The teacher's friend: Donald Trump

Back to the 19th century

The recent inauguration of President Trump coincided with the start of my spring semester. One of my classes covers American history from the late 19th century to the present. I often try to connect events from the past to things in the present. I was on the lookout for something Trump might say in his inaugural address that would echo themes from the history my students were about to engage. Heretofore Trump had not distinguished himself for his knowledge of or interest in history. In this regard he was like most presidents.

Imagine my surprise, then, when his inaugural address proved to be a most useful introduction to the first third of my semester’s material. His favorable mention of “manifest destiny” sets up the last phase of America’s territorial expansion. I say “last phase” tentatively now, for if the president has his way, America will be embarking on a new phase.

It has long been a challenge to make the American desire for territory real for my students, given that our country’s most recent acquisition occurred before their great-great-grandparents were born. But Trump’s attitude — that if the president of the United States wants the Panama Canal zone and Greenland, the president of the United States ought to have them — suddenly makes James Polk and Theodore Roosevelt easier to understand.

Likewise William Seward. We’re approaching the 160th anniversary of the American purchase of Alaska from Russia. The parallels to Greenland are striking. Alaska was valued for its natural resources and its strategic location. Greenland ditto. The Alaska deal was done in a convoluted, lubricated manner that must cause Trump, dealmaker in chief, to feel proud to call himself an American. Perhaps he has something similar up his sleeve for Greenland.

Should Trump strong-arm Panama over the canal, he’ll be reprising the tactics of TR, who did the same to Colombia, which controlled Panama before the revolution Roosevelt sponsored.

When Trump couches his policies in the language of manifest destiny, he conveys the same message to the same evangelical Christian groups his 19th century predecessors did. Many, perhaps most, Americans then didn’t take the language seriously, recognizing it as rationalization. But some took it very seriously. And their political influence could be crucial at key moments. Just like today.

Trump’s embrace of tariffs brings relevance to an issue that had gathered dust in American politics before he revived it during his first term. His recent inaugural address makes plain he will employ tariffs as an economic tool as energetically as William McKinley, who might well have a renaissance following Trump’s glowing reference. Trump’s post-inaugural threat of tariffs against Colombia over deportees suggests he might try to outdo McKinley and use tariffs as a diplomatic weapon as well.

Trump’s recent counsel to Israel to “clean out” Gaza of Palestinians tees up another theme of American history after the Civil War: the relocation by armed force of American Indians to western reservations. The motivation was the same in both cases: a desire for security and for room to plant new settlements. No one expects the Palestinians to accept expulsion from Gaza without a fight, just as no one expected the Lakotas and other tribes to accept expulsion from their homelands without a fight. But American troops won their fight, and Trump seems to think Israeli troops can win theirs.

Immigration is an issue that never goes out of fashion in America. But Trump’s militarization of immigration gives it a salience it’s rarely had since the 19th century. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 touches contemporary chords in two ways. First, it signaled America’s peculiar concern with things Chinese. China was seen as a threat in the Gilded Age for sending its people to America. It’s seen as a threat today for sending its manufactures.

Second, the law forbidding entry to Chinese workers created the American phenomenon of illegal immigration. Until its passage, America’s borders were open to all. The 1882 law didn’t end Chinese immigration to America, but it made some of it illegal, and it set the model for making more immigration illegal. The illegal part of immigration is what most upsets Americans today. The upset helped elect Trump, and it creates support for the sweep of undocumented immigrants that started the day after the inauguration.

We know how events of the 19th century played out. Some of the initiatives of Trump’s predecessors proceeded as they hoped. Some didn’t. We don’t know how things will play out this time. We never do. That’s the difference between history and current events.

But we’ve been over much of this ground before, and the landmarks look familiar.