Daniel Immerwahr
Interviewee: Daniel Immerwahr
Interviewer: Doug Exton
Description: Look at a U.S. map, and you’ll see the familiar cluster of states, plus Hawai'i and Alaska in boxes off to the side. But what about Puerto Rico? American Samoa? The U.S. has held overseas territories—home to millions of U.S. nationals—for most of its history. Though often absent from textbooks, these territories have been central to the nation’s past. This talk explores what U.S. history would look like if it included all U.S. land: the Greater United States. Bio: Daniel Immerwahr (IM-mer-var, he/him) is a history professor at Northwestern University specializing in global history and U.S. foreign relations. His first book, Thinking Small (Harvard, 2015), a history of U.S. grassroots antipoverty strategies, won the Organization of American Historians' Merle Curti Award for best work in U.S. intellectual history. His second, How to Hide an Empire, which reframes U.S. history to include its overseas territories, was a national bestseller and won the Robert Ferrell Book Prize from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. Immerwahr is currently working on two research projects: one on the pop culture of U.S. global hegemony and another on nineteenth-century urban catastrophes. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, Slate, The Nation, and The New Republic.
Date: 2022-03-23
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Doug Exton: So this program is funded through the a more perfect union initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities. And with me today is Daniel Immerwahr, who is a professor of history at Northwestern University, where he teaches a global history in US foreign relations. He also did write a book titled How to Hide an Empire: A history of the Greater United States.
I turn it over to you.
Daniel Immerwahr: Wonderful. Doug, thank you so much for organizing this. And thank you, everyone, for being here. To whatever degree here is a thing. So I'd love to talk to you about some of the research I did around that book that Doug mentioned, How to Hide an Empire. And to do that, I will attempt an act of technological proficiency.
I'm going to share my screen. We'll see how that goes. Okay. Boom. I think we're seeing it. So the book that I wrote and the research that I do is about trying to see US history in a new light. And in order to start, I'd like to to, talk not about an obscure event that you've never heard of that I'm trying to argue is important, but actually one of the most important and and famous events in U.S. history. I think if you were to ask people in the United States which historical events they could put a date to, ie then they not only knew what year that happened but actually the date that they happened, I think that'd be a really short list. I think the list would be: Fourth of July, 1776 and signing of the Declaration of Independence, sort of grimmer anniversary, September 11, 2001, Al-Qaida's attacks on New York and Washington, DC.
And then I think there's one other date that you would get, which is the date that lived in infamy. December 7th, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in the Territory of Hawaii. This is an interesting event. I mean, this is an event is like a, you know, it's in every history book. And I checked at the Library of Congress. There's like three hundred and 50 separate books that are held by the Library of Congress about this event. It is obviously a really important event in the national story. It's also a curious event. It will. I'll let to. I'll let you sort of get get someone else's narration, for you to understand how we normally talk about this event. So, famously, this is the event that drew the United States into the Second World War.
But it also had a curious feature here described by Richard Nixon, who Served in the Pacific during that war. Which is, Pearl Harbor was the only piece of American territory that suffered directly from enemy attack in World War Two, as Nixon puts it. And that's often how we narrate it. So it is a place that in the United States was attacked, but it was actually the only place in the United States that was attacked during the war. So it has that curious, feature. Those of you who are World War Two buffs might be aware that that narrative or that story offered by Nixon and sort of affirmed by so many of us readily isn't actually totally correct.
So in in World War Two, in a in a matter of hours, The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Pearl Harbor Naval base at the Territory of Hawaii. But also and we don't talk about this as much. Also just within a few hours. They also attacked, Wake Island, which is a US territory. Wake Island is different from Hawaii. Both of them were territories, not states, which is still not a state. Wake Island was uninhabited in the sense that it had no indigenous inhabitants. But actually had a lot of people on it, had a lot of, U.S. service members and civilians who were building airstrips and that kind of thing. So it was also a U.S. territory, territories. They got attacked. Japan also attacked the US territory of Guam, which is inhabited and does have an indigenous population, as well as the largest overseas territory that the United States has ever held, the Philippines, which has millions of people living in it. And then also on the same just within the same span of hours, Japan attacked the British colony of Hong Kong, the British colony of Malaya, and the independent Kingdom of Thailand.
The, you know, newspapers at the time were sort of unsure how to talk about this event, if you remember, September 11th, in the immediate aftermath. There was a similar kind of confusion. It wasn't like on September 12th, newspaper editors were saying yesterday, September 11th, happened, and the name of the event was. It took a while to settle. And that's also true for this, the name Pearl Harbor wasn't a name that people gave to it, for a few days as the name of the naval base was attacked. But it wasn't the name of the event. And, and people struggled to, to locate the event to figure out where this event took place. Hawaii is one place but Guam is another. In the Philippines is another, and Malaya is yet another US paper, as You can see from just immediately afterwards, editors giving articles, titles like, you know, Guam and Hawaii are attacked or the Philippines and Hawaii or attacked.
The Philippines often loomed large in this kind of coverage and understandably so. The, the damage, the military damage to United States that the Philippines was, according to the U.S. Army's history, as bad as the military damage suffered by the US armed forces, at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. So militarily, it was a blow equally as great. But the attack on the Philippines was also different from the attack on Hawaii, whereas the attack at Pearl Harbor and Hawaii was, was, just that. It was an attack. The Japanese attack. They did great damage. And then they didn't come back. In the Philippines, it looked a little different. The Japanese attack, they did roughly equal amount of great damage. And then they kept attacking. And then they invaded. And then they occupied such that the Philippines, the largest colony that the United States had ever held, became Japanese territory for the duration of the war between Japan and the United States. So you can see why the Philippines might have loomed large in people's understanding of the event.
And in fact, Eleanor Roosevelt in her speech to the country that she gave the night of, this event, she, she said, you know, this is ultimately an attack on Hawaii and the Philippines, our citizens in Hawaii and the Philippines. And that location, this is an attack on Hawaii and the Philippines is, is also how FDR is, trusted under-secretary of state drafted the speech that the president was supposed to give a speech that we now know as the date with which will live in infamy speech. FDR looked at that speech, which located the event as mainly occurring in Hawaii and Philippines and threw it away. And he, drafted his own speech, which thankfully, thanks to Library of Congress, we have we have his draft number one, which then the president marked up, with, with various edits over the course of the day. These edits are somewhat consequential. Like the first line is an incredible edit. The original speech is, Yesterday, December 7th, a date which will live in world history.
And then FDR changed it. And you can see him cross out world history to make it a date which will live in infamy. That's a really good edit. I often share that with my undergraduate students as an example of the power of editing. But he made a number of other edits, and one of those edits is to the, I think, seventh line. I'll read it if it's if it's too small on your screens, where he did a similar edit. And this is where, he's describing the location of the attack. So originally it had said Japanese air squadrons commence bombing in Hawaii and the Philippines. So he's using the same pair of targets that, his wife had used, that is undersecretary of state had used. But then, you see, he crosses it out and replaces Hawaii and Philippines with just Oahu.
Which is an island in Hawaii. And and throughout the speech, FDR did a curious thing which he demoted prominent references to the Philippines, focused his description of the attack entirely on Hawaii. And then there's a lesser known back portion of the speech where FDR lists the other places that Japan attacked, Guam, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Malaya. But he gives a mixed list, so you can't really tell which are the British territories and which of the U.S. territories. And he certainly doesn't explain. It's a curious thing. And you might wonder, why FDR made that edit to the speech, why he took the Philippines out, from prominent reference in the speech. And, And it's actually hard to know why. Or at least we don't, you know, we can't scan his brain. We don't know exactly why, but I have a pretty good guess as to why this happened
At the time, people, there was a lot of opinion polls about, you know, people in his audience asked if the United States would defend, militarily or if the United States should defend militarily, various places if they were attacked. So if Canada's attack, should the U.S. military defend it, if the Philippines is attacked, etc.. And what what was noticeable on those opinion polls is that the far western territories of the United States, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa did extremely poorly in polling there were very few people in the audience who wanted to see the US military brought to the defense of such far western territories. Hawaii was a little different. Hawaii had a far larger white population, was a little closer to the continental United States, and for that reason it was easier, I think, for people in his audience, to see, to see the Hawaii as American, but even still
it was kind of difficult. There's a poll from fortune magazine, in 1940, in which fortune it's the same kind of poll that I just described. Fortune asked its readers, which countries should the United States defend if it came to war, and 55 percent of them suggested that it would be worth defending Hawaii. Officials in the Territory of Hawaii hit the roof when they saw this poll, and they sent angry letters to fortune, and they had their two objections. One of them, I think you can probably guess 55%. That is an awfully and sort of terrifyingly low number. They thought, are you saying that only 55% of the country believes that we merit and, defense in case that we were attacked, that that's very scary. This is happening just Before the Pearl Harbor attack. And it's not at all unthinkable that the Japanese would attack at Hawaii.
The other objection, I think, is a little subtler, but but it's also really important. The, the officials in the Territory of Hawaii objected to the wording of the poll. Which countries should the United States defend? Which countries? Hawaii is not a country. Hawaii is an integral part of the United States. Like New York, New York is not a country that the United States should consider defending. New York is part of the United States. So is Hawaii. And the way you're wording the question sets people up to misunderstand that really important fact at a time, officials in Hawaii felt. When we really need people to understand that, I think, FDR had some sense in his mind about the unsteady status. In, in the years of a lot of his audience.
Of Hawaii, because he made one final adjustment to the speech, and he made it, in between the last drafts that we have with all his markings, and the version that he verbally gave that we have a recording of. And so I don't exactly know when he made it, but I like to imagine that he was approaching the microphone and he just paused and thought, one final adjustment. And it's an adjustment to that seventh line that I've already drawn your attention to. In the penultimate draft. FDR had said, that this was an attack on the island of Oahu, and then he changed it, and he changed it. To add just one more word to the American island of Oahu.
FDR was nervous that people in his audience would not understand that Hawaii was actually part of the United States. And he badly needed them to understand that, because otherwise the entire speech makes no sense, because the speech is, the Empire of Japan attacked the United States of America. And so FDR, you can see, was already, I strongly suspect, very nervous about whether people would understand the Philippines To be the United States of America. But I think he was nervous about Hawaii, too which was also, like the Philippines, a territory not a state. And hence his rounding up to, Hawaii to America, the American island of Oahu. A place where American lives were lost. The speech was a big deal when it was given. People recognized that at the time.
And but I think it didn't fully settle the issue. FDR, asked people, not in this speech, but in a series of subsequent speeches to buy Atlas and maps. And so that they could follow along as he narrated the war through a series of fireside chats. And it was actually a bonanza for map publishers, as suddenly they found there was a huge national audience for for Atlas, as people wanted to be able to follow the war. And you would see these, publishers come out with new wartime atlases that were specifically issued for the war. I have an account of a classroom of, of seventh grade girls in Kalamazoo, Michigan, who were doing exactly what the president had asked for, and they had purchased a wartime atlas, Rand McNally Ready Reference Atlas of the world, which was published, during World War two for the purposes of World War two. And they're doing exactly what the president had asked. They're following along on the various pages of the atlas. They're learning about the world as the war, carries, American soldiers to various parts of it.
And then one seventh grade girl turns to an unexpected page, a kind of uninteresting one on the same page, at the back of the atlas, this page here, the index of foreign cities and physical features. It's just an index. It tells you where you'll find things on, on various maps. But it's an index of foreign cities and physical features. So a foreign places and the seventh grade girl looks at this and notices that on this list of foreign places she sees Hawaii and she also sees the Philippines. And hey, there's Puerto Rico. Which leads to a real question. What's going On? I don't know exactly how this played out in the seventh grade classroom, but it's some version of this.
The girl asks the teacher. The teacher poses it to the class. The entire class gets in on this question to the point where they write to Rand McNally, the publisher of this Atlas, asking what gaps why are these places listed as foreign? Hawaii is not part of the United States. What are you talking about? FDR gave this whole speech where he talked about the United States being attacked at Hawaii. Rand McNally, the map publisher, wrote back to the seventh grade girls to explain its reasoning. And so this is the sound of, a map publisher explaining to a group of seventh grade girls in Kalamazoo, Michigan, why it is appropriate to list Hawaii as foreign although Hawaii belongs to the United States, says Rand McNally.
Of this country. It is foreign to our continental shores and therefore cannot logically se shown in the United States proper index. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means, and I don't think the girls did either. They were sort of furious. They, took that correspondence and, they first responded to Rand McNally, and then they forwarded the entire thing to the Secretary of the Interior, which is how I found it. And they gave their commentary on Rand McNally's, reasoning, which is this. We believe this statement is not true. It is an alibi instead of an explanation. The Department of Interior wrote back to those seventh grade girls in Kalamazoo, Michigan. And confirmed that they were entirely right. Yes, Hawaii is part of the United States, the Philippines where we go these places are part of the United States. And yet that question what's up with Hawaii? Is the Philippines part of the United States? What's going on with Puerto Rico? That question and questions like it, I think, have haunted US history. I think if you ask most people in the United States to just picture the country mentally like to map it mentally, to imagine what it looks like, the, the mental map that you would normally get would be this map. The, political scientist Benedict Anderson referred to maps like these as logo maps because that, you know this if the United States had a logo, like a brand's, this might be it.
And he's not entirely wrong about that, you know. This map isn't entirely right. If you've seen maps of the United States, you were aware that, Alaska and Hawaii, which are now states, are usually shown on those maps of the United States. And if you've taken a U.S. history class, you're also aware that this isn't a permanent map of the United States. In fact, the country, as historians are always eager to tell students, had a different shape at its start. At its founding, it was a much smaller, feels like now stub of a country, on the eastern seaboard. And then it was only through a series of wars, purchases and indigenous possessions in the 19th century that the United States expanded to fill out the familiar profile that that that we know, in the last sort of jigsaw puzzle piece is, under the Mexican cession on this map is the Gadsden Purchase, which, provides the border between the United States and Mexico and was ratified in 1854. Okay. So in 1854. The United States has the shape that that we're so familiar with it, that we're so familiar with. That's true, except, that this is a very interesting fact. The United States only kept that shape for three years. There are only three years of U.S. history where that familiar shape is actually accurately corresponds to the borders of the country, those three years being 1854 to 1857.
And the reason is that after the United States filled out that familiar profile, it then started expanding overseas. It did so through first through a, series of, annexations of the so-called guano islands, islands that were uninhabited but were, rich in, in fertilizer, which you could, sorry, rich and bird guano, which could be used as fertilizer. That's how the United States acquired Wake Island and use here, see a map of them. I say it's a series of islands. But in fact, over the course of the 19th century, the United States acquired nearly 100 of them. 94 of them, and then very quickly after that. So the guano Islands started being annexed in 1857, 1867, the United States purchased Alaska at the end of the 19th century, the United States entered a war that Spain was fighting with Spain's, rebelling colonies, Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico. And in the course of that war, it entered on the side of the rebels who were seeking liberation from Spain. But in the course of the war or at the end of the war, it, it annexed a lot of Spain's colonies. So it annexed the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, all of which were Spanish colonies it occupied but did not annex Cuba.
And then in a sort of fit of imperial enthusiasm, it, took the non Spanish lands that same very small amount of time of Hawaii and American Samoa, thus giving the United States quite a large, territorial empire and colonies, you know, stretching, to Asia that that fact about the United States, that it had a large, empire with millions of people living in the colonies is, I think, a sort of elusive one. It's hard to recognize if you just read the textbook account of U.S. history. And partly the reason it's hard to understand that is it's actually hard to visualize, most maps of the United States don't show those kinds of places. This is, I just googled map of the United States to see what would first come up. And this is the map, that first came up. So, there's a few things to note about this map. One is that it's a map of states, not of all the lands that the United States claims. So Puerto Rico is not on this map. And to even the extra continental states, Hawaii and Alaska are given a kind of bizarre treatment. Alaska, most obviously. So, those of you who know much about geography understand that Alaska is actually way larger than that. But it is shrunken down on this map. Alaskans find this, deeply irritating. And I found one of the favorite parts of my research. One of the most fun parts of my research was I. I, encountered a map that an Alaskan had done of this same geographical zone. So this is an Alaska, this this same territory mapped from the perspective of Alaska as a form of cartographic revenge.
And here's what you see here. Alaska is represented in a loving cartographic detail. Every twist and turn of the coastline is shown. All the topography and all of its glory and the lower 48, as Alaskans call it, is just shrunken down and shown in a kind of distorted, Gumby like perspective. Hawaii actually gets a more serious treatment on this map, than the lower 48 do. So, okay, you know, you can see the, the map battles. I wanted to have a map of the United States that showed not just the states, but that showed all the territory. And that showed it, not shrunken down and distorted as Alaska sometimes is, but. But gave it to you from an equal, you know, to scale at an equal area of, projection. And I actually struggled to find such a map. So I made a map myself of the United States, on the eve of Pearl Harbor, showing all the territory that the United States controlled. And this is that map. So a few things to note about it. First of all, it shows you all of the inhabited territories, to scale at an equal area projection.
The only parts that shows, not to scale are the uninhabited islands. Many of them have been guano islands that the United States claimed. Many of these are so small that, to show them, you just wouldn't be able to see them on a map. So I've rendered them as clusters, in the lower left and lower right for Pacific and Caribbean guano islands. Everything else is to scale and, when you look at a map like this, you quickly see just how large some of these overseas territories are. Alaska, for example, is huge. I mean, this is a point that Alaskans love to make is that if you superimpose Alaska on the local map, it stretches from coast to coast. You know, that's that's how big Alaska is. And you can do a play a similar game with the Philippines where it kind of just, you know, colonizes the entire East Coast. When you look at a map like this, you realize that, it's it's, not quite correct to take that logo map and to call just that the United States, that's a part of the United States. It's a big part. It's a important part. It's a populous part. It's a privileged part, but it's not the whole of the country.
And in fact, I struggle to know what to call that familiar, because I was I grew up calling it the United States. And then you look at a map like this and you realize, well, it's part of the the United States, not the whole thing. So I learned to use a term that, people in the territories often use, which is to call it the mainland. So that's the Mainland of the United States, not the whole thing. I'm pointing out maps just to show you how large some of the territories are, by the way. Hawaii too, if you look at below the mainland, if you look at not just the, eight islands that are normally shown, but the entire island chain also, almost stretches coast to coast of the mainland. But, the the map itself isn't entirely. The point. I think another thing to it's worth pointing out is, just how many people live in some of these overseas territories. So this is, again on the eve of the Pearl Harbor attack. This is, the US census count of the population of the Overseas Territories. And what we're looking at is a, territorial population that is large. It's almost 19 million people, the great bulk of whom live in the Philippines. The United States is not unusual in having, an overseas empire with one big colony. Britain had that in India. The Netherlands had that in what is now Indonesia. And for the United States, it's the Philippines. But, you know, these other, territories are non small Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, you have a number of people in them.
And another way to think about this is to think about those 19 million people who live in the, overseas territories as a percentage of the overall U.S. population. So if you lived in the United States in 1940 million, the whole thing, not just the, mainland, there is a 1 in 8 chance that you were living in a territory, you know, in a colony. Another way to say that is to say that if you live in the, United States in 1940, there is you are more likely to be colonized than you are to be black. That's how many people live in the, overseas territories. And you're more likely to be colonized than you are to be an immigrant. That's how many people live in the overseas territories. And that's the launchpad or the conceit of this book that I've written. How to Hide an Empire.
What I try to do in the book is to tell the story of the United States, where the United States is not just the mainland, but is all of the land over which the United States claims jurisdiction. What people at the turn of the 19th, 20th century called the greater United States. And so I asked if you look at U.S. history, you know, where the United States is this whole space not just a smaller space we usually focus on how does it come out differently? And I think the answer is it comes out actually quite differently in a number of spots. I should explain the title of the book is called. It's a somewhat playful title. It's called How to Hide an Empire. And that has to do with the fact that I think the United States has an unusual relationship to its overseas colonies. And that it has it doesn't have a history of Talking about them loudly. And this is kind of bizarre because, the British were completely unashamed of their empire, as were other other countries. So this is just a Canadian postage stamp showing a familiar image to a lot of people in the British Empire, which is a world map with all of the British claimed parts on it proudly rendered in red.
That that was a map that a lot of people would have have seen, living in the British Empire. In fact, the British had a holiday, to celebrate the imperial dimensions of their country called Empire Day. It started in the schools, and then it became, an official holiday in 1916. Interestingly, the United States had a holiday, a patriotic holiday with exactly the same chronology. It starts in the schools and it becomes official in 1916. But also, interestingly, the United States patriotic holiday holiday is is of a different kind. It's not to celebrate the Empire. It's called Flag Day, and it is designed to celebrate the United States as a nation rather than as an empire. And the object that students were asked to venerate on Flag Day wasn't a, as it was on Empire Day in Britain, wasn't a map of the world with all the, you know, colonies painted a certain color. But it was rather the US flag, which has, a star for every state, but no representation at all for the overseas territories. That hidden quality of the US empire, I think it mattered historically and matter a lot. And it never didn't matter more, than in World War two.
It was already clear, in the run up to World War two, that the Japanese might seek, violent expansion. And if they did, that would imperil the western territories of the United States, the Philippines, Guam, American Samoa, or Hawaii, all of which indeed were attacked during the war. The United States saw this coming. People in the territories absolutely saw it coming. War and loudly of it. But nevertheless, the United States was, slow to build up its defenses. On the thought that, you know, this was kind of expensive. And were these colonies really that important anyway? And, you know, maybe it would be okay if Japan took them. Interestingly, the thing that the United States did to most prepare itself, for possible attack by Japan was not fortification, but it was to put the Philippines on a countdown to independence. So the idea is that, the Philippines would be transition to a new kind of government called a Commonwealth government. And then after ten years, if it essentially behaved itself, it could become independent. And then, of course, it were to become independent. The United States would no longer be obliged to defend it.
So the Philippines got its independence before Japan attacked. Japan would be attacking, from the US perspective, a foreign country. The exact political nature of the Commonwealth government is, is a little tricky. And it's trickiness that became clear on day one. A, part of the transition was if, Filipinos could elect the president of the Commonwealth, and they elected a man named Manuel Quezon, who was became the first president of this new government. Quezon, upon election, asked for a 21 gun salute, which is an honor, a military honor. And, FDR refused him a 21 gun salute, and proposed instead that he get a 19 gun salute. What is the difference? FDR says the difference is symbolic, but meaningful. A 21 gun salute is fitting for a head of state. You are not a head of state because the Philippines is subordinate to the United States. I am the head of state. You are essentially like a state governor.
Or something like that, and you get 19 guns. Quezon felt this to be, a serious insult. So he threatened, well, first he threatened war. Then he threatened to boycott his own inauguration. Ultimately, he, acquiesced and took the 19 guns. Nevertheless, too few guns would be an enduring theme, in the in the years to follow. So, as a lot of people saw coming and as Quezon and other Filipinos feared, when Japan went to war with the United States, it attacked the Philippines and it began to invade and conquer the Philippines. Quezon demanded, immediate military aid. I mean, he'd been demanding it before the war had started, but now he was demanding it much more loudly on on the grounds that Japan was actually in the process of invading and conquering the Philippines. But as he asked for aid, he but sort of, rammed up against a hard fact about US policy, which the United States had agreed on a grand strategy for fighting World War two, understanding that it would be a two front war. The United States would prioritize, Europe and this is called the Germany First strategy. So the United States would fight the war on two fronts, but it would, put the war with, Japan on the back burner, which, you know, implicitly would mean, you know, taking a few losses, in order to prioritize, defeating, Hitler and defeating Mussolini.
And then once, once, the conflict was in hand in Europe. Then it could turn its full energies to the Pacific. You know, war is is hard. War never involves easy choices. This was, I presume, a hard choice. But it was a choice that I think the hardness of was was particularly evident, to Filipinos. It wasn't a secret choice. FDR took to the radio and gave all these addresses about, the need to defend England, from from conquest and those radio addresses, because the Philippines was part of the United States, made their way to the Philippines, where Filipinos heard them. And, For Quezon, this was it was you became apoplectic upon hearing this. I said, you know, defending England, that is the main priority. England is not even part of the United States. England in fact, not only is a foreign country, it is an imperialist. And the United States is more interested in defending an imperialist than defending its own largest colony. When people who are U.S. nationals who are in the process of getting invaded, not just facing the threat of getting invaded, Quezon delivered a soliloquy.
That, to U.S. officials heard and recorded. So we have some sense of of what he said. And it's kind of a remarkable one. It's it uses strong language, but it's it's strongly felt, upon hearing Roosevelt's war speeches on the radio, he said, I cannot stand this constant reference to England, to Europe. I'm here and my people are here under the heels of a tyrant. How typically Americans who writhe in anguish at the fate of a distant cousin while a daughter is being raped in the back room. That reference to the Philippines as the back room? That's not the worst reference that I've heard. To the place of colonies within the US polity, especially during World War two. Because, demanded immediate independence. So at least he could negotiate a peace with Japan. As long as the Philippines was part of the United States, the Philippines was at war with Japan.
And he thought, well, if we can be independent, we can negotiate a peace. The Japanese could perhaps station their troops in the Philippines, but they wouldn't have to conquer every inch of it. He demanded this from, FDR, if you're not going to send battleships, at least give us the ability to, you know, come to our political peace with Japan. And FDR refused. No, the Philippines cannot negotiate with Japan. And the US flag will be defended to the death, which are potentially stirring words. But they are, also, if you look at them in a different light, ominous words and actually prophetic ones, in terms of what they predicted for what the war would mean for Filipinos, the cost of the war on Filipinos was appreciated by top U.S. officials at the time and came out at this moment when, Winston Churchill was discussing with Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, who himself had been the governor, the colonial governor of the Philippines earlier, Churchill was discussing the Germany first strategy and, and asked Stimson if Stimson was willing, you know, fully understood and was willing to bear the costs of that Germany first strategy, knowing that it would basically mean allowing the Philippines to fall into Japanese hands. And Churchill was thrilled with the Germany first strategy because it meant defending England. But he just wanted to make sure that the United States was aware of the cost it was paying and was ready to pay that cost. To which Stimson replied, there are times when men have to die, and this is an explicit reference to the Philippines. There are times when men have to die.
Unsurprisingly, the Philippines was occupied by Japan during the war and by all accounts, it was a brutal occupation as Japan tried to shunt, the entire Philippine economy into its, war machine. In hastily as a way of kind of building up its defenses and getting more resources to fight the United States. As the United States prepared to devote more and more resources to the Pacific conflict. Filipinos, not only objected, but resisted. And there are many accounts and diaries of Filipinos from the war of people being, tortured, sometimes summarily executed. In the streets. There were resistance movements and violent suppression of them. It was incredibly hard times throughout Southeast Asia. In the 1940s. The United States did return to the Philippines, to quote unquote, liberate it, from Japan. Although, of course, the what the United States was going to do was to claim what Japan said was now a Japanese colony. And return it to to the United States, so would now be a US colony once again. The, but Japan had done something in the Philippines that the United States hadn't done, which is Japan, and fortified it and and taking it back, liberating it from Japan, was going to be much more difficult than it had been for the Japanese to take it initially from the United States.
The United States prepared to do this, particularly by targeting Manila. Manila was the largest city in the, in the Philippines. It's sort of the Hollywood in New York and Washington, DC all at once. And because of the, depredations of the Japanese war economy, a lot of Filipinos in the countryside were facing outright starvation and had, you know gone to Manila, which had inflated to have a population of around a million, just to try to get some food, even there, by the end of the war, they were dropping dead of starvation in the streets. So Manila, in, by, you know, by the end of the war had a million people, which made it the sixth largest city in the United States, larger than San Francisco or Washington, DC. If if you still counted Manila as being part of the United States, as Washington and war planners in the United States did, the United States prepared for the battle in Manila by bombing it. By bombing its own city, to take out Japanese installations. And I when I was researching in Manila, I found in the archives some fliers, that US bombers had dropped before or in between dropping bombs to warn Filipinos of this. And the fliers read this Filipinos American planes are bombing and strafing this area. Remember, we don't want to hurt you, but bombs cannot tell friend from foe. So stay away from our military targets. Which means building supply dumps, bridges, all installations used by the Japanese. Keep off the roads.
Yeah. There's a few things to notice about this. I. First of all, I think this flier basically gets it right. We don't want to hurt you. That part is exactly true. I found no evidence that there's any desire, in the part of the US military to hurt Filipinos who, after all, are U.S nationals. But nevertheless, bombs can't tell friend from foe. That part's really true. To, if you're bombing a city, it's really hard. Especially by the 1940s technology, to be in any way precise. And this list of things to stay away from gives you a sense of just how general the damage could be. Stay away from buildings, bridges, roads. That's a lot of a city. That after, bombing Manila and bombing a number of other cities in the Philippines, U.S. forces, tried to take Manila by the ground. And initially they had a sort of artisanal strategy they would enter. And any building that, was Japanese held and there were many that were, they would sort of enter into buildings and, you know, get in a firefight in the stairwell and try to clear the emplacements. This was risky. It's hard to get in a firefight inside of a building, and it quickly. And by quickly, I mean, within days, became clear that this was taking some toll on, in terms of casualties of, mainland soldiers. And so the lead unit, the 37th Infantry Division that was in charge of taking Manila from the Japanese switched to another strategy, which is instead of the artisanal method, each building assess the threat. Go. And, you know, fight the Japanese. Any building that was suspected of having Japanese enemy in it would be just shelled, would be just destroyed, in advance of US troops. That way you didn't have to sort of go in and actually use small arms to, to displace the enemy.
This made a lot of sense from a military perspective. And the sense was expressed well by, the general in charge of the seven 37th Infantry Division who said it this way, to me, the loss of a single American lives to save a building was unthinkable. Put that way, I entirely agree. Lives or architecture? I choose lives. And it's not. It's not at all unreasonable to do so. But that statement conceals something and conceals something that Hitler was fully aware of. There's a little sleight of hand going on, or two sleights of hand. One is a building. Those buildings aren't just architecture, because those buildings have, by definition, have people in them. They're the buildings. And suspected to have, to have the enemy in them. So it's Japanese lives that will be sacrificed. But also a lot of those buildings have Filipinos in the matter held hostages, or in fact, there are no Japanese in the building, but there are Filipinos in the building. Some of these buildings are hospitals, some of these buildings are other, you know, places where civilians are amassing, to, to try to get safety. And even when the buildings aren't occupied by Filipino civilians, often they're right next to buildings that are in the shells aren't always entirely precise. The other sleight of hand, which is related, is this bit about a single American life by law, was indeed deeply concerned about the protection of the lives of lives of uniformed mainlanders.
But Filipinos were U.S. nationals, too. And this strategy, did not effectively protect them at all. In fact, it gravely imperiled them. Here's some photographs that I collected at from Manila. They're not, grisly. You won't see any corpses. But they just give you a sense of the extent of the destruction as, both Japanese and the United States, with a combination of a sort of lethal concoction, leveled Manila, the United States sixth largest city in a month. In the month long liberation of Manila, mainland deaths were kept very well, being about a thousand people in the U.S. Army died. Whereas Filipino deaths were extensive, in the same amount of time, we're talking about 100,000, Filipino deaths, almost all civilians, almost all dying from some form of collateral damage on one side or the other. That asymmetry of of of danger and peril in Manila, captures well the entire day of the Philippine War and particularly the, lethal months at the end, as the United States tried to liberate the Philippines. In the month long liberation of Manila, mainland deaths were kept very well, being about a thousand people in the U.S. Army died, whereas Filipino deaths were extensive, in the same amount of time, we're talking about 100,000, Filipino deaths, almost all civilians, almost all dying from some form of collateral damage on one side or the other. That asymmetry of of of danger and peril in Manila, captures well the entire day of the Philippine War and particularly the, lethal months at the end, as the United States tried to liberate the Philippines.
Overall according to the, Philippine government's count, the war killed 1.1 million Filipinos if you count the dead on all sides. So Japanese made us mainlander and Filipino. We're talking about 1.6 million. Only a very small fraction of former US mainland or largely Filipinos and Japanese. And I think it's just worse taking a step back and kind of realizing the, the, the scale of this. One point 6 million people, that's two U.S., civil wars and and yet this is an event, this is a single bloodiest event that has ever happened on U.S. soil, killed more U.S nationals than than any other event. And yet it's an event that you'll rarely find in U.S. history textbooks, because when those U.S. history textbooks tell you the history of the United States, they're not thinking about the Philippines. I in my book, I try to tell the story well, it's own number of stories, but one of them is about what happened in the Philippines, at that time. And, it's a story I've reconstructed using a lot of war diaries, war diaries of soldiers, a lot of war diaries of civilians. And, one of the most, well, you know, and I also found a number of, photographs I'll just share with you the photograph that kind of sticks in my mind.
It's not grisly, but it's haunting in other ways. This is just a picture of a shellshocked, woman being carried to safety by by a guy, and, it's somehow it's the the look in her eyes and actually the look in his as well just gives you a sense of of the kinds of things they've just witnessed. Scenes like that with GIS helping Filipinos get to safety were not, entirely unusual. On one of the war diaries I found was described one such scene. It was from, a guy who, who'd been a young child at the time named Oscar. And, and he described being one of these kids in the aftermath. It was, you know, kind of being helped out by a guy. The guy comes by and, starts doling out chocolate to the children. And Oscar says to him, thank you, debris. And a guy, kind of is startled and says, how do you learn to speak American? And Oscar says, well, then I replied. Right. When you colonized us, you sent over a number of teachers, enough to, set it up so that the, language of instruction in schools would be English. And that's been going on for some time. And so, you know, I and all my classmates went to schools where the language of instruction was English. That's why we speak English.
And the GI, again, sort of was taken aback and said, we colonized you. And in his memoir, Oscar says, I couldn't believe it. How did he not know that? It's unthinkable? Like, how did he not understand the basic that's why he's here. And it's I mean, I think it's true. A lot of the memoirs from soldiers, from the mainland who fought in the Philippines indicate that they really don't have a firm sense of it. This guy, I think, by all accounts, thought he was invading a foreign country. And that difference in perspective between the young boy and the GI, I think captures a difference in perspective in terms of how we can think about the United States or how I would like I'd like to propose that it does. I think for too long we've been telling U.S. history from that GI perspective, we colonized you where the overseas territories just kind of, recede into the blurry periphery. And I think it's time that we tell U.S. history from Oscar's perspective, one that is fully aware of the overseas parts of the United States. So when we do U.S. history, we're not just doing a history of the logo map for the mainland. We're doing the history of the whole thing.
The greater United States. Okay. Those are my thoughts. Thank you so much for for listening. And I'd be really happy to take any comments or questions you have.
Doug Exton: Yeah. Thank you for all the wonderful information. I know I definitely learned a lot, especially about the Philippines, you know, and all the dynamic there in World War Two. The first question we have from the audience is, are you able to explain where the term I'm probably going to butcher this jingoism comes from?
Daniel Immerwahr: Jingoism
Yeah. That that's. The kind of, it's like some real 19th century, like, you know, old timey politics here. So when the United States was, involved in that war with Spain, and trying to figure out whether to enter the war with Spain, and if so, what to do with Spain's colonies, whether to assist them toward liberation or to actually claim them from Spain? A the political tendency that, that sought to enter the war boldly and leave the war with Colonies were the jingos. And, Teddy Roosevelt was a jingo. I forget exactly where that comes from. So. I'm sorry. I'm completely unable to answer the question soon as the etymology of jingoism. But that's what jingoism is.
Doug Exton: Well, thank you for defining it.
Daniel Immerwahr: At least I can at least. Yeah. All right.
Doug Exton: And then, as you mentioned, the U.S. has a history of just purchasing land from other, entities to grow and expand. Can you think of any other examples where other countries have done that, similar to, you know, the purchase of Alaska, Louisiana Purchase?
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. No, it's not. I mean, in the 19th century, it's not uncommon for, countries. I mean, basically the tendency was when countries would get more powerful, they would get larger. So, I mean, that that's that is not really a 20th century tendency, but, the 19th century is full of wars and purchases and kind of, you know, colonists exchanging land holdings. Often it's purchases aren't just like on the open market, you know, the United States purchased the Philippines, but it did so after defeating Spain's navy and its land forces in a war, which then, you know, kind of it's like a purchase under duress. But, yeah, no, I think that's not an unusual thing, for countries to purchase places from each other, including, in fact, Spain and, France had traded like the Louisiana Purchase before it was belonged to the new the United States had had passed back and forth between Spain and France.
Doug Exton: And then could you also talk about the idea of, the United States of empire, but in terms of our military bases around the world?
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. So the, there's a kind of an argument about whether the United States is an empire or not and, the there's a few different positions you can take. One one thing is this kind of minimalist position is to just say, well, the United States is a country with colonies, and in fact, it has five inhabited territories today, and millions of people live in them. And its entire history. It's never been just states. It's been states and territories, ergo an empire. And that's a position I'm very comfortable with in a lot of my book is about those territories. But you could also say okay, fine, colonies makes a country an empire. That seems like that's the basic definition. But there's other things like substitutes for colonies or quasi colonies that that also would seem to merit the calling someplace an Empire. And so that's where a lot of the debate about the United States has laid. So, are there other things that the United States does that isn't claiming colonies, but nevertheless should should classify it as an empire? And one is, you know, it has this outsized, you know, economic and military power, and it seems to kind of throw its weight around. But there's also a territorial component of that, which I've gotten really interesting myself, which is that the United States has, we think it is seven hundred and 50 military bases overseas and in its territory. So by and large, almost all foreign military bases. So you have to if you add up, all of the foreign military bases that every other country in the world besides the United States has, we're talking about a complete collection of like 30 to 40. So, I mean, there is a complete asymmetry in how many bases the United States claims. It's the number is a little unclear because the military keeps a lot of them secret. And sometimes the jurisdictional arrangements are nebulous.
But I think if you were making the case that the United States is an empire today, that would be a thing to point to. And, I in my book, I try to make that case and I say, look, it's not a colonial empire because these bases are actually very small. If you match all of the ones that we know about together, we're talking about an area the size of Houston. It's not huge but but it's they're still actually really important. And so I call me for that reason, I suggest calling United States a pointillist empire. You know, all those little dots. Yeah. No, I really like that name. You know, like you said, it shows how even though there's not a lot of land is there's still a lot of numbers. Yeah, yeah. And in the book, I try to suggest that, those little dots are incredibly important. And major historical events turn around them. Leaders are brought down, Wars are started. So, to just dismiss around them down to zero because they make up very little acreage, I think would be a historical error.
Doug Exton: Yeah. No, I definitely agree with, and moving to the next question, why do you think, Hawaii became, you know, a formalized state per se? Yeah. Whereas like Puerto Rico is in Guam is in, you know, some of the other, you know, larger territories in terms of population and influence are still just kind of at that territory level.
Daniel Immerwahr: Absolutely. So the United States has had a history of overseas territories, and some of them, well, Philippines became independent. American Samoa is still a territory. Guam is still a territory. Puerto Rico still territory. So what about Alaska and Hawaii? Why did they become states? The answer is really straightforward. It's white settlement. Those were the two territories that were most conducive to settlement of Anglos from the US mainland. That and they had, for that reason, a different legal category. They were incorporated rather than unincorporated territories, and that played a role in their eventual promotion to statehood, although even still, that was pretty rocky. And, Strom Thurmond, who was sort of a famous segregationist, saw it really hard to keep Hawaii out of statehood because he believed it would involve the, admission of too many nonwhite people to U.S. political life. Knowing that Barack Obama was born and raised in Hawaii. He's not entirely wrong about that.
Doug Exton: Then what brought you into when you're studying the territorial history of the United States?
Daniel Immerwahr: Pure stupidity. I, I've been teaching U.S. history for a while, and, you know, I've been teaching in the kind of normal, whatever, approved way. And, you know, and, you know, so if, if you, like, plop me down in someone else's history classroom and said, you know, it's 1880, go. And I was like, great, we're going into the Gilded Age, you know, end of reconstruction. You know, I like, you know, whatever. I knew that I knew of story to time. And then I went to Manila to, for completely unrelated reasons, to this book. I was researching something else entirely. And, you know, I had known kind of like I, I had known that the Philippines have been a colony of the United States, that was not lost on me. But there's like a difference between knowing something and really, truly getting it. It's like the difference between reading the lyrics and hearing the song, you know? And I just I knew it intellectually and then I got to Manila and I was like, oh yeah, right. Like it's really viscerally evident and audible in the way people speak. And, you know, you can see streets named after U.S. presidents or U.S colleges, and you can drive in, you know, repurposed U.S. Army jeeps around, like you're just like, yeah, it's this place has also been part of the United States. It's really obvious.
And in fact, Manila had been the urban planner to do. Manila was the same urban planner who did, the city I'm broadcasting from Chicago, so many of Daniel Burnham. So once I saw that, I was like, oh, right. Yeah. This place has obviously been part of the United States. Why haven't I been teaching it? Right. And in fact, all my lectures, you know, I had this like one lecture about 1898 where I kind of mentioned the Philippines, and then it just like disappeared from view. And that was also true of Puerto Rico and Hawaii. And I mean, that's what we say about military bases. And I realized that I was actually by my lights doing US history wrong, that I just like there were all these parts of the United States that weren't in my story in any way. And so the point of the book was, you know, which took like years to write, was to figure out how to think about U.S. history with with the territories and view and, and luckily, there, you know, a lot of researchers, including people from these places, had been telling versions of that story. And, you know, it's not like, it's not like Philippine history is a secret. It's just that us historians like me hadn't really been incorporating it into the story. And I wanted.
Doug Exton: Yeah, yeah. And I definitely feel like that's a, you know, similar thing is happening with Hawaii. Yeah. Because for me, when I was in high school doing American history, it was always kind of like, okay, like Hawaii exists. Boom, Pearl Harbor. And now Hawaii's, you know, important, so to speak, not to diminish anything prior to Pearl Harbor, but just kind of how it was taught. But now I feel like there's a lot more, you know, about, like, oh, pre US involvement, Hawaiian history. You know, there's just a lot more robust conversation around like the entire time frame of Hawaii as an entity.
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Exton: You know even me you know without the US that you got involved.
Daniel Immerwahr: Right. So the Kingdom of Hawaii and its history, the US sort of political machinations and ultimately coup within that kingdom, and then the US annexation of Hawaii to the point where Hawaii is a colony of the United States. All of that had, I think, is you won't easily find it, or at least in the textbooks that I read when I was being trained. But, when you talk about that stuff and I think it's it's wrong to just a U.S. history as the history of states where places only pop into existence when, you know, Pearl Harbor happens, or when they promote or, or something.
Doug Exton: Yeah. And you mentioned that dynamic between, the US with Flag Day and Empire Day. Yeah, in Great Britain about, you know, the celebration of having an empire versus, oh, or honoring the US as a nation. Can you talk about that dynamic and kind of that turning point, at least, where you think in history it kind of became, oh, it's almost shameful to have to be an empire to market yourself, you know, as an imperialistic country versus, oh, we were the states. You know, everyone's incorporated.
Daniel Immerwahr: Well, I think so. From the founding. There's a kind of tension between empire and being a republic. The name of the country, the United States of America, insists that these are states and they're bound in a union, not by a hierarchical kind of colonial relationships. And that part of that is an assertion of political difference from old world politics, from, you know, how it had been, you know, in Britain and France and Germany or the German lands and places like that. So, I think from the start there was an interest in marking the United States as a different kind of place, a place that didn't do Empire. But, you know, if you go through the founders speech, Jefferson, Washington, people like that, they're very interested in empire and conceiving of the United States still as a different, maybe a different kind of empire. So there's a it's a tension from the start. And you see it really pronounced, around 1898 when the United States acquires a bunch of these overseas colonies. There's a brief moment when all the maps put the Philippines and Puerto Rico on them and they're like, yeah, of course, the United States an empire. This is great. And then around World War One, but especially with the rise of sort of Woodrow Wilson and Wilsonian understandings of global politics. Then the e word again becomes the kind of thing to shun. And government officials try to find euphemisms and ways of talking about U.S. power protectorates in these places that aren't our our empire, our colonies. And I think that's kind of still where we are today.
Doug Exton: Yeah. No, I definitely think that's kind of how it is still today as well. And one of our audience members gives your book a glowing recommendation. And they say that one of the favorite stories was how the US base near Liverpool helped the Beatles learn American music, and they were wondering if you could speak to that at all, if you're able to.
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah, I wanted to tell you the story about the Philippines in World War Two, because it strikes me as one of the most reorienting stories, one of the, to me, the biggest clues that I've been doing U.S history wrong, I was like, wow, that was World War Two in the United States. Okay. But, I don't want to suggest that the book is all gloom and doom. I mean, Empire is a, it's not the finest of political forms, in my view. So, I mean, do we really sit with that fact? But there's a lot of unintended consequences and a lot of history that happens in just sort of a more surprising way than you might think. And one of the stories I tell is about the cultural influence of that pointillist empire, all those bases that the United States has spread throughout the world. And I talk about, the music. Especially the music that kind of crops up around those bases, in Okinawa, in England, and I explain that, the Beatles are part of a musical scene that is entirely dedicated towards servicing the largest single US Air Force base in Europe, which is this base right outside of Liverpool. And the Beatles and all these other bands working in Liverpool are, you know, are basically dealing with the fact that they're these relatively very rich US soldiers who are coming into an area that's still recovering from World War Two, pockets bulging with dollars. And these young men like the Beatles, are trying to impress them. And they do that by playing US rock lick for lick, playing these Buddy Holly songs, which otherwise it would make very little sense to why England would get really good at US Rock, you think that England would have its own musical form.
But the British Invasion and all this kind of English, you know, musical. A lot of that musical energy is shunted through us musical forms because of the fact that there's a US bases there, and those are places, if you're young to, to make a lot of money and have a lot of glamor, and you can see the same thing happening in Japan, where there's a lot of really good Okinawan music and it's like, Rock and roll, Jimi Hendrix and.
Doug Exton: We have two questions left, so let's try and get through them real quick. Do you think there's a sentiment, you know, from the US history, you know, teaching perspective, about, you know, the rights of a citizen in a territory and how they're completely different to someone who's living in the States, you know, in teaching that versus just kind of, you know, tucking it under the rug.
Daniel Immerwahr: So are you saying is this or should, this be taught differently in the territories? It's kind of history.
Doug Exton: Yeah.
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, the kinds of histories that I talk about in my book are not, as I said, they're not secrets. So what conceals them from view for people who are, you know, I was raised in Pennsylvania. People were educated like me. Is that is a problem of perspective, not of information. And so, yeah, I mean, one thing I'm really hoping, I'm not, you know, I'm part of a larger movement of historians who are writing in this vein. I think what we're hoping is that, you know, we can change how people in the United States learn its own history, learn their own history. And, and I think right now they're getting a selectively cropped family photo where the, you know, step kids are, like, out of the frame. And, I mean, I think that's unacceptable.
Doug Exton: Yeah. And one of the things that struck me the most, you know, in general was really learning that if you live in a territory, it's like you go, but okay, you're part of the US, but you don't get the rights of a traditional citizen. Yeah. And to me, that was always like the weirdest thing to grapple with.
Daniel Immerwahr: And I think it's worth just saying that out loud. So the United States still has five inhabited territories. Millions of people live in them. And by all three branches of government. They are in some ways disenfranchised are subordinated. So they cannot vote for president. They cannot have voting representatives in Congress. And the third branch is the Supreme Court. The, all the existing territories are unincorporated territories, which means that the Constitution doesn't fully and automatically extend to them. Which is why, for example, that you can be born in American Samoa and you are American. It's in the name of your territory. But you are not a U.S. citizen because the 14th amendment does not apply to you, because the 14th amendment does not automatically extend throughout the entire United States. It just extends to the constitutionally covered part of the United States. And the unincorporated territories lay outside of that.
Doug Exton: And the last question that we've gotten from a lot of the audience members is, can you make any kind of connections? You know, between the conflict between Japan, the US and the Philippines, too, what's going on right now in Ukraine?
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. One story that I tell in the book is about the importance. And then I think decreasing importance of territory, it's interesting that the United States, at the moment when it became most powerful, did not go on a, you know, after 1945, didn't go on a colonial shopping spree or didn't try to take Malaya from the British, you know, or Indochina from the French, or Korea from the Japanese. It found other ways to exert power, in other ways to use territory that that had a much smaller footprint, hence the pointillist empire. So I had seen there as being a kind of arc of history away from these kind of land grabs as an expression of power. And I think that's largely borne out which is why the Russian invasion of Ukraine is so startling and why so many of us have had a reaction of, this feels real World War two. Because the world used to be full of these kinds of invasions and border wars and, and, you know, including all of the violence that we're seeing. I mean, I've not broadcast on social media, but but these were really awful wars that would cut people off from supply lines and that kind of thing. And, and the way that, you know, conflicts have been handled, recently and I think happily, has really moved us away from that model. We're seeing, I don't think that this is a kind of tilting of the world back into that, but, justice, you know, just a hint of a kind of invasion like you see the United States doing in Iraq or like you see Russia doing in Ukraine, just gives you a taste of the kind of politics that were, so pronounced and, and pushed to the forefront in the age of colonial empires.
Doug Exton: And thank you for the, you know, description and the connections that you just drew. And again, for all the wonderful information from today's presentation, of course, we are out of time. So I'd like to say thank you again to everyone who attended. And a final thank you to you, Daniel.
Daniel Immerwahr: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it.
Doug Exton: Have a good one.