Empires and the wilsonen moment, the International Origins of anticolonialism. He will explore how president w explores how the president s convictions were formed, how they helped shape the 1919 peace settlement, and how that continues to impact us today. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming dr. Erez manela. [ applause ] thank you, lora for that kind introduction. I just want to take a minute to thank lora and matt and camille and everybody else, all the rest of the staff at the world war i museum and memorial, including everybodys whos kept us organized and on time and wellfed throughout these two days. Its the second time, as you mentioned, lora, that ive worked with this group. And im just ive been amazed by your intellectual engagement and your organizational wizard ri. I would like to take a moment to put our hands together and thank the people who brought us all here. [ applause ] in december of 1918, u. S. President Woodrow Wilson arrived in britain enroute to the peace conference then gathering in paris, about which weve heard quite a bit already. Now, during his time in london before he arrived in paris, wilson had a private interview with a deputy chief sensor of Great Britain, a man by the name of frank worthington. In response to a question from worthington about closer relations between Great Britain is exam the United States, wilson, according to worthingtons notes, told him the following, and i quote, you must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers. We are neither. Neither must you think of us as anglosaxons, for that term can no longer be rightfully applied to the people of the United States. He then concluded, and i quote again, no, there are p only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine. They are community of ideals skand of interests. Now, this might seem like a surprising outlook to take for a man like wilson. All the more so since it ran against common perceptions of u. S. Elites in that era. And let me just give you one example of an opposite perspective on this relationship. Some years earlier, the Scottish American steel barron Andrew Carnegie published an essay in which he advocated at length for the reunification of britain and north america. In that essay, carnegie wondered why mere disagreement over taxation, one that was already more than a century old, should result in a permanent separation. Now, in that essay, carnegie proposed six arguments for his reunification of britain and america. The first element, in carnegies view the most important one, was about race. I quote here from carnegie, first in race, and there is a great deal in race, the american remains 3 4 purely british. He added that there is some mixture of german, but that too is tutonic. I continue to quote, the american remains british remains different from each other. Continue to quote from carnegie, it is to be noted that only in the region of political ideas is there dissimilarity for no rupture between the parts has ever taken place between language, literature, religion, or law. This is the end from carnegie. If we compare these two viewpoints, carnegie on one hand and wilson on the other, the difference is striking. For carnegie, americans and brits were one race separated by dive divergent political ideas. For wilson, there were races, quote unquote races, united if they were to be united only under common ideals and interests. The divergence between carnegies view and wilsons is striking if we consider wilson, like carnegie, had roots in the british isles. His grandfather was a scotch irish immigrant to america from northern ireland. His maternal grandfather, thomas woodrow, after whom he was named, was born in scotland and then moved just across the line to Northern England to carlisle, where he headed a congregation and which Woodrow Wilsons mother, jesse, was born before emigrating to america. What do we make of wilsons statement in 1918 . In order to understand it, i want to argue to you today, and more broadly to understand his thinking on the postwar world in general, we need to take into account not only wilson as the descendant of scottish immigrants, not even, as many historian have often done, as son of a minister and devout presbyterian himself. After all, every single u. S. President in history has professed to be a leaving christian. So, in this sense, wilson is not unique. Of course we can stipulate that some have done so more credibly than others, but nevertheless they all have done it. Instead, we must cast our minds to the aspect in which wilson was truly unique among u. S. President s. That is to recall that he was the only president in the history of the United States either before or after, who had earned a phd degree, which is perhaps why hes a favorite of many academics, and made a distinguished career in academia, in the fields of history and politics no less. So, what i want to argue to you today is that its wilson as the academic that we need to think about when we try to reconstruct the intellectual capital that he brought to his career, first as a domestic political leader and then on the world stage. Lets begin with a bit of biography. Wilson, we know, was a product of the u. S. South. Born in virginia and raised in georgia and South Carolina before and during the civil war. He went on to attend the college of new jersey, later renamed Princeton University and studied law at the university of virginia before attempting to practice it in the new south metropolis of atlanta. But he quit law, bored out of his wits within the year, and decided to pursue history and politics at the newly established Johns Hopkins university in baltimore, maryland. Hopkins had been founded only a few years before with the goal of importing the German University model of combining teaching with highlevel research to the United States. This was a novel model at the time for american colleges. Wilson was a member of one of the first cohorts of americans to graduate in the United States with a phd, which he received in 1886 at the age of 30. By 1890 he landed back at princeton, and had launched a successful career as a public intellectual. He published a steady stream of books and essays on history and became a popular teacher and lecturer. In 1902, he was appointed president of princeton, and the decade of his presidency that followed is seen as a time when that university was transformed from something of a finishing school for southern gentlemen into a Serious Research university. Now, i recount these biographical details because theyre important to the task in this lecture. The task is to better understand the argument about the war and the peace that should follow it, in essence to understand the International Order that wilson was trying to put together in paris, we must understand the origins of his thinking on the sources of order and disorder sources of order and disorder in social and political life in general. One way to think about it is that wilsons project was and this is the alternate title of my presentation to avert anarchy, to avert anarchy. And i use anarchy here in two senses of the word. The first sense, perhaps the most obvious one s the anarchy of world, in this case world war i. The second sense, related but separate, is the anarchy of social disorder, and specifically the one that wilson would have associated with socalled anarchists in his time, a designation in which he would most likely have lumped socialists. These two type of anarchy were, in wilsons view, tightly connected in the modern world. And the remedy for them was tightly connected as well. That is to say the two types of anarchy, social disorder on one hand, war on the other. To see just how the two senses of anarchy that are justified were connected in his mind, we need to take stock of the intellectual capital that wilson brought to his position as president of the United States, capital that he had accumulated over the roughly three decades of his adult life prior to his entry into politics in 1910. Henry kissinger is supposed to have said that decision makers, political leaders dont have time to learn anything new. So, all of their decisions and outlooks when they are in office draw, he said, on the intellectual capital that they had accumulated prior to taking that position. So, thats this intellectual capital that wilson brought to his position is what im trying to trace for you today. It was during these decades, two, two and a half decades, from the start of his graduate studies or actually close to three dekasd. From the start of his graduate studies to appointment of administration, decades roughly 1880 to 1900 that span some of the most Tumultuous Times in history. First in the reform of governor of new jersey from 1911 to 1913 and then president of the United States. Wilsons thinking about politics, government and the sources of social disorder and order, i argue to you, developed in the context of the Domestic Social and political life with the United States in the decades that preceded the war. Only later after the war broke out was the scheme that he developed applied to the international arena. So, it is the intellectual framework within which wilson interpreted a transformation he saw around him transformations that he saw around him unfolding from 1880 on. Wilson developed his political thought primarily during an era that we historians like to call the guilded age in the United States, which was, of course, as im sure all of you know, a time of profound historical transformation in u. S. History. Since i know all of you recall this from high school or perhaps later, ill go over this material quite quickly. What are these transformations . Well, first, perhaps and this helps to explain wilsons comment about americans no longer being properly called anglosaxons this is an area of large scale immigration into the United States, bringing new diversity and new tensions. From 1880 to 1910, some 20 Million People arrived in the u. S. , mostly from south and eastern europe. In the 1910 census, almost 15 of the population were counted as foreignborn, higher than even today. So, number one, immigration. Number two, sweeping technological changes during that era. In the fields of communication, telegraph i like to tell my students who think that the internet and social media have transformed and revolutionized our life that that revolution apails, i think, as against the revolution of the telegraph because which happened then is that information that until that time could only travel at the speed of an individual human being, whether mounted on walking or running or mounted on a horse or on a ship started to travel after that at the speed of light. And that really is a revolution. I think that goes much further, in many ways, than the one weve seen with the internet. So, revolution and communication. Revolution and transportation. The steam engine for ships and rail and the internal Combustion Engine for automobiles. Wilson, of course, was born and raised in the age of the horse and carriage. By the time he was president , he had a president ial automobile. And i think not only after that, they started building the mall, che next to which im standing in kansas city, the country club plaza, which im told is the first mall built in the United States to accommodate customers coming by automobile. And the third and related set of technological changes, of course, had to do with the industrial revolution, again, based on steam engines and so forth. We see then in this era, wilson saw in that era, rapid industrilization that by 1900 made the u. S. Economy account for some 25 25 of all global and industrial production. We see also relatedly massive social dislocations, not just because of dislocation but because of internal migration, the run away growth of cities. Relatedly, we see recurring financial panics, as they were called at the time, in the 1870s and 1880s, and wilson was living through this time as an adult. And as a result of all of this, we see a steep rise in inequality with the strains on the social fabric. Now, if i had to summarize how wilson himself saw the sum total of all of these changes in term of their impact on society and politics is that in his view, the result of all these changes was the rapid growth of unaccountable power concentrated in the hands of the few. Ill repeat that. The rapid growth of unaccountable power concentrated in the hands of the few. This, for him, was a moral problem, yes. But it was also, and more so, a problem of practical politics. Since, as he saw it, the unaccountable concentration of wealth and power as historical phenomenon had to generate an inevitable counteraction, namely social unrest, and indeed revolution. You could say that if he were a marxist, he would have called it a dialectic. Now, this was no theoretical reflection. Those decades through which he lived and accumulated his intellectual capital were in fact rife with labor unrest, with social conflict, with the rise of ideologies and movements that wilson saw inimable to order, not least that led to the assassination of William Mckinley in 1901. Actually, this assassination was quite literally the historical event that brought progressivism to power because it brought Theodore Roosevelt to the presidency. The way i like to show this when i teach about this in the classroom is to present these two threats to order, threats to democracy that wilson saw. Im sure you recognize j. P. Morgan on the right representing the concentration of unaccountable power in the hands of the few. Anybody recognize the individual on the left . The assassin of president mckinley, representing, in wilsons view, the inevitable reaction to the phenomenon that morgan represents. And wilson, as he saw himself as a Progressive Political leader, his job was, if you will, to get in between those two and to hold the center to make sure that through a reform the problem of unaccountable power in the hands of the few can be e meal rated so it doesnt lead to anarchy and revolution. So, the solution in wilsons in political terms for wilson which he implemented as a political leader was to push for a stronger roll in government in the economy, in order to break up the trusts and regulate production, labor and finance with the goal of restoring political balance and order. These reforms included the 8hour work day, limits on child labor, and of course the founding of the Federal Reserve. I just was driving yesterday the Federal Reserve bank of kansas city, which im sure many of you are familiar with. Now, even before the outbreak of the great war, wilson could see this dialectic between concentrated unaccountable power and revolution play out not only domestically but also abroad. In fact, the very first Foreign Policy crisis that wilson faced when he came into office as president , which is even before the outbreak of world war i, was how to respond to the ongoing revolution then in mexico. That revolution had broken out in 1910 with the removal of one strong man, and it seemed in early 1913, as wilson just came into office, that it was on the cusp of inaugurating another military strong man into power. Wilson responded to this, rather to the surprise of his british int interlockers, by trying to support the liberals in mexico by instituting an arms embargo against the mill trysts, which quickly led to conflict that saw u. S. Marines land in the mexican port. Ironically here while the actions did help the liberals in mexico and ended up with the removal of that strong man who was in power at the time when wilson came into power, they turned the liberals, at the same time, against the u. S. , since, as it turned out, no affection in mexico would be associated with yankees on military soil. So, the tensions is obvious in the mexican case. In china, too, which had its own republican revolution in 1911, wilson saw the same dynamic at play. With the late dynasty representing accountable power and the revolution representing the reaction against it. Wilsons spoil toward china tipped the scales in the favor of dedecidedly mixed results. Once the fwraet war broke out, wilson spied a similar dialectic at work there. That is to say the connection between concentrated unaccounted power on the one hand and disorder and revolution on the other. On the world stage, it was the kaiser and to some extent also the russian czar who, for wilson, represented the most visible symbols of unaccountable power. He called it autocracy. Exactly the kind of unacount able power that would and could incite revolution. One reason wilson kept the u. S. Out of war for the first nearly three years is that he believed that the czar, who was one of the allies, was on the wrong side of history. This is also why when the march 1917 revolution in russia replaced the czar with the provisional government that seemed to fit in a reformist mold, wilson recognized the new government within a week. The first major nation to do so. This change in the russian government again, this is after the removal of the czar from power but before the bolshevik takeover later that year. This change played a role in wilsons decision to take the u. S. Into the war the following month. April is when the United States goes into the war. With the czar gone, it was less tainted by the stain of autocracy. You may ask what about the british and french and for that matter american overseas empires. At that time surely those were also prime examples of unaccountable power exercise on the world stage. Well get to that a bit later. In any case, the bolshevik takeover in russia in 1917 both changed the calculus and also proved to wilson that he was, in fact, right. Wilson knew little of lenin at that time b