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In our readings, two themes appear again and again that seem to explain the motives behind Manifest Destiny and the resulting
drive westward of English-Americans. These motives tend to derive from a common narrative: a people are somehow separated
from their kinsmen, and made weaker as a result; yet deep in their hearts are compelled to reunite with their lost brethren.
According to the readings, this reunification is the only way that a people can again regain their former glory, real or imagined,
and rise up to once again defeat the greater foe (real or imagined). In order to justify the necessity for reunification,
however, there are many instances where historians, artists and writers draw upon romantic ideals drawn from either purest
fiction or from revisionist historical accounts. The power of these ideals derives from what I call imagined nostalgia, a
conjured history that embodies a yearning for a return to bygone days. The accounts they tell, based on spurious history,
nevertheless seize the popular imagination, influencing leaders and policymakers in the process. The ideal of reunification,
based in imagined nostalgia, is apparent in Theodore Roosevelt's chapter entitled "The Spread of the English-Speaking
Peoples" from his book Winning the West, reiterated in creative works like D.W. Griffith's film "Birth of a Nation"
and Jack London's "The Unparalleled Invasion," and is confirmed by Reginald Horsman in his article "Liberty
and the Anglo-Saxons." Through the lens of imagined nostalgia, reunification often represents the only way by which the
idyllic days of yore might be re-attained, when chivalry lived and freedom, the rule of law, civilized society and the natural
rights of man reigned supreme.
The imagined nostalgia of the days of the early English people began during the reign of Henry the VIII in the 1530s.
Trying to justify his desired break with the Catholic church, he sent out a call for assistants to gather propaganda that
he might use to further his cause (Horsman 10). In each case, the suggestion was that the English people were the purest in
Europe (12), and the push toward an English church was merely an attempt to undo what the Norman invasion had done back in
1066: the mongrelization of the British and the introduction of feudalism to a justice- and freedom-loving people (16).
Less than a hundred years after Henry's split with Rome, Richard Verstegen, influenced by Roman writer Tacitus, wrote
about the ancient gathering of Germanic tribes-- Saxons, Danes, and Normans-- on England's shores as a reunification of "old
brethren" (11). In other words, the groundwork was already being laid for several centuries' worth of acceptance in a
specious account of how the White races came to be the superior of all in Europe. Reunification, and imagined nostalgia regarding
its significance, would play a major role.
Nothing, however, represented a culmination and consummation of the ideal of the gathering of White races like the
drive to settle America. According to Reginald Horsman, in his article Liberty and the Anglo-Saxons, it was a lifelong dream
of Thomas Jefferson's to see the American nation symbolize the final triumph: a society based on the love of freedom, laws
and the "natural rights of man," all based on the Anglo-Saxon myth (Horsman 19). In Jefferson's view, none of this
would be possible without the combined courage, wisdom and strength of the Germanic tribes that had settled England more than
a thousand years before.
At the end of the 19th century, another future President put forth his version of the progress of Anglo-Saxon-derived
peoples. Theodore Roosevelt, in his book Winning the West, tries to convince the reader that, because the English were such
a pure race, they felt no need to combine with the peoples of the lands they conquered. Instead, he claims, the English either
killed or shoved aside the native Americans, unlike the French and the Spanish (mixed breeds themselves), who merely interbred
with them (Roosevelt 11). In a typical example of myth-making, again a scenario based on an imagined past and depending on
unified White movement, Roosevelt then speculates that the reason for White success in expansion across the American wilderness
was due to the struggle that the Indians presented. Coming in the wake of Darwinian ideas about the "survival of the
fittest," Roosevelt suggests that, "had the Indians been as helpless as the native Australians were, the continent
of North America would have had an altogether different history" (17). How one can presume to write an historical account
on what didn't happen smacks of propagandizing of the worst sort.
In any case, Roosevelt goes on to reiterate the notion of reunification of the White races as a cohesion of European stocks:
When this new English stock came into America it mingled with and absorbed into itself immigrants from many European
lands, and the process has gone on ever since...of the new blood acquired, the greatest proportion has come from Dutch and
German sources, and the next greatest from Irish, while the Scandinavian element comes third...thus it appears that no new
element of importance has been added to the blood. (Roosevelt 20)
And in that cohesion, Roosevelt proposes, is the White race's strength. American history in the popular mind then becomes
a series of attempts to undermine that strength, with Whites winning out every time. This narrative would continue to be played
out time and time again in popular fiction and in other influential ways.
In the opening years of the 1900s, no art form galvanized the attention of the public like the burgeoning movie industry.
One early film, widely considered a masterpiece of film style and technical achievement, was also strongly derided for its
portrayal of history and peoples. Nevertheless, it still remains a powerful example of how imagined nostalgia can drive home
the notion of reunification as the desired goal of all races.
In "Birth of a Nation," an immensely popular film directed by D. W. Griffith in 1915, we are presented with
another forged version of American history before, during and after the Civil War. The story is characterized as actual History,
sanctioned by sitting President Woodrow Wilson, in an opening pronouncement. The antebellum South is portrayed as a peaceful,
idyllic place, with well-mannered White masters overseeing their happy darkies slaving away in the cotton fields (imagined
nostalgia at its worst). At the same time, Northern Abolitionists are seen as muddled and deluded---but still White. As the
war progresses, Union men are set against Rebel cousins and the injustices of warfare are described in melodramatic detail
as we watch one Southern soldier dying in the arms of his Northern school chum, who dies a theatrical death soon after.
It is after the war, however, that the real troubles start. Newly emancipated Black slaves are portrayed as the true threat
to the White population of the recently defeated South. In several clownishly acted set pieces, none of which are based on
real history, Blacks take over a state legislature and the result is pandemonium. They threaten the White ideal of racial
purity, too, as they are feeling increasingly bold enough to flirt with and chase White women, playing into the fear of racial
miscegenation. The only cure to this terror lies in the hope that the White race can reunite to face the escalating Black
menace. Fortunately, in the nick of time, the newly formed Ku Klux Klan storms in, Cavalry-like, to save the day. Thus are
the innocent Whites rescued from the marauding Black hordes.
In "Birth of a Nation," the narrative of reunification is played out once again. Even the title of the film
refers to the fact that the United States were hardly united until the white men of the South joined up with the white men
of the North to shove aside the newly freed Blacks. Then, and only then, were they able to reclaim their birthright as the
superior race in America. This is totally in keeping with the narrative of the expansion of the White American Race that Theodore
Roosevelt describes.
The power of reunification, as it is presented throughout the readings, is not solely relegated to the white races, either.
Reunification can inspire any people toward their goals. Jack London, in his future tale, "The Unparalleled Invasion,"
remarks on how it was only through being reunited with their more modern Japanese kinsmen that the Chinese could "awaken"
and form such a terrible power in Asia and eventually, the world:
They were brothers. Long ago one had borrowed the other's written language and, untold generations before that, they had
diverged from their common Mongol stock; down at the bottom of their beings was a heritage in common, a sameness that time
had not obliterated. (London 154)
What this suggests is the terrifying notion that essentially any race of people could group together in the way that the
Whites have and overrun the world; and this is why the White American/British races must do everything they can to prevent
the non-white races from gathering that kind of power. As long as Third World countries are kept in their relatively poverty-ridden
states, they will present no threat to White domination. This attitude is still readily apparent in America's (and England's)
drive to topple dictators and to bring our brand of "freedom and democracy" to countries like Afghanistan and Iraq.
This is yet another version of the White races reunified for a cause.
Imagined nostalgia also continues to be a dynamic force in American culture. It has long driven a desire by many people,
and especially those in government, to return to halcyon days of America in the 1950s, when the world seemed easier, our enemies
were obvious, political correctness didn't exist and people of color were kept "in their place."
Wistfully gazing back at an imaginary past may in fact be an inbred facet of human nature, but it should never be the
basis for the actions of nations, as it has so often become.
Works Cited
Griffith, D.W. Birth of a Nation. 1915.
Horsman, Reginald. "Liberty and the Anglo Saxons." Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial
Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981.
London, Jack. "The Unparalleled Invasion." McClure's Magazine, July 1910. Reprinted in Wondermakers: An Anthology
of Class Science Fiction. Ed. Robert Hoskins. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett, 1972. 152-167.
Roosevelt, Theodore. "The Spread of the English-Speaking Peoples." The Winning of the West. Vol.1. 1889. Lincoln:
University of Nebraska Press, 1995. 1-27.
Copyright 2003 Dean T. Moody
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