1. Was the Euro-American belief in their cultural superiority merely a self-serving justification for the dispossession of the Indians or did it, in addition, stem from other needs, ambitions, or anxieties? Indicate how any two of the authors we’ve read who considered this question--Todorov, Rogin, and Venables--responded to it. In giving your own opinion, remember to address possible objections to it.
2. Near the end of his article, Venables quotes the English philosopher David Hume’s retort to those who believed that government should be founded on a social contract:
It is vain to say that all governments are or should be at first founded on popular consent . . . conquest or usurpation--that is, in plain terms, force--by dissolving the ancient governments, is the origin of almost all the new ones which were ever established in the world . . . (118).
Venables thinks that the United States, as “an imperial power,” followed this logic. So, it would seem, does Rogin. Did the Constitution itself lay the groundwork for imperial expansion, as Venables says? Can an imperial foreign policy be made compatible with internal liberty? In answering these questions, be sure to look at the discussion of standing armies and national defense in the Constitutional debate.
3. Is imperialism immoral because it unfairly subjects others to domination, or amoral because, as Captain John Smith put it, “What growing state was there ever in the world which had not the like [of colonial Virginia’s war with its Indian neighbors]? Rome grew by oppression, and rose upon the backs of her enemies?” (120). Be sure to consider how Venables and some of the other authors we’ve read responded, or might have responded, to this question.
4. Discuss the myth of the noble savage in relation to Venables’s notion of the “common cause.” Be sure to explain what each is. (Venables mentions two versions of the common cause--a self-serving assimilationist one and one “based on respect . . .[that] was a precursor to twentieth-century pluralism and ethical relativism” (81).) When the colonials employed Mohawk masks at the Boston tea party, were they symbolically making common cause with the Indians--borrowing and thus affirming the Indians’ cultural identities?
5. Your question (please discuss with me before proceeding).