Manu Karuka, an assistant professor of American studies at Barnard College, gave one of the 2022-2023 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lectures at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on Oct. 3. Photo courtesy of Emily Harding.
By Kiera McLaughlin ’26
Staff Writer
Content warning: This article discusses anti-Indigenous and imperialist violence.
Imperialism has had roots in the United States since the beginning of the nation’s history and has produced direct consequences for the rest of the world. This was highlighted in a keynote on “The Imperialist Roots of the U.S.A.” on Oct. 3, 2022, as part of the “Confronting Empire: The 2022-2023 Feinberg Family Distinguished Lecture Series” at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This lecture was presented by Manu Karuka, an assistant professor of American studies at Barnard College. Karuka discussed his work on the United States’ imperialist ties with the international community and how it has affected current global issues.
Karuka has been an associate professor at Barnard College since 2014, where his work, “centers a critique of imperialism, with a particular focus on anti-racism and Indigenous decolonization,” as stated on his description page on the Barnard website. He is also the author of “Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers and the Transcontinental Railroad.” This book focuses on the “transcontinental railroad from the perspectives of the Cheyenne, Lakota and Pawnee Native American tribes, and the Chinese migrants” as summarized by the publisher, the University of California Press.
The lecture began with Karuka explaining the history of imperialism in the U.S. and the way it is discussed in the country. Imperialism, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “the policy, practice or advocacy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas.”
Karuka directed attendees to pay attention to how the U.S. capitalizes on imperialism for its own benefit. He further built on how this exploitative tendency of imperialism is not a problem of the past alone, and is relevant to the 21st century. “Some began to imagine that imperialism was a thing of the past — going so far as to suggest that the United States played a pivotal role in this turn. As it quickly became clear to leaders of newly decolonized nations, while the imperialists retreated, imperialisms remain in the same form,” Karuka said.
Karuka’s statement finds relevance in modern examples of U.S imperialism. This has been especially clear in Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory that has been treated extremely differently than the 50 states. For example, when the need for hurricane relief and future protection arose, the governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro R. Pierluisi publicly spoke to the U.S. President Joe Biden. “We want to be treated in the same way as our fellow Americans in times of need. All American citizens, regardless of where they live in the United States, should receive the same support from the federal government,” he said. Despite Biden’s promise of $60 million in aid, per The New York Times, Pierluisi’s need for a statement shows that American imperialism has resulted in prominent inactive disregard for American territories.
While Karuka doesn’t mention Puerto Rico himself, he instead discussed the economic benefits that imperialism brings to the U.S. that crosses national borders. Karuka focuses on a more rational approach to explain the complexities of imperialism, instead of the emotional appeal used by American society. He expressed how using an emotional approach through engaging a person’s feelings to win an argument seems to manipulate a common understanding of American imperialism, and therefore he prefers to focus on factual evidence and examples throughout history. “Against an emotional approach to understanding imperialism, resting on faith, we can consider a rational approach based on evidence. Imperialism is not an idea or a feeling. Imperialism is a set of material relations,” Karuka said. This is shown directly through the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico. In reaction to the formation of NAFTA on July 22, 1993, American activist Teresa Gutierrez reported in Worker’s World, “No agreement between the U.S. and a Third World nation can be characterized as between equal partners. NAFTA must be recognized as an agreement between an oppressed nation and two oppressor nations, with Canada the junior partner of the U.S. Mexico has historically been dominated by U.S. finance capital. NAFTA will not change this.”
While discussing this material and economic aspect of imperialism, Karuka further explained that as Samir Amin, a famous Marxist economist, coined, “Capitalism and imperialism are the two inseparable faces of the same reality.” Karuka also talked about how American capitalism has grown and prospered off of other nations’ land, resources and labor and clarified that, “Imperialism is not a particular policy of a particular government, political party or political leader. Imperialism is a method of class rule.” This is evident in NAFTA and proves that the U.S.’s pursuit to imperialize third world countries is still prominent today. Guiterrez reflected in the same article on the status of capitalism in America and its influence globally, she wrote, “These monopolies do not want ‘free trade.’ They want the freedom to exploit and make more profits.” The promise of free trade, as Guiterrez defined it, was supposed to come with capitalism, but the completion that capitalism promotes makes it impossible for free trade to be truly free.
Karuka further contextualized U.S. imperialism by situating it in the colonial history of North America. He stated, “North America is part of the colonized world. … The political, economic, cultural and ecological transformations taking place in North America in the 21st century can be understood in relation to historical processes underway in other parts of the colonized world.” By explaining the United States’ colonial past of endless wars and violence, Karuka was able to connect the current situations in the world to American imperialism. These influences are accounted for in what Karuka defined as the “three major crises” created by American imperialism: the threat of nuclear war, destruction of the atmosphere and mass poverty around the world, including in the U.S.
Above, Manu Karuka of Barnard College discusses detrimental effects of American imperialism. Photo courtesy of the UMass Amherst Department of History.
To explain how the threat of nuclear war is a consequence of imperialism, Karuka described the direct relationship between European warfare and the U.S. and both their histories with imperialism. This relationship can be shown through the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, and its goal as reported by Students of History, “to help protect Latin America from European control.” But as history has proven, the U.S. used this opportunity to exercise their own imperialist control over Latin America. Karuka then explained how it affects the current warfare landscape in the world. He stated that the United States’s war on terror post 9/11, and weapons testing on Indigenous lands in the states of New Mexico, Nevada and the Pacific region have impacted the people there. Karuka explained some of the detrimental consequences of the United States’ goal to maintain and achieve military and nuclear weapon sufficiency, stating, “Depleted uranium ammunition left by U.S. occupation forces litters the Iraqi countryside, triggering shocking spikes of cancer and infant mortality.”
Next, Karuka delved into the impact of imperialism on climate change. He explained that “A transition away from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources revolves around key resources, especially lithium and rare earths. So far, this transition is taking place under [the United States’] monopoly control. It repeats and renews the militarized control of resources that has defined the fossil fuels” and isn’t helped by the endless fracking used by the United States to gain new resources of oil and natural gas. He further included that, “Climate change has already exposed millions people to acute food insecurity and reduced water security. Indiegnous people are particularly affected by sudden losses of food production and access to food.”
Finally, Karuka elaborated on poverty and its connection to imperialism by sharing examples about the United States. He said, “In December, 2017, the U.N. special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights visited the United States finding that the immense wealth and expertise of the U.S. stand in shocking contrast with the conditions in which vast numbers of citizens live,” he explained. “The U.S. has the highest rate of income inequality, the highest youth poverty and the highest infant mortality among comparable [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development] states.” Karuka explained that this is a direct result of imperialism and American capitalist ideals in relation to class rule that extends externally and internally. By analyzing the situation in the United States, students and audience members can understand the uses of imperialism to maintain class rule.
Karuka ended his presentation by sharing what he believes the right steps are to working towards an anti-imperialist nation, based on the work of famous American sociologist, W. E. B. Du Bois. “It begins with the return of land from the colonizer to the colonized, from the landlord to the cultivator, the tennant,” he explained. “Land reform has taken shape in relation to a social revolution, which across the colonized world, has focused particularly on women’s rights, education and access to health care.” Each of these movements are also relevant to American politics and the current conversations about U.S. ideals. Karuka ended with a powerful final statement, “Imperialist roots of the U.S.A. [are like] a tree’s roots. … In parts there are characteristics to every branch, every leaf, every fruit the tree produces. This suggests that for the sake of our professed ideals, for the sake of our humanity, for the sake of life on planet Earth, we urgently need to cultivate different trees. We need to reforest this land.”
“Imperialist roots of the U.S.A. [are like] a tree’s roots. … In parts there are characteristics to every branch, every leaf, every fruit the tree produces.”