Expansionism

“ The first goal was success in the struggle for survival. Collective uniformity and expansion opened the path to wealth and power, in the city, state, the empire, the civilization. From a multitude of local beginnings the struggle for expansion and consolidation led to ever larger aggregations of land, population, capital and wealth concentrated in the hands of an increasingly rich, powerful oligarchy, protected and defended by a military elite pushing itself ceaselessly toward a position from which it could make and enforce domestic policy and order. ”

“ Each civilization has been built around one or more urban nuclei which accepted and practiced expansion as the primary law of their beings.
Expansion takes many forms. It may be peaceful, as travel is peaceful. It may be competitive, as trade is competitive. It may be economically aggressive; the search for markets, for raw materials, for investment opportunities carried on simultaneously by representatives of long time rival cities, states, empires. ”

“ But there is another ground on which the extension of our Empire is greatly attacked, and the attack comes from a quarter nearer home. It is said that our Empire is already large enough, and does not need extension. That would be true enough if the world were elastic, but, unfortunately, it is not elastic, and we are engaged at the present moment, in the language of mining, in 'pegging out claims for the future.' We have to consider not what we want now, but what we shall want in the future. ”

“ Expansion seems to be regulated, not by any difficulties of resistance, but by the moderation which results from our own internal constitution. No one knows how rapidly that restraint may give way. Who can tell how far or how fast it ought to yield? Commerce has brought the ancient continents near to us, and created necessities for new positions—perhaps connections or colonies there—and with the trade and friendship of the elder nations, their conflicts and collisions are brought to our doors and to our hearts. ”

“ Expansion gives the ruling oligarchy of the expanding nation, empire or civilization command of the strategic vantage points from which the principle of exploitation can be made continuously operative. ”

“ In every instance the expansion has been of benefit, not so much to the power nominally benefited, as to the whole world.{30} In every instance the result proved that the expanding power was doing a duty to civilization far greater and more important than could have been done by any stationary power. ”

“ My votes in Congress have always been in harmony with that line of policy. It matters not how far you acquire more territory, or how much or how little you wish to acquire. Expansion is the law of our existence; when we cease to grow, we commence to decline. Hence our course is onward, on the principle established by our fathers, under divine inspiration, as I believe, in the formation of the Government. ”

“ Any man in the more thickly settled regions who might be dissatisfied with his lot saw the frontier beckoning. Expansion, as in the twelfth century, made for a buoyant temper in the mind, but, unlike that of the twelfth century, this temper was too contemptuous of the past (because of the sixteenth century break with tradition and also because the expansion was without precedent) ; whereas the twelfth and thirteenth centuries felt that they were only partly reconquering the Roman order. ”

“ Paralleling their domestic expansion, civilizations expand geographically up to the point of diminishing returns, determined by the growth of overhead costs. This process has taken the civilization, its personnel, its institutions and practices into territory not heretofore occupied, sometimes with the consent of the "foreigners", but more often in the teeth of their determined and long-continued opposition.
Expansion of a civilization is of necessity a movement from an urban center and beyond the urban center. ”

“ Gelett Burgess. BALLADE OF EXPANSION 1899
TIME was he sang the British Brute,
The ruthless lion’s grasping greed,
The European Law of Loot,
The despot’s devastating deed;
But now he sings the heavenly creed
Of saintly sword and friendly fist,
He loves you, though he makes you bleed—
The Ethical Expansionist!
He loves you, Heathen! Though his foot
May kick you like a worthless weed
From that wild field where you have root,
And scatter to the winds your seed;
He’s just the government you need;
If you object, why, he’ll insist,
And, on your protest, “draw a bead”—
The Ethical Expansionist! ”

“ The great movement of expansion, which seemed to promise so much to ambitious nations anxious for world-power, was being arrested. Moreover, it began to be realised that the rapid growth of a community was accompanied by phenomena which had not been foreseen by the enthusiasts of the first period of optimism. They had argued—not indeed verbally but in effect—that the higher the birth-rate the cheaper labour and lives would become, and the cheaper labour and lives were, the easier it would be for a nation with its industrial armies and its military armies to get ahead of other rival nations. ”

“ During their periods of expansion civilizations are dynamic. Their history records growth at home, expansion abroad, exploitation, domestic and foreign under the pressure of effective motivating forces. The resulting dynamism leads to the contradictions, confrontations and conflicts which have studded the internal and external life story of every civilization.
Perhaps the most outstanding aspect of the dynamic functioning of civilization is its growth in magnitude. ”

“ There is another phenomenon that is working in the same direction, and which, even more than the competitive arming, is destined to reduce the policy of expansion to an ad absurdum, and thereby to cut off from the present method of production its last possibility of further evolution. ”

“ At the beginning the growth cycle has moved slowly, from victory to victory, as competing neighboring peoples have been brought under the authority of the victor in local wars. After generations or centuries of struggle a point is reached at which the nucleus of the growing empire begins to expand, through trade, colonization, diplomatic alliances, conquest, into an era of survival struggle in which rival cities reach out for the same piece of fertile land, the same markets, the same mineral deposits. ”

“ Science and industry, in the first place, made the conquest and organisation of the world easy. In the first stages of the expansion of Europe the material superiority of the West had unquestionably afforded the means whereby its political ideas and institutions could be made operative in new fields. The invention of ocean-going ships, the use of the mariner's compass, the discovery of the rotundity of the earth, the development of firearms—these were the things which made possible the creation of the first European empires ”

“ Empires and civilizations are established during periods of social expansion when the up-building and out-going urges are widely felt. The surge produces not a single center of growth and expansion but dozens or scores of competitors, each aiming to win and keep a position well in advance of its rivals. The resulting up-surge and free-for-all, which usually lasts for centuries, is a characteristic and recurring feature in the political life of every civilization. ”

“ But epochs of concentration cannot well endure forever; epochs of expansion, in the due course of things, follow them. Such an epoch of expansion seems to be opening in this country. In the first place all danger of a hostile forcible pressure of foreign ideas upon our practice has long disappeared; like the traveller in the fable, therefore, we begin to wear our cloak a little more loosely. Then, with a long peace, the ideas of Europe steal gradually and amicably in, and mingle, though in infinitesimally small quantities at a time, with our own notions. ”

“ The history of all nations shows that national expansion, though often achieved by individual enterprise, can only be maintained by organised effort, by concentration of power in a few hands, and by a proportionate diminution of individual freedom. ”

“ In our natural, necessary, irrepressible expansion, we are come here into contact with the progress of another great people, the law of whose being has impressed upon it a principle of growth which has wrought mightily in the past, and in the present is visible by recurring manifestations. ”

“ Let us expand, then, where we are healthy and strong. Is not there a magnificent field left for our ambition of aggrandizement? Yes, and it fills my soul with delight when I see events preparing themselves which will lead the whole continent north of us into our arms. ”

“ It seems a long time—doesn't it?—since Expansion was a cardinal issue and Imperialism a war cry, and we were deeply concerning ourselves with the fate and future of the little brown brother, and warmly debating among ourselves whether we should continue to hold him as a more or less unwilling ward of the nation or turn him and his islands loose to fend for themselves. ”

“ No important forward step in production, no memorial of civilisation, such as the great waterworks of the East, the pyramids of Egypt, the military roads of Rome, the Arts and Sciences of Greece, or the development of craftsmanship and towns in the Middle Ages would have been possible without expanding reproduction; for the basis and also the social incentive for a decisive advancement of civilisation lies solely in the gradual expansion of production beyond immediate requirements, and in a continual growth of the population itself as well as of its demands. ”

“ The fact that everything had to be built up anew from small beginnings on a virgin soil gave an opportunity to trace the rise of institutions from their infancy in a Puritan dwelling or in a town meeting till they spread and consolidated over a continent. In this short time the people have grown from little scattered settlements to a nation, have experienced an undreamed-of material expansion; have passed through a rapid succession of great political struggles, and have had an unrivaled evolution of agriculture, commerce, manufactures, inventions, education, and social life. ”

“ The study of expansion reveals to us the fact that expansion and contraction furnish the many elements of all human action, but that expansion is first, that expansion expresses joy, exhilaration, animation in life, and that contraction, aside from its co-ordination with expansion in causing control in intensity, expresses antagonism, hate, anger, pain. ”

“ A state formed by colonial expansion presents difficulties to any one who tries to define its nature. It is like a family of plants all sprung from one stock; the stock has sent out offshoots, which have themselves struck root, but are still connected with the parent stock from which they sprang. ”

“ In early ages, when knowledge was but little advanced, and when the small stock that had been accumulated was confined nearly to a single spot, the first description of causes were the principal ones. -- Local situation, priority in discovery, or in establishment, gave to one nation a superiority over others, and occasioned the accumulation of wealth, and the acquisition of power and territory. ”

“ The fathers and grandfathers of these Twentieth Century American Plutocrats, working coatless in their tiny factories; managing their corner stores; serving their local banks, and holding their minor offices had never dreamed of the destiny that lay ahead. No matter. The necessity for expansion had come and with it came the opportunity. The economic pressure complemented the human desire for "more." The structure of business organization, which was erected to conquer one continent could not cease functioning when that one continent was subdued. ”

“ There was rivalry and conflict for the prize in every department. The rising generation, conscious of newly awakening powers, dared enterprise after enterprise and with each waxed greater. With increasing production, the power of assimilation also increased. Everything grand created in other centuries was drawn into the circle of their own nation as if just discovered. ”

“ With such a prospect before us, who thinks that we should shrink from an enlargement of our national sphere because of the limitations that bound, or the dangers that threatened, before railroads, before ocean steamers, before telegraphs and ocean cables, before the enormous development of our manufactures, and the training of executive and organizing faculties in our people on a constantly increasing scale for generations? ”

“ What would more thoroughly insure its speedily flying to pieces than the lack of every one of these requisites? Over and over, the clearest-eyed students of history have predicted our own downfall even as a continental republic, in spite of our measurable enjoyment of all of them. ”

“ Neither is it true, as the committee says, that when a nation ceases growth, its decadence commences. History does not teach this doctrine of expansion, nor is there any parallelism between the growth of a nation and an individual man. ”

“ The nation must expand economically. This expansion, which is broader than what is usually called imperialism, is not a merely political process. It takes small account of national boundaries, but develops farming wherever possible. ”