The Territorialities of U.S. Imperialism(s): Conflicting Discourses of Sovereignty, Jurisdiction and Territory in Nineteenth-Century U.S. Legal Texts and Indigenous Life Writing

The narrative of US imperialism postulates a history of US expansion marked by strictly demarcated phases (continental, 1782 – 1890; overseas, 1898 – ca. 1945; global, 1945 – today) based on the different modes of territorial incorporation and management in each phase. At the same time this narrative argues for a continuity of an “anti-colonial” (Alyosha Goldstein, Amy Kaplan, John Carlos Rowe) and exceptional character of US expansion throughout all phases - both in terms of the particular modes of US expansion, as well as in relation to other Euro-American projects of imperialism. This imperial narrative glosses over the colonial relationship with indigenous peoples (i.a.) inside and in relation to US national territory and is intimately entangled with the western conception of the Westphalian nation-state and its model of territoriality. This model of territoriality is based on the notion of a “jurisdictional congruence,” i.e., an unshakable congruence of nation-state sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territory.

Reading the narrative of “anti-colonial” US imperialism against its grain entails taking a closer look at Cherokee Nation v. Georgia (1831) and the so called Insular Cases (1901) as the key Supreme Court rulings and legal texts that have shaped the discourses of the continental and overseas phases of expansion, respectively. Cherokee Nation codified the “exceptional” relationship between the US and Native American nations on the North American continent, maintaining that the latter were in relation to the US “domestic dependent nations,” which are neither full states of the Union nor entirely foreign nations. Because of this “exceptional” relationship, continental expansion was framed as anti-colonial. The Insular Cases or, more specifically, Downes v. Bidwell (1901) describes the relationship between the continental US and the overseas territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, Cuba, etc.) gained after the war with Spain in 1898, maintaining that these “unincorporated territories” had the status of being “foreign in a domestic sense”. These overseas territories were therefore not fully independent, yet did not have full access to the US constitution either. To not water down the exceptional character of US continental expansion, “unincorporated territories” overseas were ruled not to be in an exceptional relationship with the US, but were instead only held temporarily in US possession and prepared for eventual independence. Connecting the legal discourses underwriting those two cases reveals that both alleged phases of US expansion rely on rendering Indigenous peoples and territories as exceptions to the regular regime of law i.e., as peoples and territories fully under US sovereignty, yet not entirely under US jurisdiction. This sweeping conception of US “overriding sovereignty” (Mark Rifkin), which allows the US to decide which juridical order applies, is at its core a strategic and flexible disconnection between US national sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territory.

Analyzing the narrative of “anti-colonial” US expansion beyond the self-affirming logic of an overriding sovereignty requires the inclusion of Indigenous voices and perspectives directly disenfranchised by this discourse. In addition my analysis focuses on the legitimization of the overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by US troops in 1893, as an expansionary event that took place ‘in-between’ these two phases. Since overriding sovereignty denies Indigenous peoples agency within US law, Indigenous authors particularly in the 19 th century often negotiated US and other legal discourses in various life writing formats. The three life writing texts of this analysis are all examples of this. A comparative and overlapping reading of these Indigenous life writing texts and the US legal texts to which they relate, with the help of a “culture as law” lens, makes visible the logics and mechanisms of US imperial discourse obscured by the notion of an overriding sovereignty. At the same time such a reading reveals how these Indigenous authors used their literary texts not only as sites of critique or representations of the law, but also as legal spaces in their own right, in which conceptions of sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory are articulated and negotiated outside of the official (legal) narrative of the US nation-state.

Cherokee author John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta (1854) is a dime novel situated in post-1848 California. The setting serves as a front behind which the Ridge negotiates his personal experience of Cherokee removal under Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. Through the fictional narrative of Mexican bandito Joaquín Murieta, Ridge’s text debunks the strategy of overriding sovereignty as a strategic incongruence in US sovereignty, jurisdiction and territory. Ridge then appropriates overriding sovereignty by translating it into the ability of his protagonist to override/overwrite US law in a spatial and literary sense. Ridge’s text thus becomes an alternate space of writing and practicing law that aims to put the US legal discourse to trial by literature. Still, Ridge’s text moves beyond the mere reproduction of US legal strategies, and instead claims an in-between position on several levels. Although his text is clearly designed as a rejection of an unjust United States and a call for justice for the displacement of the Cherokee, it simultaneously envisions a continous resistance by Indigenous peoples inside the US legal system until a space for the Cherokee and others has been carved out within the US nation-state.

In Geronimo’s Story of His Life (1905), an as-told-to autobiography, legendary Apache chief Geronimo (Bedonkohe Apache), Apache translator Asa Daklguie, and white co-author Stephen M. Barrett engage in negotiating the relationship between Geronimo’s life story and the narrative of US expansion into what is today the Mexican-American borderspace. Barrett attempts to appropriate Geronimo’s story and his voice to replace in hindsight the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848; between Mexico and the US) with a new narrative of how the US expanded into the Mexican American borderland. Even though historically the Treaty of G.H. officially gave the US sovereignty over the territory in 1848, it was followed by a decade long struggle between the US, Mexico and the Apache to affirm this sovereignty. This struggle and the discrepancy between US sovereignty and US jurisdiction it embodies, did, in Barrett’s perspective, not befit the US narrative of expansion. Geronimo’s Story disavows sovereignty over territories gained by the Treaty of G.H., and replaces the treaty with the narrative of a neat transfer of sovereignty over the Mexican American borderland from the Apache to the United States—after which the Apache simply vanish. In contrast, co-author Geronimo uses the forced collaboration as an opportunity to articulate a future for the Apache beyond his immediate life and to demand restoring the Apache to their homeland—tropes which all stand in stark opposition to the notion of coherent and neatly demarcated phases of US expansion, which structures Barrett’s approach to the book.

Both the autobiography Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen (1898), authored by Queen Lili‘uokalani, the last Queen of the Hawaiian monarchy, and the US Congressional Morgan Report (1894) negotiate the events of the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy by US troops in 1893. The Morgan Report was designed to legitimize US plans to annex the Hawaiian Islands by proving that the United States were not involved in the overthrow itself, while simultaneously affirming a US claim to the Hawaiian Islands that predates the events of the overthrow. To that end, the Morgan Report disavows US sovereignty over Hawa‘i during the events of the overthrow, yet simultaneously locates the islands in an “American system“ and under an overriding US sovereignty—albeit not under US jurisdiction. In Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen, Queen Lili‘uokalani challenges this representation of the Hawaiian Kingdom by providing proof of the United States’ direct responsibility for the overthrow and by using the United States’ own narrative of expansion against it. Moving beyond the mere reception and discussion of US legal discourse, Queen Lili’uokalani’s autobiography also holds juridical power when read through the lens of Kanaka Maoli autobiographical traditions. Her text is an attempt to affirm the soverereignty of the Hawaiian Kingdom before and during the overthrow, as well as to articulate and enshrine Hawaiian sovereignty beyond the potentially doomed political entity of the Hawaiian Kingdom, and apart from her own position as Queen.

Theories of nation-state sovereignty generally agree that the concepts of sovereignty, jurisdiction, and territory are the core vocabulary of the sovereign Westphalian nation-state, and that “jurisdictional congruence” is the ordering grammar that describes the indissoluble connection between these three concepts in this model. The analysis of the texts by Ridge, Geronimo and Queen Lili’uokalani highlights that throughout all phases of US expansion, flexibly disconnecting this vocabulary is one of the fundamental mechanisms of US imperialism—the imperial grammar of jurisdictional incongruence. This imperial grammar is, paradoxically, at odds with the model of the Westphalian nation-state on which the narrative of US expansion rests. This reveals that the United States were at no point in their history a Westphalian nation-state in the sense of the model, but that claiming adherence to the model was and is fundamental for perpetuating a narrative of a sovereign, legitimate, exceptional, and essentially anti-colonial US expansion.

Contents :

1. Introduction: The Territorialities of U.S. Imperalism(s)
1.1 Has the Constitution Ever Followed the Flag? Making a Case for the Continuity of Fluidity
1.1.1 The Messy Genealogy of the Westphalian Nation-State and the Incorporation of Indigenous Territories
1.1.2 Upsetting the “Idea of 1898”: The Overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy
1.2 Culture as Law and Indigenous Life Writing
1.3 Reading Across Indigenous Perspectives: Potentials and Pitfals
1.4 Embracing Limitations: Positionalities and the Analysis of Indigenous Life Writing and U.S. Imperialism(s)
2. Overriding/Overwriting U.S. Sovereignty: John Rollin Ridge’s The Life and Adventures of Joaquín Murieta
2.1 Poetic License and Legal Fictions in U.S. Federal Indian Law
2.1.1 Overriding Sovereignty in the Marshall Trilogy
2.1.2 Poetic Justice in Joaquín Murieta
2.2 Overriding/Overwriting the Law in Joaquín Murieta
2.2.1 Domesticity and Sovereignty in Joaquín Murieta
2.2.2 “An author who acted out his own tragedies”: Joaquín Murieta as a Legal Text
2.2.3 Haunted by Cherokee Nation: John Rollin Ridge’s Verdict in Joaquín Murieta
3. Disavowing Sovereignty to Strengthen It: Geronimo’s and Stephen M. Barrett’s Geronimo’s Story of His Life
3.1 The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in Geronimo’s Story of His Life
3.2 Western Domesticity and Apache Sovereignty
3.3 “Such were the events in ‘Apache Land’”: Disavowing U.S. Sovereignty to Strengthen It
3.4 The Interpreter and the Continuity of Apache Life
4. Overriding and Disavowing Sovereignty Queen Lili‘uokalani’s Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen
4.1 Travelling Across “Little Spots in the Broad Pacific” and “Vast Continents”
4.2 U.S. Continentality and the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom
4.3 Disavowing and Overriding U.S. Sovereignty: The Morgan Report
4.4 Kanaka Maoli Interventions and Articulations of Sovereignty
4.5 Kanaka Maoli Conceptualizations of Territory
4.6 “There is not, and never was any such a person as ‘Lili‘uokalani Dominis’”: The Continuity of Hawaiian Sovereignty in Hawaii’s Story by Hawaii’s Queen
5. Conclusion(s): The Grammar of U.S. Imperialism(s)
6. Works Cited