Here the bachelors at the university of colorado and his doctorate at harvard. He has been serving as an associate professor of history at the university of california are equally. University of california berkeley, some of us call the other School Across the bay. Professor delay is known best for his book war of a thousand deserts which 15 major book prizes. He also one multiple book prizes. 5 major book prizes. He is even ventured into the realm of art history in a terrific essay on winslow homers famous painting, was tson and the shark. Entitled the familiar made a strange american artifacts after the transnational turn. His new contract under ww norton is to be called shoot the state arms, capitalism, and freedom. Professor delay is also a multiple awardwinning teacher who has served as an organization of american historians distinguish actual or and eight fulbright distinguished lecturer in japan. He one distinctions from many he won many distinctions. Yet i must add that officer delay professor delay wears these achievements lately. He has great company. Bryan will be speaking to us today on the professor on the topic of guns capitalism, and the independence of the americas. I give you one of your own bryan delay. [applause] prof delay good afternoon everybody. I want to sincerely thank tim and the Program Committee for extending this tremendous invitation. I am deeply honored to speak with you at the luncheon. Im also a little guilty because tim recaps to me and said, borderlands is going to be an important scene for the conference and we would like you to talk at the luncheon. And i told him well, i look to but i id love to,. Tim was two knots was ntoo nice of a guy to withdraw the invitation. [laughter] i am going to be talking about guns specifically the International Arms trade in the americas during the American Revolution, the haitian revolution, and the spanishamerican wars for independence. Guns have been curiously absent from scholarly efforts to integrate the histories of these three important events. Mostly focusing on ideas. Gun runners can be found hiding in the siloed histories of these historic events. But we know very little about the early modern arms trade as such. That is surprising for at least two basic reasons. The first is that the relevance of revolutionary ideas depends significantly on the means available for acting upon them. Specialists observe that europe had consensual empires in the americas. Britain, france, spain, and portugal offered by consent, not by force. That is true enough in many ways. But consent is based on a realistic assessment of alternatives. And guns, like ideas, can profoundly change those assessments. Firearms exercise power over the immaterial as well as the material. They reconfigure wills and imaginations as well as bodies. They do this right changing by changing calculations what they are willing to conjure, endure risk, and imagined the futures. The second reason that the arms trade matters is that ist bound up three independence wars in dependent relationships. In a nutshell, my argument today is that neither the haitian revolution nor the spanishamerican war spray dependence could have possibly prevailed without the free trade in arms that came from the u. S. , which was itself a neglected but extremely important consequence of the American Revolution. Prior to the American Revolution, a tangle of formal rules, informal structures, and historic legacies made it impossible for even the wealthiest of colonists in the new world to arm themselves against empire. In effect, european colonial mercantilism had thrown up a great dam over all the new world colonies. A dam that kept the means of destruction from flowing west into the hands of europes american subjects. How the dam functioned, how it fell and the consequence of its destruction are part of a larger story of hemispheric significance. The story casts new light on the curious durability of european imperialism in the americas prior to the 1770s. The story is crucial to making sense of a dramatic reconfiguration of hemispheric power in a generation after the 1770s. I reconfiguration whereby the locus of power shifts from western europe to north america. The story constitutes a neglected a crucial hit it in the history of capitalism. Pivot of capitalism. The newly independent United States committed to the freetrade war material. They equipped insurgent armies across the spear. Victorious movements swept aside barriers to International Trade and foreign capital. The arms trade was the leading edge of capitalist transformation in the western hemisphere. Over the next two and a half hours, i will try to convince you of that. [laughter] just getting, 40 minutes. Just kidding, 40 minutes. By doing three things. First, i will tell you how this dam functioned. Second i will tell you how it was demolished by a very Improbable Coalition of marcus and republicans. Monarchists and republicans. Then i will say white haitian revolution why haitian revolution would have never prevailed without the arms trade. Let me begin with the dam itself. Insurgents needed many kinds of war materials if they were going to overthrow european empire. They needed reams of cartridge paper, tons of lead, hundreds of grass cannons, tens of balance of bayonets, millions of guns. Above all, they needed muskets and gunpowder. Permanently dislodging france or Great Britain would sooner or later involve overcoming while militias so decisively as to secure a treaty with independence or at least the recognition of it least other great powers. That military victory would hire tens, if not hundreds of thousands of muskets and thousands of tons of gunpowder. There were only a few places in the world capable of producing arms in these quantities during the late 18th century. None of them were in the western hemisphere. The vast majority of the world guns were made in birmingham, and a few other birmingha european cities. They were the most coveted objects that most people in the most complicated objects. I have a prop to show you here. More than two dozen sub trades went into the making of a musket. Two dozen sub trades. The lock mechanism alone consisted of 10 carefully cut and balanced iron parts and merely producing a quality barrel involved for supervisors supervising 14 armorers. This is from a flintlock musket, this is what i passed around. These things are hard to make. They are really hard to make in quantity. I had a whole must get when i got to the airport in san francisco. [laughter] the only thing they let me take was this. These things are hard to make. The sister cities around western europe artisans trained under a master or a decade. The state imposed demeaning regulations and quality tests and contracts from great emergence and large mercantile firms sustained the whole enterprise. Nothing like this existed anywhere in the new world. Nothing like it could be created from scratch in the middle of an independence war. Gunpowder presented comparable problems, equally daunting problems, although of a different kind. During the 18th century gunpowder consisted roughly of 50 charcoal 15 charcoal. Charcoal provided the fuel. Although there were pieces of wood that were preferred, it could be found anywhere. Sulfur came from okinos, but readily available International Trading circuits. But the problem came with saltpeter. It was the magic oxidizer that superchargecd the explosion. Supercharged. The best saltpeter in the world came from india. Everyone in the world agreed with that. What is astonishing is that india was also responsible for 70 of the global saltpeter production. The british gain control over almost all of it in their victories in the seven years war. Panicked european rivals try to compensate for this with costly state run Research Programs run by some of the enlightenments best minds. Colonists had precious few of any of these institutional financial, or scientific resources at their disposal. As was the case with muskets the gunpowder required to drive europe from the americas was going to have to come from europe itself. How could this be arranged . This could only be arranged by solving a trio of interlocked problems. Accessing the right networks, conjuring up payment and transporting material back and forth across the ocean. Given the scale remember, they need a lot of all of this stuff. Overcoming these challenges would have been difficult even in the international market. But colonists in the 18th Century America did not happen International Open market. Mercantilism might have been fraying at the edges, but economists were still traveling across the economy that mercantilists built. They were for bid and access to most foreign markets, deprived of hard cash, and mostly bereft of oceangoing ships. Consider first the problem with networks. Where could private persons go to buy an army worth of guns and ammunition in the late 18th entry . Century . That required not only timely market knowledge, but reformed informed and reliable contracts abroad. Exchanges involved 35 commercial partners in multiple continents speaking differently which is. This obviously would compound transaction times. But a deeply compounded the already substantial uncertainties and risks involved in this kind of transatlantic commerce. Merchants relied on a change of credit chains of credit. And marine insurance to facilitate longdistance trade and to minimize risk. Most of all, they relied on each other. They relied upon farfluing and laboriously networks of trust. Across the Atlantic World and beyond. Every colony in the western hemisphere had merchants with transatlantic networks. But mercantilisms formal rules and informal incentives channeled these networks inexorably toward their possession. Newcomers could not access the intensely personalized nature of mercantilism based on mutual trust in connection. Network problem, the problem. Big problem. If somehow the Network Problem could be overcome, recruiters would still have to be paid. Here another of mercantilisms feature driving towards the metropole prevented presented problems. Paying for huge qualities of foreignmade munitions required largescale exportation of colonial products. Things like grains, fur timber, fish oil, and especially of course cash crops produced by the hemispheres millions of slaves. That meant securing physical control, not only over labor but also over the sites of those labor production and routes of transportation to the coast. Paying in kind, rather than cash, compounded the Network Problem. Because merchants specializing in war material in europe were very seldom the ones in the best position to take colonial products. These had to be shipped to merchant a, we would provide bills of exchange that could be used with merchant b who could actually provide you with the war materials. Even if the right contacts could be made and a viable method of payment arranged, the surgeons still had to solve the transportation problem. Mercantilism was woven into the trees that found europe together and prohibited almost all direct trade from foreign companies. Foreign merchants contemplating sailing to most american ports would be subject to legal future and compensation conversation confiscation. As for colonial merchants themselves, all of their waterborne trading suitable for coasting trade in the caribbean. Old world firms by the 1870s controlled the large amount of oceanic shipping. It would be exceedingly difficult for colonists to transport large colonies large quantities for materials in their own ships. In fact, they had to do a lot more than that. The value to weight ratio was so much higher for these colonial products they had to ship much more east than they needed to get west. These three confounding interlocked problems, so he did with payment network, and transport. They were great passive obstacles to serious anticolonial rebellion in the americas. But european monarchs would not be passive in the face of open rebellion. If the structural impediments to obtaining war materials were the bricks in europes mercantile dam, they provide the mortar. This complex amounted to a extremely sophisticated alarm system. One that started blaring the moment colonists showed up in foreign parts sniffing around guns and in addition. Once those alarms went off empire new exactly how to mobilize diplomacy and violence to magnify these would be insurgents merciless trinity of problems. All the while, the certainty of interference meant that rebel agents had to procure far more war materials than they thought they needed just in hopes that just enough would get to the armies of the other side of the ocean. If all this sounds basically hopeleless, that is because in fact it was basically hopeless. Smuggling abounded through the new world and no monarch could totally suppress the arms trade. Im certainly not saying that. But europes mercantile dam needed a subject in the americas to equip themselves with enough ammunition to achieve independence through more. That is an overlook that i think anticolonial rebellion is all but nonexistent in the americas prior to the 1770s. It is also why so many observers expressed incredulity when they learned british north americans were preparing to go to war against their king. Is it possible, contemporaries wanted to know, that people without arms, ammunition, money or a navy, would break against the nation respected by all the powers of the earth . Possible, yes. Rational, that seemed pretty doubtful to those who knew how the world works in 1874. This means me to the second part, how this dam finally fell. The revolutionary war began in part because of attempts to breach this dam. In the summer of 1774, an american smuggler named benjamin defied british mercantile trade resurgence and failed to ship directly to amsterdam. Following the Austin Tea Party which happened the previous december and the socalled intolerable acts a few years later, he did not have to be Warren Buffett to figure out that there would be a sellers market in ammunition. What he does is stops with 150 tons of dutch gunpowder and weighs anchor for nantucket. He doesnt get away before someone notices. Sir joseph yorke, the first earl of hardwick, long serving British Ambassador to the United Provinces sounded the alarm to his superiors in london. Other similar reports around the same time were coming in from the hague. Distrust british managers ordered them to do everything they could to frustrate guys like thihim. Faithfully, officials in london prohibited war materials to be exported to the colonies. Once news of this prohibition reached new england in december, outraged patriots dissented on arsenals and powder magazines across the region, hauling weight muskets canon, and ammunition to secret locations. In boston, a general responded by redoubling his own efforts to secure munitions storage. These culminated on april 1975 in a carefully 1875. Once the shooting began, the Continental Congress had to address its armys truly staggering needs. Private gun ownership was more widespread in british north america than in any colonial region in the western hemisphere. Careful samples of inventories from massachusetts and South Carolina for example, suggest that on average about half of white households possessed at least one firearm. A very rough back of the envelope guesstimate, and no one got an trouble guesstimating about numbers of guns in early america, right . [laughter] put that number between 1502 00 thousand guns. That is a lot of guns. A large proportion of these guns would have been unfit for military service. And a lot of the people that had workable, serviceable guns would be reluctant to give their only good gun up when they were facing a nation war. So while private guns did go to the rebel effort, they werent nearly enough. Leaders in congress made this absolutely plain when just a few months after the declaration of independence, Congress Orders agents to procure 100,000 muskets in Continental Europe. As for powder, the colonies had perhaps 80,000 pounds of powder on hand. Thats the best estimate we have. That also sounds like a whole lot of gunpowder. Most of this dated from the seven years war. 80,000 pounds sounds substantial. But patriot forces expanded nearly twice that much just in the two and half years of the war. Totally inadequate. Rebel leaders sometimes indulged themselves and each other and the public in the idea that Domestic Production could overcome this massive gap. It could not. Poweder mills went up in every state except for georgia. But couldnt even meet state militia needs anywhere, let alone the vast needs of the continental army. In contrast to cities like in europe with thousands of artisans and specialty, the total wartime firearm industry in rebel north america was a Pretty Amazing number. The total wartime fired industry consisted of about 200 men. Most laboring alone or in pairs in impromptu inefficient shops. From the very beginning of the revolution, it was absolutely clear that independence would depend existentially on imports. Robert morris, one of philadelphias shrewdest merchants would oversee the Deportation Program from a secret committee and congress. Even among colleagues that despise mercantilism morris was an unrivaled profit of the free market capitalism. Commerce ought to be as free as the air, he wrote. Unrestricted by government. Morris did not have a problem with government helping commerce. From his perch in the secret committee, he doled out lavish contracts, often to friends in fronts firms even to his own firm in pursuit of this goal. He mobilized an astonishingly farflung network of foreign markets, correspondence, brokers, commercial agents ships captains spies and manufacturers across the Atlantic World. By 1776, americans could be found hosteling arms in the port cities of spain, france, holland, and italy. Off the coast of west africa awaiting munition deals at sea. Hunting down gunpowder in every port of the caribbean. To pay for all this, colonists loaded their hulls with fish, flaxseed, flour,a and tobacco indigo, and rice from the slave south. Morrissystem was amazingly effective and efficient at first. I think that he was probably as important to the success of the American Revolution as George Washington in that there was really only one person with more importance still. I will leave you in suspense as to who that person is. Without the timely arrival of gunpowder purchased washington would not have been able to engage boston in the march of 1776. But the kings countermeasures soon began to tell. Diplomatic protest in Continental Europe disrupted networks in constricted the flow of war materials west. In the dutch republic, for example, from whence so much gunpowder had sailed out, sir york had sharp words with his friends in the state general. They prohibited munitions sales to british subjects and began to closely police and monitor their traders in airports. More creatively, british agents spread lies in two places about europe about the imminent and of the war. That had the desired effect of spooking merchants that had considered major arms deals across the ocean. In the first two years of the work, the british navy effectively tripled the number of its ships in the america station. The sea is full of all kinds of cruisers. There is not one in 10 that escapes coming and going. By 1777, the navy began stopping and searching neutral as well as colonial vessels. This move sabotaged one of the key insurgent stratagems, which was to ship their produce to europe under foreign flags. It also convinced prominent caribbean merchants to quit the insurgent trade altogether. It was just too dangerous. Morris found it increasingly difficult to make agreedupon payments, and before long, most of the firms he dealt with in europe were bankrupt. No single british countermeasure was decisive. But collectively, the critically endangered the war effort. By the winter 1776, Colonial Arms smugglers were coming up empty. Washington found itself running out of powder, and he told state governments to stop sending him unarmed recruits, because he had no guns to give these guys. All affairs are in a very that way, he confided in 1776. The game is pretty well up. No other Colonial Coalition in the americas could have possibly come as close as they came to preaching europes mercantile dam. Even morrisbritish north americans couldnt quite do it. Not alone at any rate. Londs remaining fear londons remaining fear was that france would avenge it deletion in the seven years work by doing for insurgents what the market cannot. The british confronted the french that they had been secretly aiding the rebels. You can almost picture him sigh and shake his head wearily as he says well, if a lucrative trade could be carried on with hell, certain french merchants would send him there with the risk of burning their sails. But my government will continue to do everything in its power to stop the arms trade to these insurgents. Not because we want to help you but because american independence would threaten us. He invited him to imagine a future in which these insurgents prevailed. They would immediately begin constructing a great marine, he protected. And with the superiority and every advantage of situation they might, whenever the please, conquer your American Island and yours. They said they wouldnt stop there. It wouldnt happen in our lifetimes, but it would certainly happen, that in the process of time, they would not leave a foot of atmospheric in the possession of any european power. Thus, while some in france welcomed englands troubles and wish to sustain them by harming the top the rebels, the french monarch did not. They may indeed have rejoiced in the stress of the rivals, but the larger danger is in consequences. This performance through elite reassured that the rebellion would have been doomed if you meant what he said. But as you all undoubtedly know, he was lying. This is why, in my view, he got to be known as even more important to the success of the revolution. France issued massive wants to frenchman franklin and other agents in parents. In paris. With no collateral and casually generous terms that would be used to bite emissions from private vendors. Franc help to secure smaller loans on its allies, especially spain. It pulled on a variety of other levers in order to ease the problems of networks, payment and transportation. The first of the resulting shipments of arms and ammunition arrived in march 1777, heralding an early spring to washingtons despondent winter. Glorious news this, washington exulted when he heard about these shipments. Morrisprograms basically collapsed. France and spain formally entered the war soon after. Their navies are critical to the ultimate american triumph. French money and french weapons sustained Washingtons Army from start to finish. His policy is fascinating because it was successful to the success of the revolution. It was also one of the most disastrous decisions of modern international history. Contrary to his hopes and expectations, the war did not seriously weakened Great Britain. It did not enhance frances geopolitical situation. It did not bring the u. S. Into the french trading orbit. What it did was provoke a profound budgetary crisis that would lead to the summoning of the states general the outbreak of the french revolution and the destruction of the french monarchy. Bad decision. Among all the ironies here, one of the richest and the least remarked upon is this. The prophecy that he unfurled before the angeles credulous proved to be so much closer to the truth then the geopolitical expectations that he thought t to conceal. They had blown the mercantile dam to pieces. In his life, in his lie, he foresaw the truth. He was independence would inexorably produce a mighty spirit power whose transnational reach would undo european empire throughout the americas. Initially that would happen through the arms trade. This brings me to my last part of my talk about the consequences and destruction of the dam. I want, is part of the talk, justified this claim that the haitian revolution was dependent upon the u. S. Arms trade. I should say upfront that the haitian religion and spanish wars for independence or enormously collocated events. They were both longerlasting, more politically gated, and far more destructive than the revolution. Anything that i can say in 11 minutes is going to be mostly productive and superficial. Im going to say it anyway. [laughter] insurgents in spanish america had in particular advantage. They could be reasonably confident to pay for arms and munitions. They could do this through plunder property, through plantation crops maybe even through gold and silver. But like any other metric, by domestic manufacturing capacity, by Network Connections into foreign markets, and by oceangoing ships, they were far behind their british north american counterparts. The rebellion in peru enjoyed no conduits whatsoever to the International Arms trade. It succumbs to british reaction despite the astonishing bravery of its partisans. In one final regard things were even worse in the 1790s than they had been in the 1780s, certainly in the 1770s. The north americans have launched their uprising in a time of european peace revels in spanish america launched theirs in the context of the french revolution and napoleonic wars. This meant a profound disruption in transoceanic commerce and most important, an unprecedented contraction in the Atlantic World arms market. All of the things being equal these disadvantages would have hobbled these later independence movement, and indeed would have dissuaded them from ever chancing it in the first place. But of course, all things were not equal. The treaty of paris had heralded something new in the western hemisphere. A large and growing free market economy unrestrained by mercantile is a or old world alliances, possessed of a great and growing merchant marine, deeply committed to the buying, making, and selling of guns and ammunition. Soon after independence, the war to permit auction off tens of thousands of its older muskets to wholesalers involved in the International Trade. The u. S. Continued to energetically import guns from europe whenever it was able to do so, given the context of the wars. U. S. Administrations tried to facilitate these deals. For example, in 1807, when james monroe requested the assistance of the british navy in securing safe package for 35 caps off muskets that the financier james swan had purchased from the dutch. The government would further build staterun arsenals in harpers ferry, and it told out lucrative contracts to private manufacturers in hopes of encouraging a really robust domestic arms industry. Crucially, american diplomats also wanted an exception from british prohibition on so peter exports during the napoleonic wars. This enabled manufacturers to m ake the u. S. Significant gunpowder manufacturer and exporter. Finally, the u. S. Committed itself to the notion that private citizens have a right to export or material anywhere in the world so long as they themselves were willing to take the risk. In sum, the new republic had lots of war material on hand continued to import and produce more of it. Its arms dealers were indeed willing to take the risk of selling it abroad. U. S. War material was crucial in ways that historians fail to college to the haitian revolution from its inception all the way through its triumph in 1804. On the eve of the uprising, that u. S. Had about 500 ships involved in the trade and its 13 points. This island with second only to Great Britain in terms of its importance to american trade. And as shocking as the uprising was, to most americans, the commercial opportunities involved were plain to see. Just months into the uprising, philadelphias federal gazette reported any price is being offered power in arms on the island. That same newspaper published a story of american merchants running afoul of the french authorities, even being executed for selling arms to the revolted men of color. Are british observer in jamaica insisted that the obviously france vigorously protested all of this. The u. S. Government claims, we dont have either the right or the capability to suppress this trade. This obviously was selfserving. But it was also entirely correct, which was an important part of this story. In contrast to west european rivals new u. S. Didnt have the revenue to actually police International Trade. Moreover out of necessity and design, the emerging customs regime, such as it was, was extraordinary deferential and run by local mercantile interests. The same interest deeply invested in a trading with the island. Merchant even convicted the government to issue licenses. These licenses in turn become prerequisites to obtaining marine insurance in this quite dangerous trade. Easily overlooked is the basic fact that arms exporters enjoyed the physical production of being based in the u. S. For the agreed french to attack gun merchants in their place of business which is the only place you know for sure you can find them, was obviously on thinkable. This would immediately embroiled in in a war with the u. S. The National Government could apologetically claimant powerlessness over this extensive arms trade even though its own policies encouraged and protected it. All of this helps accelerate the trade to haiti late in the decade. They imported something on the order of 30,000 muskets just for his own forces in haiti. By the time napoleon sent a french army of tens of thousands of veterans to regain control of the island in 1802, they understood that acquiring these arms was the number one imported job. They estimated there were probably about 110,000 muskets in the hands of former slaves. Yellow fever famously devastated the planes army. But guns and in emissions enabled black insurgents to drive them out of the country altogether. The leader of the french expedition right at the moment of his defeat, he says it is the americans who brought the muskets, the canons, the gunpowder, all of these munitions. I am entirely convinced that americans formed the plane to promote the independence of the antilles so they can monopoly to the trade. All the while, anxious spanish administrators are watching all of this. They are getting more and more nervous. In 1806, spains secretary of state looked upon the ruin of haiti, which used to be the most wealthy Impressive Company in the world. He prophesized that trades with the black rebels would have fatal consequent is for all the nations in this part of the world. Indeed only four years later starting in 1810, dozens of emissaries from mexico and south america began arriving in washington, new york, new orleans, philadelphia, baltimore looking for guns and ammunition. Mostly, american merchants just came to them. As in the case of haiti, there are several hundred american ships trading with spanishamerican ports on the eve of the uprising. One scholar conservatively estimates that the west spent hundreds of tons of powder and at least 160,000 muskets in south america during the wars for independence. I think this is probably a dramatic underestimate. Once the napoleonic wars ended there were vast amounts of war material on hand throughout europe that was auctioned off in huge quantities. Treaty obligations forbade Great Britain from sending any of this directly to spanish america. Unlike the u. S. , Great Britain had the ability to place their ports. Not a lot without. Not a lot went out. The American Traders could sell this and then ascended onto spanish america. British customs records revealed that the u. K. Exported nearly one quarter of a million tons to the u. S. Just in five years 18151820. A huge, ultimately unknowable, but huge percentage of these must have gone towards the fight for spanish american independence in the early 1820s. Whether through its own growing productive capacity or through reexporting european weapons the u. S. Became the arms market in the hemisphere. But crucially, the u. S. Never offers terms remotely as generous as those it had received from france in its own war for independence. No masses, easy loans from the government, no secret state programs to equip insurgent armies, and certainly no declarations of war in support of other peoples wars for independence. If the u. S. Had the immense advantage of the fighting its war for independence wholesale haitians and spanishamerican had to fight theres real tale fight theirs retail. Revolution retail meant making deals wherever and whenever possible, summing that inhibited Central Planning and fostered insurgent factionalism. Revolution retail meant longer and broadly corrosive wars. Revolution retail inhibited decisive, final outcomes. Prolonging antagonism with former imperial masters and fueling a ruinous militarism in many postcolonial states throughout hemisphere. Finally, the liberation of the hemispheres arms market didnt simply make guns more available to anticolonial insurgents. They made guns more widely available to insurgents of all kinds. War material wasnt the only thingthat europes mercantile dam withholding back in the americas. The 19th century would be far less stable than the 18th. The arms dealing that both encouraged and fed off ms. Instability treated foreign capital throughout latin america. New independent states needed arsenals in order to govern effectively. But except the u. S. , colonial state constructed its own significant form industry in the century after independence. That means they had to turn to the market. At first most of the states were so broke and exhausted after a decade of war. Consequently. They took out large loans, mostly from foreign banks. In ability retain these loans on times or at all could lead to a problem of sovereign impulse that give foreign capitalists and investors extraordinary leverage over desperate governments. Meanwhile, would be insurgents looking to capture rationale states had fewer resources than the states themselves. They invariably had to court for an entrance to obtain war material. Court foreign patrons. They traveled hat in hand to cities in a north america looking for patrons to help them fight the war that would put them in power. In return, these would be patrons were often offered steeply discounted national bonds, shares of future customs revenue, mining privileges, lucrative government contracts and ultimately railroad contracts. These are often tied up with the arms trade. As historians of the witness western hemisphere focus on western capitalism, this immense capacity to retard as well as encourage freedom. To reconfigure the mystic hierarchies and to destroy as well as create. We ought to take a cue from our subjects and pay lesser attention to where the guns are going. Thank you very much. [applause] when first Lady Ida Mckinley arrived at the white house in 1897, she was in health, suffering from epilepsy. At in white house events, her husband william mckinley, would sit next to her. When he saw she was having a seizure, he would cover her face with a large handkerchief until the episode past. Despite her health problems, she traveled as first lady, even tending the american expedition, where her husband was assassinated. Ida mckinley, sunday on cspans original series first ladies influencing image, examining the public and private lives of the women who filled the position of first lady. From Martha Washington to michelle obama. Sundays at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. On cspan3. Each week, American History tv since then on a college sits in on a college class. Next professor susanna lee talks about the citizenship in reconstruction. She talks about whether this should be tied to the race or gender. Dr. Lee good afternoon. How are you all doing . As you know, i am susanna lee. We are here today in my civil war