Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1994. [Vol. 2.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 22)
BOOK REVIEWS - Davis D. Joyce: D. W. Meinig: The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History. Volume 2: Continental America, 1800—1867. Yale University Press, 1993. 636 pp
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [which ended the war with Mexico] involved a variety of issues between the two parties Qand claims, indemnifications, and so on), but geography was the crux of the matter. This war began over disputed territories, the main objectives —of both sides —had always been defined in terms of specific territories, and at each stage of the war as their armies ranged across much of the Mexican nation and their warships blockaded its harbors, American leaders pored over maps to consider how big a bite to take out of their victim. It is difficult to appreciate the immense geographical scope and portent of those discussions. We have lived so long with the results and, as with the Oregon dispute, the outcome has been so commonly represented as the logical, more or less inevitable —even equitable (on the grounds that corrupt, chaotic Mexico did not deserve to rule those lands) —result of American development that it is useful to consider the geography of this great alteration with care. Sometimes Meinig will write a sentence that will surely make many American readers squirm, as: "The Americans were of course acting with that luxury of choice given to a powerful aggressor that has beaten a weak neighbor into submission." Indeed, Meinig's analysis of American imperialism in general, a central theme of his work, will prove discomforting to many Americans. As he notes, "rarely did anyone speak of the United States as an empire in the old generic sense of a geopolitical structure exhibiting the coercive dominance of one people over other, captive, peoples." And he notes correctly that this tendency to call it "imperialism" when another country does it but something else, like "Manifest Destiny," when America does it, is "still part of the national mythology." But how any intelligent reader could read Meinig's pages on "Empire: The Geopolitical Management of Captive Peoples" and deny that the United States of America was an imperial power 177
