be intrigued by its really reminiscent of the test key syphilis experiments which is really the only other. Branded chapter in history that seems similar to this where they tell people there being treated but instead their being just monitored and not treated to see like how does this disease run its course and It's very dark and of course when you sign up for the military it's very no rah rah we're gonna fight for the freedoms of people but, oftentimes history shows that you can sometimes be used as a guinea pig is much as you can be used as a soldier. It's just a lot darker sometimes than then people realize when you turn over those stones yeah i'm a lot of this man who uses guinea pigs

30:17 Don't speak english we have documents that suggested a lot of the men are being tested on don't really understand what's happening. And even those who do speaking english porto rican or not are clearly not given proper information about what can happen and matters because, They literally bear the scars many of them to their death people suffer from emphysema from eye problems from genital scarring from psychological damage It Matt, you know getting gassed is a serious serious business and for some people it's just you know A scar on your arm and that's it for life. And you know that's okay But for other people it isn't ongoing medical issue and they're also not allowed to talk about right like the army forbids them From talking about it because it's a military secret Mm-hmm

30:58 It's so dark, man. It really is and something else I thought was important in your book that I haven't heard come up in many of your other interviews Is the testing that was done on Puerto Rican women concerning birth control and the quest for The Almighty Pill? And this too gets pretty nefarious doesn't it Yeah so this is where in which colonies can just serve as laboratories for empires. Playtest to test things out and you can kind of see why because from the perspective of the mainland from the perspective of imperial leaders rulers call me replaces wear

31:35 You can do things and you won't bear the full consequences if they go wrong you can try things out you have as much oversight you actually less resistance because the political processes in college center shore up. What's our turn power to these people without a little representation answer my book i tell number of stories about professionals lawyers architects doctors, Who find that the colonies are actually really congenial places to work and to try things out to travel experiments which is one reason why colonies are so important us history because a lot of stuff gets tested out in them but as you say at the dark history and in puerto rico's case there is just kind of affinity between puerto rico and particularly medical testing is a lot of medical stuff it gets tested on puerto rico.

32:19 It's not just the experiments it's not just the gas to get tested in porto rico but on Puerto ricans, what is also birth control one of the things that mainlanders keep saying about puerto rico is. All of its problems are because women just keep having too much babies. The island is overpopulated, it's not like more densely populated than New Jersey but nevertheless from the perspective of the mainland you know it's like there are just to many Puerto Ricans and that's the cause of all the problems, that's a cause for poverty, that's the cause for slums and so there's a lot of medical interest among doctors in keeping Puerto Rican populations down And so you see this thing where just doctors go to the island and first of all perform sterilizations on women. Just like record unprecedented numbers, and it seems like some of the women wanted to get sterilized but it still feels a little weird when you just look at how disproportionately Puerto Rican women are sterilized compared to women in everywhere else. But the birth control pill is also tested in Puerto Rico back in the bad old days before they got the dosage right. The dosage was way too high

33:22 Who is tested largely on Puerto Rican women and the accounts we have are kind of painful to read because what you'll see is you'll see that on the spot medical professionals nurses and doctors saying. Okay we're running a test for giving this pill to women and they are suffering headaches, vomiting, experiencing cervical erosion like it is really hard pill to be taking. And then you see the doctors who were overseeing coming from mainland being like you know Puerto Rican women just complain alot there hysterical they always gonna complain the pills working fine whatever their saying and then they start running experiments where despite the fact that they know these side effects likely because they've already been testing it

34:02 They decide not to tell women about the side effects so not informed consent on the theory that if you tell Puerto Rican women, they might experience side effects there so hysterical just gonna report their experiencing side effects so the pill gets tested and approved. With this like crazy dosage basically because doctors are unwilling to look at Puerto Rican women take their medical complaints seriously Then after it starts getting used more probably the dosage gets brought in hand but that's what makes the pill happen and i'm such a huge events, demographic and cultural history not just of united states but the world. But porto rico is a testing ground for it and not just to build but number of contraceptives get tested first in puerto rico before they're born into the market. Man it is just so shocking and i do believe john oliver not long ago did a

34:53 peace about black women today having a very similar problem going to the doctor saying we have this issue and kind of just being dismissed kinda that same racist attitude of like. You don't even know what's wrong with yourself you're fine it is really difficult to read sources and just think about, what i must've felt like to be in that position and you can also missus tricky contemplate but you can also imagine from the perspective of doctors Patients particularly experimental patients whose pain you can dismiss your who's paying you can read just being like that will be fine. That's kind of convenient in some ways for doctors at least for the doctors who are more interested in testing drugs running experiments than on you know Really being there with their patients and healing them and listening to them Mm-hmm. And I wanted to grab one quote here from this section where you are talking about this contraception and pill testing in Puerto Rico Where do you say when it comes to the pill?

35:51 The first experiment used medical students at the university of puerto rico despite having their grades held hostage to their participation in the study half of them dropped out and then you go on to say that they tried prisoners next and then i went to the housing projects gotta get the poor involved but. Do encourage students to be guinea pigs like that is insanely cruel, Yeah, I mean i don't know if it's more cruel with students or with people in housing projects or prisoners but It is. So what you just imagine is these students who are In medical school and they're told we're going to run a test on you And this is part of your class participation and You know you might not finish Medical School Or you might fail this class If you refuse to participate in this test open up here's the pill Oh are you vomiting now like yeah sorry? We don't or I don't know The full story Of those women right

36:41 Some of them might have dropped out for other reasons. We just know that like the experimental numbers went way down, but it seems really likely that a number of them dropped out because taking the pill was awful or at least taking the pill was awful in those days of bad dosage And it is just so sad because while a lot of these places were talking about are or were under the control the us they definitely work at arms length like you said using legal ease and using terms like colony, where territory and it is these distinctions that sort of justify the actions in this place is right i mean these.

37:17 Terms actually have huge implications that even go beyond this medical experimentation thing and even just our perception of how bad some of these crimes really are. So let's talk about the terms for a second because united states has an interesting way, i'm talking about or not talking about its empire the usual with the standard word four overseas places that have different laws there are subordinated people who are understood as different from the perspective of the center of power. The usual word for that is colony and if your country has colonies you're an empire, and when the united states grabs a bunch of these places a bunch of colonies

38:02 During and after eighteen ninety eight is this kind of imperial shopping spree it goes on at that moment does brief window where leading men. Just say it out right there like you know united states and empire we got colonies thats a great thing or thats a bad thing but were completely open about that so teddy roosevelt talks about like that would your will to talk about like that, it's not a secret but then you have to bout a decade or so you start to see officials Stop using the c word colony and start going for other you from ism so they get to really mouth when i start talking about what's going on. They say territory territories a gem or word and it also has a kind of happy history united states, canada was a territory montana was a territory and then became state so being a territory doesn't necessarily bad thing in the united states just might mean not yet estate. So territories where they tend to go for instead of colony

38:59 Where they just don't talk about it. One thing that I've encountered when i talk to readers about my book special readers who haven't yet read it is that they get a little confused just like in their mouth when they're trying to talk about places like Puerto Rico or Guam because they don't really know the names for these political relationships and so they use circumlocutions and that kind of thing. And, I think that's a really interesting fact about United States is that The basic fact of empire, the basic fact of colonies has become so obscured but actually is difficult to speak about I really good example of that is how we use the word united states so most people when they use the word you not stay it's referred to the state. And so then it gets very confusing when you're trying to talk about the us virgin island which has united states in a name its quite clearly part of the united states, what does it feel like when the two thousand seventeen hurricanes were approaching the US virgin islands newscaster saying

39:57 the hurricane are first gonna hit us virgin islands and then they're gonna have united states can you get people from like saint thomas being crazy what do you talk about that actually makes no sense. What is because we don't really know where mainland, when you can say approaching us virgin island and i'm gonna get to us mainland that's a way to set it actually make sense. Yeah all that is really important and i definitely find myself getting tripped up on the right words and phrases just trying to prepare for this end On the subject of language you have a chapter called language is a virus that i really like to not only the campaign to get english adopted around the world and tracking that progress which hollywood now the internet has helped a great deal but we've often heard that when an empire colonize as a place one of the first things it builds his schools so can start the process westernization witch.

40:50 No it's also something you can frame in a positive light but when you get into the details it's quite dark you got stories in the book of people saying. that they would get beaten as kids for using their native tongue in some cases there forced to celebrate their colonization day as a holiday the force to, celebrate the birthdays of us president i mean this stuff it roads are culture and that's what they're really doing although they can frame it in this positive altruistic light up education. Yeah so the united states has done something extraordinary and it hasn't just done it through its formal colonies what's extraordinary is that even beyond its formal colonies. It has promulgated english

41:34 To the point where english is a global language and obviously united states not the only powerful country that speaks english britain as well but it's been under the united states watch actually really recent, did english hit the tipping point in become truly global language everyone is expected if they're gonna be in a conversation and then elite conversations somewhere on the planet. Do you have to do it in english are there any expect speak at least a little english that something happened in the united states what can you see this started How's the united states tries to push english and some college has some success in some failure turns out it really hard, get people to speak a language against their will and the fact that puerto rico is still spanish speaking and english is not fully spoken porto rico is a really good example how hard can be any actually right sometimes that difficulty in pushing language has been.

42:28 responded to by US colonial leaders by using force. So they'll take kids in schools and literally wash their mouths out with soap if they hear native languages spoken, there's beatings... We have an account of a naval officer in Guam getting all the English Chamorro dictionaries he could find and burning them because why would you translate between English and Chamorro? You shouldn't even be able to do that we should just be speaking English here It's a difficult business and it's kind of painful once when you actually realize what it took to get somewhere like the philippines onto english. It's interesting history and talk about something a bit lighter tell us about the guano islands this is pretty fascinating stuff that i don't think many people have heard about

43:11 I'm glad you brought that up partly because look you can't write a history about empire and colonialism without it being something of a dark story right this is not the greatest form of government is profoundly undemocratic in all kinds of. Baleful consequences ensue but, This book is not intended as a litany about every awful thing that the United States has ever done. It's rather a book that tries to tell you how important empires been and how variegated the experiences have been, so there are some chapters that are a little lighter in tone and one of them is this comic tale of the seizure of guano island so united states in nineteen century kept planting the same crops over and over on the same land because it was trying to transition to industrial agriculture, select we cotton tobacco and you do that you quickly drain all the nutrients out of the soil particularly nitrates and.

44:05 You know, they didn't have artificial fertilizer back then. So there was a like a scramble for ways to replenish and restore particularly nitrates to the soil and it's that's a hard thing to do especially when you're doing industrial agriculture where you're not doing crop rotation where you don't always have animals to eat crops and then put nitrates back out on top of them it turns out one of the things that was really good for this is guano, can i meet bird or bat droppings use a fertilizer. But there are these islands in the pacific and caribbean that are you want to get a guano island you want a small island that is

44:42 dry so doesn't rain on the island a lot but never less than a lot of birds and so the birds will go into the ocean delete anchovies or whatever they can eat come back on the islands don't poop on the islands. It won't rain to the people just pile up for not just decades but millennia and you know it's basically entire islanders like native shit hard and shit And that is a really good fertilizer. So in the 19th century, US farmers figure this out and start really trying to buy up guano and then it turns out like Peru has a lock on all the really good guano islands and there's a british monopoly that keeps jacking up the prices for that peruvian guano so united states like wow this is like opaque this is like an oil crisis of the nineteen seventies, what are you most important substances to make this economy go as guano and we need it. And expensive so they just start claiming island everywhere uninhabited islands that are going out in the united states overall takes nearly hundred of them

45:41 And these are the first times that the United States goes overseas. It's just these islands that are spread all over the Caribbean and Pacific, you know they would talk to whalers, did you pass an island when you were out on your whaling expedition? Was it covered in shit? Do you remember where it was can you show me on a map we're gonna go out there we're gonna scrape all of that shit off and bring it back so I mean yeah something is ridiculous about this but also serious because... All of the legal questions that come up about having an empire Get first worked out on these shit covered uninhabited islands because all the you know it's like. Constitutionally can united states extend overseas how does us law work if you're on one of these islands and not in a state or an organized territory all those questions come up immediately and actually that you can say the foundation of the united states colonial empire is ship

46:30 I like it and i hate to pile on no pun intended more darkness two are one light and fun. Chapter of this whole book but you also talk about the boss a phosphate company which is another one of these, Will companies that would promise the world and tell people about the bountiful land a paradise will be living in all the women you're gonna love the women, add they were shipped over african-american labor. And this was a bunch of lies. It's a bunch of poor treatment, some of these people are illiterate and told to sign terrible one-sided contracts and we're right back to abuses of the people lower on the totem pole but it comes into play here too doesn't it? Yeah so let's talk about why this needs to happen or from the perspective of the Nevada phosphate company

47:27 It's cool to have a guano island but you need someone to scrape that off the island and these are uninhabited islands so you need to bring laborers over. And it turns out that scraping and mining guano on guano island is and i check this with my fellow historians some confidence saying it, no worst job you can have in the nineteen because its basically like coal mining and all the lung damage you get from that except to do what your name rainless remote island and you just have to stay there. You're basically marooned at your workplace, and it's often not fresh water, you're eating what they called hard tack which is dry, like turkey dried meat, people get all kinds of intestinal distress then they are having it on the island then there's no plumbing It is a bad situation Also the guano itself is really...it's like ammonia, very pungent so if you breathe in too much that its horrible for your respiratory system So this is a bad situation

48:21 It basically turns out that it's not easy to get laborers to agree to do this under terms of full consent so in the pacific there is a lot of. Chinese workers who are actually kidnapped from china you know it's like, can i come check on my boat and then your leg on the boat as a worker and then we're sailing now where are they going to work and in parts of the pacific use hawaiians to mine it Caribbean and especially on the bus islands in the last month a company uses african americans any trick amongst the books they basically like just you said, you're gonna be living on a tropical island picking fruit and romancing beautiful women. Just sign a dotted line step on the boat and that'll be it.

48:59 And then you know they step off the boat and suddenly they're deeply in debt because they've been charged for their own voyage over. I have to pay ridiculously inflated prices for clean food, and then there on a dry island that is absolutely miserable called devil's island this particular islands and i have to work mining one up so not surprisingly some of them need me revolt. They get in a fight and they end up killing five of their white overseers And you know, it's national news. Right? Because like five white men have been killed by black people and the national news is not does not cut in these men's favor It's not like oppressed workers stand up for justice. It's like black butchers murder innocent white people and so they're hauled back to the mainland

49:42 to go to where i want to come from and they're gonna be tried in the court and the black community in baltimore just rallies behind them is like okay we got help these guys out, add a get this guy who was the first black lawyer to pass the maryland bar and he's on legal team and they come up with this kind of extraordinary argument. First i say the obvious that they like these workers are horrifically a press like you can hardly believe it so it's kind of understandable why don't fight but then this is something else to say look these men cannot be convicted of murder in us court. You're like me interesting okay why can't they be convicted of murder and say because this event didn't happen in united states,

50:23 The Guano Islands are not really part of the United States. So these men are not under US jurisdiction, they're foreign and not domestic and so the U.S courts can't try them! I mean that's a really interesting argument because that is putting to the question in the constitutionality of empire Are these places really part of the United States or not? It goes to Supreme Court and Supreme Court has to think about it And then court decides okay yeah These islands ARE part of the United States which then means that the United States can indeed expand overseas But then that raises other questions what's the part of united states what court has them under its local jurisdiction where were these men supposed to go to complain about the labor abuses like. You can't just have a little island out there it's under no jurisdiction or under no local jurisdiction,

51:04 So as i said the legal foundation for empire is worked out on the backs of these men who are ultimately convicted murder, first their sense that there are sense gets commuted because people show outrage by the conditions under which they were working but never less once that sentence committed they're still doing time and not just any time you also doing hard labor. Yeah thought that was a really interesting story heard basically nothing about but That idea of making the lawmakers actually think about the status these places is really compelling cuz this also, can i come up with guantanamo bay and mean that is a really odd case it's in cuba we had an embargo against cuba for decades.

51:47 Castro would not recognize the lease and never cashed the annual $4,000 check that they sent. I thought that was a nice detail but it just seems like an odd situation if the US won't leave and they're not wanted there is it sovereign? Is it an occupation? These are curious questions Yeah and that curiosity is not just an accident that's how empires work empire usually have these complicated jurisdictions because those are enabling from the perspective of the empire. Guantanamo bay has been from the perspective of washington kind of an awesome place and part of its utility is that no one really knows about who's jurisdiction so technically it's cubans under cuba sovereignty but united states has a lease to give all the power that would have if you were a sovereign even though its not the sovereign, and then cuba wants to reject it but the united states doesn't let it what kind of rental situation is that it seems more like squatting than renting.

52:48 But think about that from the perspective of the Bush administration. They're like, okay we would like a space that we control completely and yet it is not subject to US law Guantanamo bay is the space that's a perfect legal solution and guantanamo bay isn't the only space you know in the US empire that has that nebulous quality where it's like all these legal anomalies about. Places that are legally anonymous can turn out to be really useful i mean there's a reason i'd like so much wealth internationally is stored in, Bahamas and british virgin islands all these offshore jurisdictions because places like that these little loopholes standing with bones become really important for powerful people to do what they want. I guess i would ask you as we're wrapping this thing up do have any goals or hopes for this book beyond just the education what would you like to see people doing this information,

53:41 What's mainly a work of history and i want particularly people living in the us mainland to just remap their own country. Get better map where they think you're living and understand that it's not just the mainland but. I think also matters today is not just me being historian complaining that you know these days don't know history are getting it right. United states has five inhabited territories now, US virgin islands puerto rico guam american summer and the commonwealth of mariana millions of people living in hands. In the last two years for out of these five,

54:20 territories have been threatened to the point existentially threatened by what hurricanes in the case of the virgin islands and porto rico typhoon which is actually the worst storm to hit united states since nineteen thirty. Typhoon you too much suspecting that a lot of people even know about your audience that had been northern mariana's. Did two thousand eighteen, And you know guam as your call was threatened by north korea credibly threatened by north korea. Which said the united states keeps up its over flights which are launched from guam over the korean peninsula, north korea will surround guam with an enveloping fire us mainland is kind of hard to hit with a missile from north korea one's a lot easier to get into what calls her buy and it's pretty good target so that's four of five inhabited territories that have been threatened with something resembling obliteration

55:15 In the last two years and that's gonna keep happening i mean think is climate change gets worse and us alliances right these are the places that are going to be. On the line I mean overseas parts of the United States have been front lines of its history for a long time and this is going to continue be the case today and i think. At this point it just feels urgent and embarrassing and painful and exasperating that after all this united states still really hasn't gotten right on the issue of empire i think we are long overdue for some conversations about status, how do you receive territories about what did the constitution applies to them which currently does not fully

55:54 And frankly about us military bases which still you know there's still hundreds of them all over the world and wish you know kick up the same kind of protest that they did in the days of godzilla. Well said well said it empire is gonna claim these areas as their own then we can i owe it to them too, try to bring big daddy when its actually needed for once rather than not when it's not and i guess one last thing i want to bring up that kind of relates to what to do with this information i wanted a touch on your other book thinking small the united states and the lure of community development.

56:31 I didn't get to read it, but some lines from the description say, Thinking Small tells the story of how the United States sought to rescue the world from poverty through small-scale community based approaches. And it also sounds a warning such strategies now again in vogue have been tried before with often disastrous consequences. Thinking Small challenges those who hope to eradicate poverty to think twice about their risks as well as the benefits of community development There is that tendency a lot of people say that it's a major component of the liberal party in america that we actually need to help these people because they can't help themselves it seems like thats, kind of a thread that is getting touched on this book thinking small. The books seem kinda related but i guess if people might be interested in outside things what would you say to people about the overall message and thinking small how it relates to the things we've been talking about today

57:31 I teach in northwestern and i've got a lot of students here who are really well intentioned and one thing they often want to do is, join the peace corps you know go out and work with poor people in villages and get it like its such a tempting things from the perspective these students. You know there are four people i wanna help i wanna know that world you don't share whatever expertise i have them And i guess two things i mean one is the book talks a lot about history that including history of the peace corps but all these other predecessors so that where united states would try to resolve poverty by sending out some well intentioned men women who are willing to roll up their sleeves and get their knees muddy in help build a hut or something like that.

58:14 First of all, I mean still see that as a kind of form of hubris right now. How would you think that sending in Dartmouth graduate? You know how to some Kenyan village is gonna really help matters wouldn't a Kenyan person be a better expert on how to deal with Kenya especially when they don't speak the language which is often true so That's one thing but more importantly is this it's so tempting because we love communities You know we think that the modern world has gotten too big and you know, we have genetically modified food and there's like office parks in suburbs when we used to just live in small communities. And this focus on the small and the obsession with grassroots as a way of fixing everything I think often shifts the blame because if go to a village and your like okay well what are the problems? Your gonna see village size problems! Okay well we should put a drinking well there and that would help

59:04 And you know drinking water cool that's great but if you wanna know why people are poor it's not usually there is not a drinking well right there is usually that there's a large global system that is drastically unfair that, transmit benefits to some people and others of them that seals borders against people who would very much like to move to areas that are little more profitable than others. And that is, at this time heating up the planet to the point where anyone who's living outside of those privileged parts is gonna have a more and more difficult time just subsisting and living. There's gonna be more conflict and there's gonna be less water. Those strike me as the real issues rather than it's just like should there be well here? Rather than asking when confronting the problem with poverty how can we help these people you might ask what have been doing too these people

59:54 And so to the degree that how do i know my new book is about empire it's about kind of taking responsibility in this case of united states for the effects of attractions and another booking king smalls trying to do something right asking people in united states to look at global poverty not just see you know, an occasion for help and building a cv line but as an occasion to think deeply about the larger forces. That privilege you don't often intentionally so the privilege the united states and then if you know how to lock other places into poverty Amen man yes it is kind of a condescending thing to hear about us small injustice and then immediately jump to how can we help you know there's a lot of white nights out there really sometimes, the answer is just back off or get the corporations outta here and will be fine so i do like this energy between those two books not thought that was important thing throw in their.

1:00:48 And right on this is been a lot of fun man i mean super insightful how to hide an empire should be on everyone shelf there's plenty of stuff in there we didn't get to talk about, before i really cut you loose anything more to tell the people about upcoming projects or your website or social media platforms that can find john. Yeah, I was on Twitter briefly and then it got a little much so i'm not active right now but I've got a website and I do a lot of writing that goes beyond this. So you know I write for magazines and I had a piece on Jared Diamond the author recently. I turned out to be a little critical of him. The book is the main thing How To Hide An Empire but I've got a lot of other stuff on the website and anyone's welcome to visit it and see what they say

1:01:32 Very cool well it has been a real pleasure talking to you today man i know what's the marathon session around here so thanks for your time keep doing what you do and take care out there. Pleasure thanks for having me on. And boom goes the dynamite dear people daniel emmervar dropping, are unique kind of knowledge another one that i knew would be while received and was excited to release And I'm sure you guys have picked up on my desire over the last couple of months to cover this sort of space a little bit better. We circled around it, a little with Natalia40 and again with Whitney Webb before her Epstein coverage but when i saw this book was coming out I was really really hoping that THC didn't scare him off and here we are so kudos to him for his willingness

1:02:30 Because if we really care about the disenfranchised and the voiceless victims of empire, We should highlight these stories because they definitely help make our case. More so than most things that you're gonna talk about within the American bubble or should I say American blob? But we have a lot of people out there friends and family who might still blindly trust the system Or think that it's there to protect them or to make their lives easier That the game isn't rigged, that the system isn't that corrupt? Hmm. Well it's harder for someone to drink the Kool-Aid with this playing at the party you know what I'm saying? To hear these chapters of hidden history or suppressed history should be pretty eye opening and it's also not something you have to debate with someone! I doubt the conversations you'd have around this episode would contain as much well...that didn't happen

1:03:30 as the ones based around the more hot button topics might and i wanna refrain from going too far outside the parameters of today's episode, how to respect for our guests cuz i don't want him to feel uncomfortable with how i'm kind of extrapolating out from what we heard today because i would guess that he might say. Did i take things too far guilty But there is this sentiment that I talk with my buddy Durell about quite often, that if you want to summarize what white privilege is it's drinking the Kool-Aid that politicians care and government is there to serve you. That they're doing the best they can and corruption couldn't be as deep as I might say it is or we'd hear about on the news just believing the whole illusion. That's pretty much all naive white people should

1:04:28 Because the rest of the people out there have unfortunately gotten a closer look at the true colors of The Big Machine. It's why when I worked at The Great American Cookie in the Columbia Mall, the guys that got along with best were the workers at Foot Locker and Lady Foot Locker! What do you think we bonded over? Sports?! No... We got talking about politics and corruption etc., etc.. And they thought hey he doesn't know anything about basketball but this guy is alright I guess i'm just saying if we don't consider ourselves part of the human family first, then people like Cornelius Rhodes become tolerable because what he was doing was in Puerto Rico and not Kansas. And if you want to talk about dark aspects of the medical system there are other testing microcosms we could talk about like the Tuskegee syphilis experiments

1:05:25 It's all good history to know, and like building a case for some of the more extreme opinions of our other guests you have to as they say establish a pattern of behavior. And the next time someone says well they wouldn't do that you can simply point out the things they have done that nobody is debating and I think those things alone will speak volumes But I really did try to keep my crazy in today because i care too much about the actual content of the book Daniel wrote and also respect his path in academia even if it hasn't been mine.

1:06:08 The stuff about the Philippines and Pearl Harbor was great and eye-opening. Of course, the reckless medical testing in Puerto Rico was key And his own personal family connection to some of this was also surprising and interesting But I think that was in the second hour Regardless you should all be very well stuffed from all the food for thought today! And I just can't get over the fact that Cornelius Rhodes he did what he did He worked for the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research for a decade and was the first director of the Sloan Kettering Institute, and the first director of the combined Memorial-Sloane Kettering Cancer Center. Plus, the story of how chemotherapy was derived is a bit troublesome but I'm not really insinuating anything further those are just facts!

1:07:06 And maybe he is an isolated incident to some degree. It's not for me to say, but a huge appreciation to Daniel for highlighting these pieces of history and writing his book! Of course even just the first hour of this interview is full of things that i didn't know and glad i know now. And that's also true right on through the second hour as well we talked about several other aspects of his book how to hide an empire such as, using colonies as sacrifice zones the contentious relationship between the founding fathers and the frontiersman i thought that was fascinating

1:07:49 The lost history of Sequoia and the integration of Cherokee Nation. Did you know they even had their own newspaper? They were trying to play ball, they came to the game and sadly it seems that the system just said no we also talked about Daniel's thoughts on the intentionality behind these spread of smallpox in the new world, the effects of empire on Daniel's own family tree as I mentioned The ever important underlined up of the godzilla franchise lots of diverse material guano islands as well that early america stuff was also just some of my favorite but anyway you know the drill.

1:08:37 We offer the first hour with no strings or sponsors attached and if you want to support what i do, if you see the value in its continued existence and the endless sea of options sign up for the higher side chats plus. And get an extra hour of our very deep and varied shows including a long archive that goes further back than you know And that said in higher side news, I think the joint session this month is going to be on the 20th. Again 7pm pacific time i will keep you reminded as we get closer to it and with that...I'm getting out of here! I've done my part your move pawns of empire agents of the elite and gears of the big machine your fucking move. Oh no You see

1:09:34 The world isn't random, it's attached to puppet strings Control over everything The 9-to-5 has tried to steal ya Now don't that job seem silly? Hello, can you hear me Or should I play back recordings from some spying agency? Wish we were younger and free. I'll be thankful when it's all exposed, a vast conspiracy There's such a difference between us And the Denver child

1:10:29 Hollow from the highest side They're calling out a thousand crimes They'll tell you the story Of everything that's been done Then they'll call out deception Of the web that's been spawned Hello from the higher side The earth is hollow I will tell you about something that no one else will Have you heard about Saturn? Have you heard about the real since long ago? No, they're cartoons

1:11:29 It's so typical of me to talk about the stuff I'm sorry that's good and well Did you ever hear the argument That nothing really happens? It's no secret And that the best is planned It's doubling your time Hello from the higher side They're calling out a thousand crimes They'll tell you something The elite have done And they'll call out deception On the web that's been spawned Hello from the higher side

1:12:26 I'm challenging your path And i'll tell you something That the battle's begun But we can't fight it with violence The mind's where its won At the war Hello from a higher side

1:13:18 They're calling out a thousand crimes They'll tell you something the elite have done And they'll call out deception Of the web that's been spun Up from the higher side Challenging your paradigm And they'll tell you Don't think that the battle's begun But we can fight it with violence The mind's where it's run, that's the war