Empire Records | Daniel Immerwahr

The empire of food fuels, as historian Daniel Immerwahr clarifies in his review of Scott Reynolds Nelson’s book grain oceans in the July 21, 2022 issue of the magazine. “Cheap, easy-to-carry calories can feed cities, but they can also feed armies,” he writes. The story of wheat is the story of world powers clashing, from the rise of Russia as a grain exporter in the 19th century to the calamitous famines of the Soviet Union and the rise of the United States. as one of the granaries of the world. This conflict has re-emerged worryingly as Russia seeks to control Ukraine’s fields in order to consolidate its dominance in the wheat market.

Immerwahr, a professor of 20th-century American history at Northwestern University, has written two books on American exploits abroad: a critical account of American development assistance and a history of overseas territories. -sea under American control, which was selected by The New York Times as one of his best review books of 2019. He has published essays and book reviews in the Time, The New Republicand The Guardian on topics ranging from Marvel movies to lumber history, though he often links his subjects to the American empire – a broad topic.

Willa Glickman: What prompted you to study the American empire?

Daniel Immerwahr: If you grew up in the United States, like me, at some point you notice how the world seems quietly arranged in your favor. All over the planet, people speak your language, use your currency, know your music and play your sports, even if you find their unknown and incomprehensible ways. It’s hard not to wonder about that.

Did you encounter any particular difficulties in researching a transnational subject?

The hard part is obvious: you have to understand several places. But there is an advantage. Many of the things we care about most – the economy, the environment, the flow of ideas – don’t necessarily stay within national borders. It’s actually harder to understand them if you only look at one country. grain oceans is a great example. Scott Reynolds Nelson shows that one must understand the international competition to feed Western Europe if one wants to understand why the American economy took off as it did at the end of the 19th century. You need Ukraine to make sense of the American Midwest.

You wrote about both Dunes and star wars about imperialism – are you a science fiction fan? Does science fiction seem to reflect our cultural awareness around empire in a unique way?

I’m not really a fan of science fiction, certainly not star wars Where Dunes. But popular novels and movies, especially those that attract huge or lasting audiences, are windows into a culture. Texts that “sound right” or “make sense” to people do so because they assert deeply held assumptions. Science fiction is particularly interesting in this respect because it is often about heavy political themes: clashes of civilizations, wars, transforming technologies, colonization of new environments. This gives a lot of work to a historian of the empire.

In your review, you mention that Nelson’s book is one of many recent commodity stories. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the genre? Are there any products you would be particularly interested in reading about?

There is always a danger that commodity stories are fanciful and reductive. They place a lot of weight on the shoulders of a single substance. Was American slavery linked only to cotton? Sort of, but don’t forget tobacco, rice, and turpentine – or non-farm chores like fixing buildings and raising kids. Surely there were social and cultural reasons why some people held others captive, reasons that went beyond the economics of forced labor. The history of commodities encourages you to see everything in relation to international markets, and that is not all of the human experience.

Still, I’m glad we’re writing them. The most popular stories are usually about leaders and wars – “guys and cards”. After Churchill’s fortieth biography, it can get tedious. What I love about raw material stories is that they have the guts to be weird. They jump to unexpected places, they help you think differently, they show you the world historical significance of mundane, everyday things.

In that vein, I would welcome a world history of the ballpoint pen.

I notice you’re working on a new book on fire. Does this mark a break with your previous subjects?

For me, it’s a way of writing about climate change. Today, fossil fuels are the source of our abundance, but they are also the source of our apocalypse. They allow us to cheaply manufacture and transport a lot of things, and a lot of those things are even made from petroleum-based plastic. Yet there is every reason to believe that fossil fuels are destroying our environment.

This has an echo in the past. The United States was once the Saudi Arabia of timber – visitors were amazed at the amount of timber the country had. This wood made everything cheap: it was a ubiquitous fuel and building material. But it was also combustible, dooming city after city to the fire. To me, it feels oddly familiar. And sometimes contemplating people not too far away struggling with not too different issues helps you reflect on your own situation.