Limits of nation’s belief in manifest destiny explored in new ‘Borderlands’ book

LAWRENCE — In the 1800s, Americans adopted an approach called manifest destiny, which was guided by the principle that the United States was destined to expand westward across North America.

Or did they?

“The misunderstanding I’m addressing is the idea there was this powerful vision of manifest destiny that was a consensus among Americans, who were united in a belief that they must expand across the continent,” said Andrew Isenberg, Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas.

“But it actually was a highly contested and highly divisive notion. There was always considerable resistance to it. I’m not even sure a majority of Americans thought it was good idea at any time.”

Isenberg makes his case in a new book titled “The Age of the Borderlands: Indians, Slaves, and the Limits of Manifest Destiny, 1790–1850.” It offers a new history that breaks from traditional narratives of U.S. territorial expansion. Tracing the interconnected sagas of Indigenous people, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents and physicians, Isenberg shows how the U.S. was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and Indigenous societies. It’s published by the University of North Carolina Press.

Even the term manifest destiny itself is a misnomer.

“I’d rather call it the Age of the Borderlands,” he said.

The professor defines borderlands as places where the power of empires and nation states wanes, and therefore those entities are unable to control or project their sovereignty into such spaces. Consequently, in those borderlands, marginalized individuals (such as Indigenous people or escaped slaves) can exercise much more autonomy than they’re usually able to in places where empires have more control.

The term manifest destiny was invented in 1845 by John O’Sullivan, a partisan pundit and journalist who had supported Andrew Jackson. He wrote that the U.S. enjoyed “the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.”

Isenberg said, “If you understand this in its original context, it was not about a consensus at any time. It was a highly partisan attack on Whigs who were resisting the idea that, in this case, the United States should annex Texas.”

What also runs counter to this historical narrative, Isenberg said, is the nation was actually relatively weak during this period when compared to the Indigenous population and imperial competitors. For instance, the government established a program where it subsidized trade with Native Americans to win their goodwill and another program to vaccinate them against smallpox.

“None of those things make sense if you believe that the United States was the most powerful entity on the continent, and it believes in its manifest destiny to expand across it,” he said. “But if you start with the assumption that the United States is somewhat weak and has to accommodate Native people, then the things I discuss in the book start to make sense.”

Now in his seventh year at KU, Isenberg specializes in environmental history and the history of the American West. His other books include “The Destruction of the Bison: An Environmental History, 1750-1920,” “The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump” (with James Morton Turner), “The California Gold Rush: A Brief History with Documents” and “The Oxford Handbook of Environmental History.” He’s also appeared as an expert source in several documentaries, including National Geographic’s “America Before Columbus” and AMC’s “The American West.”

Isenberg emphasized that the era of manifest destiny is not necessarily confined to the 19th century.

“The current president invoked the notion of manifest destiny in his inauguration speech, and he’s talked about Panama and Greenland and even floated the idea of Canada as places that the United States should impose or reimpose its sovereignty,” he said.

“To me, what that demonstrates is manifest destiny was not then and is not now a consensus.”