Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire

Journalist Katz (The Big Truck That Went By) delivers a searing and well-documented portrait of early 20th-century U.S. imperialism focused on the career of U.S. Marine Corps major general Smedley D. Butler (1881–1940). Contending that American military actions served the interests of U.S. business and financial institutions, often with dire effects on local people, Katz provides the geopolitical context behind interventions in China, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, the Philippines, and elsewhere, and visits each location to document the legacy of U.S. interference. He describes the terror campaign waged against residents of the Philippine island of Samar in retaliation for a 1901 insurgent attack that killed 48 U.S. soldiers, and notes that people still celebrate the uprising and mourn their forebears’ deaths in annual commemorations. In the Caribbean and Central America, Marines helped to install puppet leaders and organized militarized police forces who oppressed the people and smoothed the way for U.S. profiteers. All of these interventions were presented to the American people as heroic assistance for the development of people not ready to govern themselves, Katz notes. Butler’s evolution from the naive son of a prominent Quaker family who lied about his age to enlist in 1898 to a highly decorated major general whose 1935 book, War Is a Racket, condemned the antidemocratic actions he helped carry out provides the history’s intriguing through line. The result is an eye-opening portrait of American hubris. (Jan.)