When Generals Ruled: Military Occupations and the United States as a Global Power

The OLLI Distinguished Speakers Series presents
Prof. Justin Jackson:

When Generals Ruled:
Military Occupations and
the United States as a Global Power

Monday, February 13 at 7:00 p.m. EST

Online via Zoom

With America's withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the recent history of U.S. military interventions in the Middle East during the War on Terror recedes into the background of many Americans' historical memory. At the same time, the reluctance of top Pentagon brass to become entangled in domestic politics speaks to the persistence of a liberal, republican, and professional tradition of civil-military relations in the United States, one that prizes soldiers' autonomy from democratic procedure, and subordination to civilian authority. Yet U.S. foreign relations history reveals that America's armed forces in the 19th and early 20th centuries recurrently not only invaded and occupied U.S. and foreign territories, but governed their inhabitants, often by undemocratic and illiberal means.

Reviewing the history of U.S. military occupations in North America, Latin America, Asia and western Europe between the American Revolution and World War II and its aftermath shows that "military government" engendered its own imperial politics, if not always formal and lasting imperialism. Occupations both affirmed and challenged claims to American exceptionalism in the world, as U.S. generals from Andrew Jackson to Douglas MacArthur temporarily denied to occupied peoples the democratic political rights seemingly guaranteed to Americans at home. To domestic and foreign critics, such generals represented the specter of "praetorianism," in which military men empowered to rule others at the expanding nation's periphery threatened republican ideals and institutions at its core. To the extent that modern empires fueled globalization, and were shaped by global movements of people, goods, and culture, military occupations also reflected, and helped to produce, the American state's changing relation to an increasingly integrated world economy. The history of military occupations thus offers a new way to explain the rise and fall of the United States as a great power.

Justin Jackson is Assistant Professor of History at Bard College at Simon's Rock in Great Barrington, Mass., where he teaches U.S. and global history. His book, The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialisms in Cuba and the Philippines, is forthcoming with University of North Carolina Press. His research has been published in Labor: Working-Class Histories of the Americas and The Journal of Historical Sociology, as well as several edited volumes, including Global Labor Migration: New Directions (2022), Reconstruction and Empire (2021), and On Coerced Labor (2016).

Admission is $10 for OLLI at BCC and Berkshire Museum members, and $15 for the general public. Admission is free for Berkshire Community College students, youth 17 and under, and those holding WIC, EBT/SNAP, or ConnectorCare cards.

Pre-registration is required. Register safely and securely online or call 413.236.2190 (M-F 9am-4pm) to register by phone with a credit card.