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Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941

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Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941 Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941 Allison Powers Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Art and Sciences Columbia University 2017 © 2017 Allison Powers All rights reserved ABSTRACT Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941 Allison Powers Between the mid nineteenth century and the early twentieth, the United States transformed from a set of contiguous states into a far-flung global empire. As foreign policymakers sought to justify this expansion through the framework of law, they turned to the concept of compensation to reconcile the large-scale dispossession that resulted from territorial acquisition with a political system committed to the protection of private property. The United States became a leading advocate of international claims settlement to resolve the legal problems that arose out of imperial expansion, submitting to a series of tribunals designed to award monetary compensation for life and property lost as a result of annexation. At face value, these Claims Commissions secured the peaceful resolution of political conflict through the seemingly neutral mechanism of the market. However, the arbitrations had unanticipated consequences for the U.S. government. When denied remedies in domestic forums, foreign nationals living in American territories used the process of international claims settlement to demand their own visions of justice. “Settlement Colonialism: Compensatory Justice in United States Expansion, 1903-1941,” explains how international disputes over the legal foundations of territorial expansion became sites of political struggle over the legitimacy of the American justice system. I argue that the creation of international claims settlement tribunals following major wars of expansion represented a model of territorial acquisition that I term settlement colonialism, because its architects characterized dispossession as a form of monetary exchange that could be retroactively settled through arbitration. This model then came into crisis when Panamanian, West Indian, and Mexican residents of American annexed territories used the process of claims settlement to argue that the United States authorized forms of violence and labor coercion in violation of the international legal norms known as the “standard of civilization.” The project adds a new dimension to the historiography of law and empire by asking not only how US policymakers used civilizational rhetoric to justify imperial expansion, but also how residents of colonized territories invoked the standard of civilization to challenge the legitimacy of United States governance. The dissertation uncovers a forgotten moment of struggle over the limits and possibilities of international law to address structural injustices within the American legal system. “Settlement Colonialism” is a legal history of United States imperialism, demonstrating that foreign policymakers used international arbitration as a key strategy to facilitate annexation during the heyday of expansion. The dissertation demonstrates that mass claims settlement formed a key component of longstanding efforts to frame territorial acquisition as a form of purchase rather than conquest. The project is also a social history of international legal thought, suggesting that this strategy came into crisis as a result of the thousands of West Indian, Panamanian, and Mexican claimants who brought cases before the tribunals tasked with awarding compensation for damages to persons or property resulting from actions of the United States government. Because the legal mechanism of compensation necessitated explicit articulation of which forms of life and labor produce economic value, claimants were able to challenge the legal models judges invoked to assign awards by demonstrating that the independent variables used to calculate compensation were themselves the result of injustices perpetrated by the American legal system in violation of international norms. If claimants won awards in cases like these, government lawyers feared, the resultant pecuniary losses and larger loss of credibility would challenge the ability of the United States to use international law as a foreign policy tool. To avoid this possibility, the State Department pushed to dismantle two of its final Claims Commissions in favor of privately negotiated settlements. The terms of these settlements obscured from the international legal record a moment when arbitral judges actively considered how police violence and economic coercion operated as forms of wealth distribution for which states might be held responsible under international law. These considerations were further foreclosed by the 1940s turn to investor state arbitration, which produced a bifurcation between physical harm and wealth distribution into separate realms of international governance. “Settlement Colonialism” then recovers the rise and fall of a forgotten vision of legal order. International tribunals ultimately became forums for punishing spectacular atrocity, rather than promoting collective welfare. But this was not a foregone conclusion. The records of the colonial Claims Commissions reveal visions of a world in which grand jury decisions could be held accountable to review by international judges, debt peonage was a form of expropriation that required compensation, and the specter of lawlessness could be invoked to reveal that the American judicial system fell short of the standard of civilization it was thought to embody. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS ii Acknowledgements iii Dedication vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: THE WORLD’S EASEMENT 25 CHAPTER 2: DANGEROUS PRECEDENTS 53 CHAPTER 3: MARKET VALUES 88 CHAPTER 4: THE FAMOUS GRINGO JUSTICE 118 CHAPTER 5: THE STANDARD OF CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL 149 CHAPTER 6: THE SPECTER OF COMPENSATION 178 Bibliography 206 i LIST OF FIGURES AND MAPS Figure 1: Map Showing Line of Proposed Lock Canal With Summit Elevation at 85 Feet, 1906 55 Figure 2: Property Map of the Canal Zone Showing Property Belonging to the United States of America, Panama R. R. Co., and Lands Claimed by Private Persons, 1912 55 Figure 3: Map of Denial of Justice Claims Originating in the United States 127 Figure 4: Mexican Denial of Justice Claims Originating in US Territory 128 ii Acknowledgements I would first and foremost like to thank my advisor, Mae Ngai, who has supported the dissertation through all of its stages. She has consistently pushed me to better articulate the stakes of the project and to sharpen my analysis of the questions it addresses. Elizabeth Blackmar has made me a far better writer and thinker by offering her unendingly generous insights throughout the process of research and writing. Both serve as inspirations and inimitable models for the practice of American legal history. Pablo Piccato encouraged me to consider how the dissertation fits into broader histories of Latin American politics and to approach the project not only as a set of arguments, but also as a series of stories. Greg Grandin and Hendrik Hartog offered invaluable suggestions during the dissertation defense. William B. Taylor, my undergraduate thesis advisor at UC Berkeley, remains an ongoing source of wisdom and encouragement. I was fortunate to participate in a series of immeasurably helpful seminars during my time at Columbia. A workshop organized by Emilie Connelly made my last year of writing far more enjoyable than it would have been otherwise, and allowed me to think about the dissertation in terms of broader histories of land and capitalism. The Latin American History Workshop offered invaluable suggestions in a wonderfully convivial setting. The International History Workshop helped me to find my path as an errant Americanist. The Penn Legal History Writers Bloc(k) offered me an intellectual home in Philadelphia. For helpful discussions of earlier chapter drafts, I would like to thank Neil Agarwal, George Aumoithe, Manuel Bautista González, John Coatsworth, Andrew Edwards, Fabiola Enríquez, Sam Erman, Joan Flores, Mary Freeman, Brian Frehner, Neil Foley, Andrea Geiger, Smita Ghosh, Angela Giordani, Jorge Giovannetti, Maeve Glass, Sally Gordon, Sarah iii Gronningsater, Alicia Gutiérrez, Charles Halvorson, Sara Hidalgo, Katrina Jagodinsky, Nick Juravich, Paul Katz, Jeremy Kessler, Mookie Kideckel, Katy Lasdow, Sophia Lee, Kelly Lytle- Hernández, Serena Mayeri, Stephanie McCurry, Christina McElderry, Pablo Mitchell, Daniel Morales, Nick Mulder, AJ Murphy, Rachel Newman, Josef Nothmann, Danielle Olden, Catarina Pizzigoni, Aziz Rana, Anupama Rao, Jason Resnikoff, Paolo Riguzzi, Jesús Rodríguez-Velasco, Tom Romero, Noah Rosenblum, Emmanuelle Saada, Alfonso Salgado, Jeffrey Shepherd, Asheesh Siddique, Dana Weiner, Sarah Winsberg, and Adnan Zulfiqar. Their suggestions helped me to transform the dissertation from a sprawling set of archival notes into a coherent narrative. For years of conversations that proved essential to the process of research, writing, and everything else, I would like to thank Westenley Alcenat, Samuel Daly, Fatima Mojaddedi, and Pollyanna Rhee. This dissertation would not have been possible without the support and guidance of those listed above and many more. All errors and omissions are my own. “Settlement Colonialism” draws on research from archives in the United States, Mexico, Panama, and Colombia. I cannot offer enough thanks to Manuel Bautista González, his
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