Booknotes: A Failed Vision of Empire

New Arrival:
• A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872 by Daniel J. Burge (Univ of Neb Press, 2022).

By its most common modern definition, Manifest Destiny has been a rousing success, with the United States having established from 'sea to shining sea' a unified nation that quickly prospered politically, economically, and commercially into the most powerful country in the world. However, our understanding of that supposed ideology has been significantly challenged for over a century now, and Daniel Burge's A Failed Vision of Empire: The Collapse of Manifest Destiny, 1845–1872 argues that Manifest Destiny, as originally conceived, was neither a unifying ideology nor was it necessarily popular among the great majority of the US body politic.

According to Burge, the consensus definition of Manifest Destiny as understood and disseminated in the 1840s was that the United States was 'destined' to establish its unique form of representative government and principles of economic freedom and opportunity across the entirety of North America, encompassing Canada, Mexico, and Cuba in the Caribbean. Thus, the modern definition marks a reconceptualized, and profoundly pared down, vision of Manifest Destiny that largely ignores the failure of the much more ambitious original one.

Additionally, Manifest Destiny was never a consensus cultural driving force (or policy) behind US expansion but rather was a highly controversial concept consistently debated by critics and proponents. Burge's research leads him to doubt that a majority of nineteenth century Americans thought it was a necessary or even a good idea. From the description: "By examining speeches, plays, letters, diaries, newspapers, and other sources, Burge reveals how Americans debated the wisdom of expansion, challenged expansionists, and disagreed over what the boundaries of the United States should look like." Through "analyzing contested moments in the continental expansion of the United States," Burge's study argues that the ideology of Manifest Destiny as originally conceived was "ultimately unsuccessful."

In summary, A Failed Vision of Empire is the "first work to capture the messy, complicated, and yet far more compelling story of manifest destiny’s failure, debunking in the process one of the most pervasive myths of modern American history."