Manifest Destiny's Underworld

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440 pp., 5.75 x 9.25, 21 illus., 5 maps, notes, index

Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5581-2
Published: August 2004
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-0-8078-6040-3
Published: April 2003
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-7337-8
Published: April 2003

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Awards & distinctions

A 2003 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

This fascinating study sheds new light on antebellum America's notorious "filibusters"--the freebooters and adventurers who organized or participated in armed invasions of nations with whom the United States was formally at peace. Offering the first full-scale analysis of the filibustering movement, Robert May relates the often-tragic stories of illegal expeditions into Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and other Latin American countries and details surprising numbers of aborted plots, as well.

May investigates why thousands of men joined filibustering expeditions, how they were financed, and why the U.S. government had little success in curtailing them. Surveying antebellum popular media, he shows how the filibustering phenomenon infiltrated the American psyche in newspapers, theater, music, advertising, and literature. Condemned abroad as pirates, frequently in language strikingly similar to modern American denunciations of foreign terrorists, the filibusters were often celebrated at home as heroes who epitomized the spirit of Manifest Destiny.

May concludes by exploring the national consequences of filibustering, arguing that the practice inflicted lasting damage on U.S. relations with foreign countries and contributed to the North-South division over slavery that culminated in the Civil War.

About the Author

Robert E. May is professor of history at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. His previous books include The Union, the Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim and the prize-winning John A. Quitman: Old South Crusader.
For more information about Robert E. May, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"No one has heretofore synthesized the filibusterers' activities and analyzed who served, their motivation, ideology, funding, and role in the broader milieu. The author thus provides not only an overview of major and minor expeditions but also a colorful and interesting look at their identities and the consequences of their actions. . . . May has provided a major contribution toward our understanding of the 'underworld' of filibustering."--American Historical Review

"In this balanced, judicious, and readable account of U.S. filibustering from the 1820s to the 1860s, Robert E. May . . . redesigns the study of filibustering. . . . [An] impressive book."--Journal of Southern History

"Exhaustively researched and comprehensive in scope, Manifest Destiny's Underworld is the first book successfully to integrate filibustering into the antebellum American experience. Equally important, the book will be of immense value to scholars interested in the larger, geopolitical role that the United States played during the nineteenth century."--Military History of the West

"A major new book that merits the close perusal of anyone concerned with mid-nineteenth-century America."--Pacific Historical Review

"May explores nearly every aspect of the private military expeditions that brought notoriety and dreams of empire to generations of adventurers. . . . May's book will be the definitive work on filibustering for years to come."--Journal of the Early Republic

"A well-researched and thoughtful analysis of a neglected yet important topic of American history. This volume, with its unshakable interpretation, pertinent maps and illustrations, copious notes, and engaging style, should emerge as the definitive work on American filibustering."--North Carolina Historical Review