Salzburger Vorstadt 15, 5280, Braunau am Inn: The Dilemma of what to do about Hitler’s Birthplace

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, International Relations, Memorabilia, National politics, Regional History

Adolf Hitler was born in the small Upper Austrian town Braunau am Inn on the border with the German state of Bavaria. The future German führer’s association with Braunau am Inn was only a fleeting one…after Adolf’s birth in the three-story yellow corner house—a gasthaus (guesthouse) which later was a gasthof (ale house)—the Hitler family only stayed in Braunau am Inn until 1892, when Hitler’s father’s work as a customs official took them to Passau, further down the Inn River border but on the German side. 

(Archival image: Stadtverein Braunau)

When the Nazis annexed the Austria state in 1938 the street of Hitler’s birth Salzburger Vorstadt was renamed Adolf-Hitler-Straße, in time for the führer’s one and only return to the town of his birth since he left at aged three –  passing swiftly through Braunau am Inn on the way to Vienna to celebrate the Anschluß. From this time Hitler’s birthplace became a cult centre attracting hordes of fawning devotes to Hitler, creating a pilgrimage site for the Nazi “true-believers”. At the end of WWII the town surrendered to the US Army and No 15 as part of the historic city centre was eventually granted heritage status➀. Rented since the Fifties by the Austrian republic, the building had provided makeshift premises for a public library, a bank, technical high school classes, a day centre for people with learning difficulties.

(Photo: The Guardian)

During the last decade the Austrian government, still renting Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its original family owner (Gerlinde Pommer), has kept it unoccupied, fearful that it was in danger of becoming a shrine for Neo-Nazi sympathisers (and their regular visits were also bringing anti-fascist protestors to the site as well) [‘Austria wants to appropriate Hitler’s birth house to stop it from becoming neo-Nazi shrine’, Daily Sabah, 09-Apr-2016, www.dailysabah.com]. The building has no identifiable signage on it but a concentration camp stone memorial dedicated to the victims of Nazism stands in front (Hitler is not mentioned in the inscription).

Braunauers, saddled with the legacy of their quiet, backwater town being forever associated with the Nazi führer, have long held divided opinions over what to do with the property locals refer to as the “Hitler-haus”. Some wanted to demolish all trace of it, to replace it with a new purpose-built building (a refugee centre, a museum dedicated to the Austrian liberation from Nazi rule, etc), or to leave it as an empty, amorphous space (an option extensively criticised because it could infer that Austria was trying to bury a part of its dark past). With such heat generated over the controversial site, its not surprising that the government in Vienna too has vacillated over what to do with it➁ [Adolf Hitler’s first home set to be demolished for new buildings, The Guardian, 17-Oct-2016, www.theguardian.com].

(Artist’s impression of the renovation)

In 2016, the Austrian government, frustrated at the owner’s refusal to renovate the property to make it suitable to desirable tenants, or to negotiate the building’s future, indicated its intent to demolish it and rebuild anew. In 2017 after a court ruling in the government’s favour the building was expropriated…this year Vienna has flipped the 2016 decision, now deciding that the existing structure will stay in place but will undergo significant change to its outward appearance and be given a new life. The change of plan will see the renovated building becoming a police station for Braunau and the district (slated for completion at end 2022 at a cost of €2 million) [‘Adolf Hitler’s birthhouse to be remodeled by architects’, DW, 05-Jul-2020, www.dw.com]. Repurposing Salzburger Vorstadt 15 as a police station with a (1750 townhouse style) design that predates the period of Hitler’s residence, according to the authorities, has the intention to deter Neo-Nazis from congregating at the site in the future [‘Adolf Hitler’s Birthplace Will be Transformed Into a Police Station to ‘Neutralize’ Its Appeal as a Pilgrimage Site for Neo-Fascists’, (Kate Brown), Artnet News, 03-Jun-2020, www.artnet.com].

 

Postscript: The decision to radically makeover the four centuries-old building that was Hitler’s birthplace won’t please the cultural and heritage groups in Upper Austria, but that the building has not been obliterated leaving only a blank, anonymous space has been welcomed by others. As one architecture professor notes, the creation of ”a void into which any kind of meaning can be projected” does not necessarily solve the dilemma, witness the aftermath of the 1952 dynamiting of Berghof (Hitler’s Bavarian mountain hideaway). Despite there being nothing to see any more, tourists kept coming in droves, as did Neo-Nazis who left their calling cards [‘The house where Hitler was born could be demolished soon. Here’s why it should stay standing’, (Despina Stratigakos), Quartz, 31-Oct-2016, www.quartz.com].

(Photo: The Guardian)

_____________________________________________

➀ in the decades following the war, along with curious tourists, Austrian and German veterans, especially on Hitler’s birthday, made the trek to the house [‘Hitler’s Birth Home in Austria to Become a Police Station’, (Melissa Eddy), New York Times, 20-Nov-2019, www.nytimes.com]

➁ the Ministry of the Interior in Vienna was also under flack from the media and the public for the extravagance of paying Frau Pommer nearly €5,000 every month to rent a space it was putting to no practical use [‘Why the Austrian government won’t tear down Adolf Hitler’s birth home’, (Bianca Bharti), National Post, 05-Sep-2019, www.nationalpost.com]

Brickfield Hill: From ‘Brickopolis‘ to Centre of a Sydney Retailing Dynasty

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Built Environment, Inter-ethnic relations, Local history, Retailing history

Sydney is chock full of locality names—names like Taverners Hill, Clifton Gardens, Pearces Corner, Tom Ugly’s Point, Russell Lea, Camp Cove, Tumble Down Dick, Bushrangers Hill, Brush Farm, Strawberry Hills, Charing Cross, etc—places on or off the map not big enough or important enough to warrant the status of ‘suburb’ in their own right.

‘Plan de la Ville de Sydney’ (Lesueur’s Map, 1802) (Source: State Library, NSW)

One of the earliest in the Sydney colony with an interesting back story is Brickfield Hill. Located on indigenous Gadigal country at the south end of the CBD, Brickfield Hill is a loosely-demarcated area❋ with a small hill, the place where the early colony’s clay was sourced for the making of bricks and tiles…bricks plus a hill, hence the name “Brickfield Hill”. This endeavour started virtually from year one of the European takeover of the Great South Land…the First Fleet in 1788 included  convicts with brick-making experience – James Bloodworth, the most significant of them was to prove invaluable to the embryonic settlement’s progress. With only makeshift accommodation in the form of canvas tents, the construction of more secure and permanent housing was of the highest priority. Bloodworth was immediately appointed master brick-maker for the Port Jackson colony by Governor Phillip, assigned labourers and tasked with the job of manufacturing 30,000 tiles per month [Ringer, Ron, Bricks, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionary of Sydney.org/entry/bricks, viewed 19 Nov 2020 ; ‘Brickfield Hill’, www.kathyprokhovik.com), 06-May-2018].

The public brickfield on the ‘Hill’ became such a hub of activity that in 1799 it was described as “a suburb of the town of Sydney … within a few yards of the main road” (George Street) [‘Bricks and Nails: Building Materials as Criteria for Dating in Sydney and Environs from 1788’, Robert Victor Johannes Varman, (Unpublished PhD thesis from the University of Sydney, Sept. 1993), www.ses.library.usyd.edu.au].

Brickfield Hill, George Street (Photo: JR Clarke / State Library, NSW)

By 1804 there were 72 houses within the village of Brickfield Hill, but it wasn’t the most salubrious part of Sydney to live…that part of George Street was “infamous for its steep, dangerous and dusty road” (Varman). The “exceedingly unpleasant” place, “covered by a filthy brown haze and choking dust storms of windy days” the southerlies that swept along the street were given the name the ‘Brickfielder’ [“Brickaholic’s tales behind the history of Sydney’s ‘golden mile’”, (John Huxley), Sydney Morning Herald, 26-Sep-2008, www.smh.com.au]. By 1840 the public brickfields had become a blot on the landscape…the dusty brick pits and polluting kilns were not conducive to the increasing residential composition of the village. Its dingy, seedy taverns were dens of crime and rampant practices of bestial cruelty. In 1841 the government ended the brick industry in the locality. In it’s place small brick-making concerns in private hands fanned out in directions south and west to suburbs such as Newtown, Camperdown, Pyrmont, Glebe and to St Peters which eventually emerged as the premier site for brick-making in Sydney. Merchant stores, warehouses and more housing (leading to slum conditions) helped fill the void in Brickfield Hill (Varman).

(Source: SL – NSW)

Gradient was a sizeable issue in Brickfield Hill in the early period … the steeply sloping terrain along that section of George Street impeded the transport of heavily-laden carts. During the 1830s the authorities finally addressed this. A colonial earth-moving project succeeded in reducing the gradient between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets to a more gradual and manageable slope [‘Brickfield Hill (1) – The Hill’, Sydney Eye, www.sydneyeye.blogspot.com/].

At the beginning of the 20th century Brickfield Hill achieved the kudos of an altogether different association as the new home of one of Sydney’s early retail giants. In 1905 Anthony Hordern and Sons opened its “Palace Emporium” on the site, their mega-department store rose up on the ‘Hill’ – six stories high and comprising 21 hectares of retail space. At its zenith Hordern’s Brickfield Hill emporium was reputedly the largest department store in the world. [‘Brickfield Hill’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

In its post-department store life the Hordern building’s vast “rabbit-warren” network of rooms and corridors was home to the Business School of the NSW Institute of Technology until the 1980s. Acquired by Malaysian property developer Ipoh Garden Development in 1985, it was demolished the following year amid considerable controversy to make way for the World Square complex⍉ [‘Anthony Hordern & Sons’, www.wikiwand.com].

With the leveling of Hordern’s Palace Emporium building and the earlier closure of the Brickfield Hill post office, Brickfield Hill’s long existence as an identifiable locality in Sydney’s CBD was consigned to the past.

PostScript: The Hordern story
From humble beginnings as a King Street (Sydney) drapery shop in 1823, Hordern and Sons built up an Australian retail empire.  After a stint in Melbourne retailing, Anthony Hordern (Senior) built his first Sydney emporium in Chinatown (Haymarket). The AH showcase, opened in 1905 to replace the fire-destroyed Haymarket emporium, was the new Palace Emporium (AKA the “Senior Store”). The Brickfield Hill retail ”super-store“—with a main entrance of imported Italian marble—later diversified its commercial activities to include a branch of the Commonwealth Bank, tea rooms, a post and parcel office, rest rooms, public phone booths and a Thomas Cook travel agency. Expansion of the business occurred from the Fifties with new Hordern & Sons stores opening in Canberra, Wollongong, West Ryde and Mid-City Pitt Street.  By the late 1960s Anthony Hordern & Sons was massively losing business to suburban malls and to city competitors…it’s retail empire crumbling, the Brickfield Hill flagship was acquired by Waltons Ltd. In early 1973 the doors of the iconic retailer, once lauded as a “colossal business premises”, closed for good. (Wikiwand entry).

🔽 (Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection. Sydney Living Museums. [TC 658.871 HOR/54]) 

____________________________________________

❋ roughly covering the area from Sydney Town Hall (Bathurst Street) to Central Station, skirting the present-day locales and suburbs of Haymarket and Surry Hills

⍉ which then stayed as a gigantic hole In the ground for 18 years until World Square was completed in 2004

⊰⊱⊰⊱⊰⊱

The Filibustering Fifties: American Armed Incursions into the Mexican Frontier

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
International Relations, Military history, Regional History

Filibuster: a soldier of fortune who engages in military adventurism in a foreign country or territory to foment or support a revolution (flourished 1840s/1850s) [‘Filibuster (military)’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]. Also known as ‘freebooters’, they were privately organised, irregular soldiers or militia used to try to effect regime change or exploit a power vacuum. 

 

The 1850s coincided with a surge of filibuster activity launched from within the United States and targeted at Mexico. The majority of the filibuster expedition participants were Americans of Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent but there were other nationalities involved including French expeditions (eg, de Pindray, Raousset)✱.

What accounts for the massive spurt in filibuster ventures at this time? Conditions on both sides of the US and Mexican borders were conducive to their prevalence. A contributing factor was the inability or unwillingness of both sets of authorities to curb the filibusters. 

∆ “Republic of Sonoro” flag

An accessible and porous Mexican frontier
The area of the western border region—separating the new American state of California and the Territory of New Mexico (including Arizona) from the Mexican states of Baja California and Sonoro—was largely frontier land, lacking effective natural boundaries and sparsely populated at the time. The northern Sonoro part of the frontier in particular was a bit of a “no man’s land” and thus considered a “lawless zone”. The Mexican government lacked the resources and men to patrol the northern border properly. Indian raids from US territory into the Mexican frontier were common [Scott Martelle, in ‘Hundreds of 19th Century Americans Tried to Conquer Foreign Lands. This Man Was the Most Successful’, (Sarah Pruitt), History, 07-Mar-2019, www.history.com]. The government in Mexican City was doing little to redress the northern vulnerability, a plan to colonise (thus strengthening) Sonoro’s northern frontier, the Paredes Proyectos in 1850, was rejected by the Mexican National Congress. To the American filibusters, all of this made the prospect of invading Mexican territory more appealing.

∆ Filibuster militia in training (Source: Britannica).

US turns a blind eye to filibusters
Official complacency and a reluctant to commit effectively also prevailed on the US side. Hamstrung by a small army, the troop commitment by Washington to the border, which stretched 3,200 km from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, was in perpetual shortfall. With insufficient numbers to police the borders and ports, the government’s response to private filibuster ventures was confined to threats [‘The US Army on the Mexican Border: A Historical Perspective’, ((Matt M. Matthews), (The Long War Series Occasional Paper 22), www.apps.dtic.mil/]. Various neutrality acts forbid Americans from engaging in warfare with foreign countries, however its enforcement by Congress was sporadic and selective. At best, the US approached the task of curbing the wave of filibusters in a half-hearted fashion, ‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’, PBS, www.pbs.org/].

President Fillmore (Whig Party) was not not inclined towards expansionism himself, but he did little to curb the filibuster raids on Mexican soil. His successor Franklin Pierce (Democrat) was more open in his expansionist policies including attempting, unsuccessfully, to purchase Cuba from Spain (which many, especially Southern Americans thought would open the way to it becoming a pro-slavery state) [Joseph Allen Stout, Schemers and Dreamers: Filibustering in Mexico, 1848-1921, (2002)].

Southern comfort to the Filibusters
The filibuster movement elicited strong support from the South – in troops and in financial backing. Wealthy Southern landowners and agriculturalists helped finance expeditions into Mexico. José Carbajal, a Tejano, recruited Anglo-Texans including Texas Rangers for his 1851 armed incursion across the Rio Grande into Tamaulipas. Carabajal’s inducement to gain Texan participation was the opportunity to capture runaway slaves from Texas✪ [José María Jesús Carbajal‘, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

Texas, expanding slavery and the filibusters
As with US’ designs on Cuba, Texan land barons saw the prize of land south of the border as a means of securing independent, slave-owning states, thus tipping the balance in favour of pro-slavery states in the US. Chunks of Mexico and other Latin American countries such as Nicaragua were desirable to Texans as viable trading stations for the African slave trade, and as a cheaper source of labour than Texas [‘Texans and Filibusters in the 1850’s’, (Earl W. Fornell), Southwestern Historical Society, LIX(4), April 1956]. The model for an American colony in northern Mexico took inspiration from Sam Houston’s ‘liberation’ of Texas from Mexico [‘How Tennessee Adventurer William Walker became Dictator of Nicaragua in 1857′, (John E. Norvell), Middle Tennessee Journal of Genealogy and History, Vol. XXV, No 4, (Spring 2012), www.thenashvillecitycemetery.org].

∇ The Walker story gets the Hollywood treatment (1987)

William Walker and the “Independent Republic of Sonoro”
The best known of the American filibusters in the 1850s was William Walker. Tennessean Walker’s idea was to colonise Mexican territory in Baja California and Sonoro, where he sensed there was a power vacuum. With an armed force comprised mainly of Tennesseans and Kentuckians, Walker tried to establish first one then another self-declared (but unrecognised) republic. Walker’s attempted takeover was short-lived, meeting unexpected stiff resistance from the Mexican army and local citizens (Norvell).The Tennessean chancer’s venture ultimately floundered on poor planning (logistics problems, shortages of supplies, unfamiliarity with the territory). Forced to return to California Walker was put on trial for violating the US/Mexican Neutrality Act, but with American sympathy running high for Walker and for filibusterers in general he was swiftly acquitted in a travesty of a trial (Pruitt)🀾.

Nicaraguan adventure
This was a green light for Walker to roll the dice again in the hemisphere filibuster game, turning his attention to Nicaragua in 1855…this time however it wasn’t to end as happily. With a small army of mercenaries he invaded the Central American country and did succeed in usurping power and installing himself as “Dictator of Nicaragua”, and even securing recognition from President Pierce for his regime. However from that point on it went badly “pear-shaped” for Walker. By 1857 Walker had alienated locals as well as American shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt. A combined force from Costa Rica, Honduras and Nicaragua, bankrolled by Vanderbilt, routed Walker’s army and banished him. Imprudently, Walker made two more coup attempts in Central America before his notoriety caught up with him. The British, concerned that Walker’s fomenting of rebellion might destabilise its colonies in the Greater Caribbean, handed him over to the Honduran government who promptly executed him in 1860 [‘William Walker: King of the 19th Century Filibusters’, (Ron Soodalter), HistoryNet, www.historynet.com/].

(Source: www.wsj.com)

Endnote: Filibusters and Manifest Destiny
William Walker’s personality has been described as “a mix of hubris, ambition and nascent white supremacy” (Martelle, cited in Pruitt). The military men who followed him and other filibuster leaders were motivated by several considerations – a love of adventure, greed for personal gain and ideology. They like many contemporary Americans believed in the doctrine of “Manifest Destiny”, in the 19th century ingrained in American culture. This embodied the belief that it was an inalienable right of Americans to extend their civilisation across the continent (‘Feature the Filibuster Movement’)⎈.

PostScript: Historian Brian E May has made the interesting observation that the plague of filibustering expeditions had an counter-effect hampering the United States’ best efforts to empire-build in the hemisphere. The activities of filibusters, though they had widespread support within the US, he notes, damaged US foreign policy and limited its territorial expansion, almost in defiance of the locomotive of Manifest Destiny. The rebound from the filibusters’ intervention engendered hostility from foreign countries such as Canada and Great Britain, and Hispanic-Americans, who pushed back against US expansionism [A. James Fuller. ‘Reviewed Work. Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America, by Robert E. May, Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 22, No 4 (Winter 2002), pp.722-724. www.jstor.org/stable/3124776]🃗.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

✱ many of these has been lured to California by the prospect of gold discovery, these hopes disappointed, they turned their eyes south to other potential sources of enrichment, eg, news of gold and silver finds in Baja California

✪ Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, if Texan filibusters could capture territories in northern Mexico, it would make the reintroduction of slavery possible

🀾 Henry A Crabb, a schoolmate of Walker’s, followed him in a filibuster foray into Mexico, also making a failed attempt to colonise part of Sonoro in 1857 – claiming to “liberate the people of Sonoro” and suffering the same fate as Walker, execution at the hands of Mexican troops

⎈ as Nelson put it, “filibusters epitomised the romantic, muscular spirit of American adventure”, a sense of mission inspired by Manifest Destiny (Nelson)

🃗 May also reminds us that the increasing intensity of the criticism of the filibusters by the Federal government hardened Southern resolve to ultimately secede from the Union (Nelson)

Filibustering in the USA: Quintessentially American but Not Exclusively American

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Comparative politics, National politics, Politics, Regional History

Anyone following contemporary US politics would likely be familiar with the term ‘filibuster’ – the spectacle conjured up is of a politician, bunkering down, holding the Senate floor to ransom in an endless monologue. The object of such stonewalling is to perversely delay the passage of some piece or other of legislation they are opposed to. Many movie fans of the “Golden Age of Hollywood” cinema will recall the idealistic young ‘greenhorn’ senator (played by James Stewart) engaging in an agonising 24-hour, non-stop talking marathon to try to block corrupt legislation being passed…the junior senator droning on about the Constitution and the Bible before dramatically collapsing, exhausted, on a ‘bed’ of protest letters and telegrams (Mr Smith Goes to Washington, 1939).

(Illustration: Diana Morales/MPA)

The right to ‘speechify’: Extraneous and unrelated to the legislative matter at hand
The principle on which filibustering is predicated—that any senator should have the right to speak as long as necessary—has seen real-life politicians resort to reading material just as prosaic as the fictional Mr Smith’s tedious ‘talkathon’. Louisiana demagogue Huey Long punctuated recitations of Shakespeare and passages from the Constitution with readings of his favourite recipes – especially fried oysters and pot-likkers. Ted Cruz read Dr Seuss to his daughters while trying to stymie Obamacare. The negativity of filibustering is neatly summarised in Senate historian Donald Ritchie’s definition: a filibuster “is a minority of Senators who prevent the majority from casting a vote, knowing otherwise the majority would prevail” [‘Whatever Happened to the Old-Fashioned Jimmy Stewart-Style Filibuster?’, (Aaron Erlich), www.hnn.us/].

⇩ Huey Long (Source: www.npr.com)

Reining in its excesses
The impediment of senatorial filibustering—legislation delayed is legislation denied—led to attempts to curb its disruptiveness. Under the Wilson presidency, the Senate accepted a rule whereby a filibuster could be ended on the achievement of a two-thirds majority vote. In DC-speak this device is called invoking ‘cloture’. In 1975 the requirement was amended, necessitating only a three-fifths majority vote (ie, 60 votes out of the 100 senators) [‘Filibuster and Cloture’, United States Senate, www.senate.gov].

The device of the political filibuster, though quintessentially American, is equally a feature of legislatures of other Western democracies such as the UK, Australia, France and Canada※…and it’s a practice that goes way back to Ancient Rome and Cato the Younger’s all-day talk fests in the Roman Senate circa 60 BCE [‘The art of the filibuster: How do you talk for 24 hours straight?’, (Jon Kelly), BBC News Magazine, 12-Dec-2012, www.bbcnews.com].

⇧ The filibuster phenomena continues to provide political cartoonists in the US with endless inspiration
(Image: www.davegranlund.com)

꧂ ꧂ ꧂  ꧁ ꧁ ꧁

The other type of filibuster  

The etymology of ’filibuster’ dates from the late 16th century, it is first used in the sphere of Spain’s imperial possessions in the “New World”. The Spanish term filibustero⍟ described the activities of freelance buccaneers and pirates who plundered the riches of Spanish America (typified by Sir Francis Drake and his raid on Panama in 1573). ’Filibuster’ re-emerges in 19th century United States to refer to North American adventurers and ‘chancers’ who organised schemes and private militias in an attempt to take over foreign countries and territories in Latin America [May, Robert E. “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny: The United States Army as a Cultural Mirror”.  The Journal of American History, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp.857-886. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2078794. Accessed 10 Oct. 2020].

Pirate gold doubloons from the Americas ⇩

(Photo: NY Post)

Burr, godfather of US filibustering
The first tentative steps of US filibustering in the early period of the republic probably starts with Vice-President Aaron Burr in the first decade of the century. After Burr’s political career imploded in 1804 as a result of his killing of former Treasurer secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel, the disgraced VP is believed to have hatched a plan to invade and seize Spanish territories in the west of the North American continent. The scheme was never implemented, however Burr was subsequently tried for treason but acquitted [‘The Burr Conspiracy’, National Counterintelligence Center, www.fas.org/]◰. Other filibusters followed Burr’s lead…early American adventurers like James Long and Augustus Magee formed expeditions to try to wrest control of Texas from the Spanish colonialists.

⇩ Aaron Burr (Image credit: Bettmann/Getty Images/HowStuffWorks)

Manifest Destiny west and south
The activity really took off after US territorial gains at Mexico’s expense stemming from the 1846-48 war and the discovery of gold in California. In the 1850s filibuster expeditions became a regular occurrence as ambitious US citizens, schemers and “soldiers of fortune”, launched raid and raid mainly on northern Mexico but also Central American lands in an attempt to appropriate territory for themselves or in the name of the US. Venezuelan-born Narcisco López was one of the first, trying unsuccessfully with the assistance of American southerners to capture Cuba from the Spanish on three separate occasions. Most of these filibusters were inspired by (or found legitimacy for their actions) in the emerging credo of Manifest Destiny, the belief that Americans possessed  a kind of “quasi-divine Providence” to expand into new territories (be they held by native populations or Mexicans), annex them and thus spread American democracy to them [‘Manifest destiny’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

 

۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵ 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥 〥۵

※ by no means is it confined to Western democracies

⍟ filibustero – from the Dutch vrijbuiter, meaning ‘freebooter’, ‘pirate’ or ‘robber’

◰ Burr was also largely responsible for the introduction into the Senate of the above form of filibuster, the procrastination ploy