The United States of America is an empire, not a nation. This distinction isn’t just semantic — it is essential to understanding how politics have become so fractured in the U.S.
Protests against DOGE are popping up all over Portland. Meanwhile, concerned parents in Appalachia and the Deep South are rallying at school board meetings to ban books and take controversial material out of their kids’ curricula. How did our “one nation under God” get here?
Theories abound, but asking why and how we’re fragmented ignores an essential part of the equation: just how united were these United States to begin with?
In “American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America,” Colin Woodard posits that American nationalism is based on a myth, and a relatively recent one at that. The World Wars necessitated unity among the American people to face common external threats. The emergence of mass media made it easier to promote this unity narrative and Cold War ideological dogmatism created a lasting incentive for the government to perpetuate and propagandize the American nationalist identity.
There are many problems with nationalism: it fosters xenophobia, hinders diplomacy and leads to policies like Trump’s tariffs which have been disastrous for markets both foreign and domestic. In legitimate nation-states these downsides are, at least partially, countered by increased unity, productivity and cooperation. The problem is, of course, America isn’t a nation-state at all and thus hardly experiences any of these benefits.
Americans use the words “nation” and “country” interchangeably to mean the highest autonomous political body, or the broadest category of citizenry. This is troublesome, because many non-American English speakers use the word “state” to describe this same concept. Of course, this introduces confusion because we use “state” to mean a subdivision of the country — what others might call a “province” or “territory.” So “state” either means a subdivision of a country, which is necessarily not the broadest political body, or it is explicitly the word which describes the broadest political body.
Was that confusing? Of course it was. It’s infuriating. Hence why we should instead use the political science terminology, no matter how pretentious it makes us sound. So, without further ado, here are some definitions (source: me, a guy who got a BA in political science five years ago and is very excited to finally be using it):
A nation is a large group of people who share a common identity based on shared factors such as culture, history, language, ethnicity, and/or religion. Notice how there is no reference to territory or political autonomy in this definition. In other words, England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are nations. The United Kingdom is not. Catalonia, Kurdistan, Palestine, the Tamil people and Tibet are all nations, though they may not be recognized as independent political entities nor do they necessarily have an easily distinguished physical territory.
The terms “country” and “state” are closely related, but carry different connotations. Both are political entities with defined territory, government, autonomy, and the ability to enter independently into international relations. “State,” however, refers more to the institutions — the governmental systems and bureaucracies — whereas “country” usually applies more holistically to the physical land and the people.
Then there’s the scary one: “Empire” refers to a political unit which pulls multiple nations, countries, and/or states under one sovereign authority. The subsidiary nation-country-states might still possess the ability to govern themselves and engage in diplomacy, but that ability is limited and ultimately subject to the empire’s discretion.
One would be hard-pressed to argue that America isn’t an empire. There are clearly defined nations under the control of the federal government. Hawaii. Puerto Rico. Need I say more?
Someone could make a more feasible argument that there exists an American nation, it just isn’t the only nation under the U.S. umbrella. This is an understandable thought, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Of the factors that determine nationhood — culture, history, language, ethnicity and religion — the people of the continental United States only really share a language, and even that is up for debate considering unique dialects in places like New Orleans and Appalachia.
Perhaps the most glaring falsehood in the nationalist narrative is the myth of America as an ethnic melting pot. Sure, there are places that see a great deal of ethnic and cultural blending — New York and the major cities of the West Coast being the primary examples. Most of America, however, has been dominantly populated and/or controlled along obvious ethnic lines.
In the era of globalization it is difficult to say that any modern country is ethnically homogenous. So, in determining nationhood, we look at the proportionally dominant ethnicities and the identities of the original settlers, and under this microscope we see vast discrepancies. East Anglians settled New England and Cascadia. The mountainous West was settled largely by Germans and Scandinavians. Rural Englishmen settled in Virginia and, with their compatriots from the Caribbean plantation colonies, the Deep South. Spaniards and Latinos were the “original” settlers of the Southwest, the Dutch settled New York (originally New Amsterdam). Both the Pacific Northwest and California were settled by East Asian people at the same time as the initial European pioneers.
Each of these groups brought their own religions, cultures and values, and from those unique foundations grew distinct nations. New England and New York (or New Netherlands as Woodard calls it) have generally allied with each other on political issues to advocate for communalism and a robust government. These northern nations have been summarily opposed by the Deep South for the vast majority of the last 250 years. Which of these sides has been in control has largely been determined by who can persuade Appalachia, the Midlands and Virginia (or Tidewater, per Woodard) to join them.
This political dance has grown and branched over the centuries, and a full encapsulation of the unique identities, values and policy preferences of the various nations is beyond the scope of this article. The point is this: there is no singular American culture. The empire was born to defend these budding nations from would-be conquerors, and perpetuated for convenience and greed.
The sensible follow-up is to ask why we still need an empire at all, and whether the disparate American people would be better served by smaller regional governments. For fear of being put on some kind of list, I’ll save the secession talk for another forum. Instead, we must let this history inform our approach to politics and to change-making. Consensus at the federal level is near impossible because voters don’t share one culture or nationality. Instead, we must focus our efforts at the regional level, where we are likely to find large groups of like-minded people with the common interests and willpower to shape our society into the best version of itself.
For further reading, see Joel Garreau’s “The Nine Nations of North America” which laid the foundations for Woodard’s “American Nations”. Also check out Bill Bishop’s “The Big Sort” and David Hackett Fisher’s “Albion’s Seed.”
