The USA is , by passably much all metrics , the most powerful state in the world right now . It hasby farthe largest titular gross domestic product and GDP per capita ; thestrongest and best - fund war machine ; a leading character in just about any international organization or process , and franklyincrediblecultural seal .
It was n’t always this manner . Go back 250 years or so , and the US was little more than an upstart nation , with older countries like France or Great Britainduking it outover who was most powerful .
So when – and how – did the balance of power geological fault so dramatically ? We ’ll give you a clue : it has a lot more to do with poop than you ’d bear .
Smelling like roses
visualize the shot : it ’s the mid-19th century , and the globe has go guano for , well , guano . “ Basically what hap was that in the first half of the nineteenth century , Europeans and Latin Americans work out out that the phosphate - rich deposits of seabird droppings that had accumulated on many small Pacific islands make prominent fertilizer , ” explicate Christina Duffy Ponsa - Kraus , a professor of effectual history at Columbia University .
“ The stuff is like magic , and farmers everywhere are suddenly clamoring to get their hand on some , ” Ponsa - Kraus toldCabinet mag in 2010 . “ Everybody is look for new sources , there ’s net ton of fake guano trading hands – it ’s pandemonium . ”
Now , the best of the estimable in term of bird poop came from Peru : it “ stand alone in terms of the N content , ” Mauricio Betancourt , generator of arecent paperon the persona of guano in US history , toldScience Newsthis week , “ because of its location in a property [ … ] where itvery rarely rain . ”
It ’s not so much that ironical conditions make you poop more N , he explained – it ’s more that the guano does n’t get its rude nitrogen levels washed away by rainwater or humidness . That makes it capital fertilizer , since nitrogen is akey componentof chlorophyll – the green pigment that help plant life photosynthesize – as well as making up part of the compounds that regulate plant life development and development .
Add to that dirt cocktail the high levels of other nutrients that came from the birds ’ rich equatorial marine diet , and you had the unadulterated recipe for nothing less than a gold rush . But in brown .
“ Guano digger build settlements on [ Peru ’s ] island , ” Betancourt , who is an environmental sociologist at Washington and Lee University in Lexington , Virginia , told Science News . “ You had 100 of people live on there for 40 year . ”
“ [ It ] scared the dame , ” he added . “ There are no precise estimates of the size of the populations back then . in all probability there were about 50 million birds . Today , there are a few hundred thousand birds . ”
An empire built on sh…akylegal terminology
As you might imagine , this was hardly a sustainable modelling – even the most industrious skirt can onlypoopso much , after all . And so , as Peru ’s poop mines started running juiceless , nations that had previously rely on the South American country ’s exportation begin look for alternative solutions for the doo - doo shortage .
At first , they were pretty mutual sensation : if Peru ’s the skinny is gone , how about Chile ’s ? But when even that nation ’s reserves started running juiceless , things got more dastardly , and in 1879 , back by guano - hungry Britain , Chile go to warfare with Peru and Bolivia in the War of the Pacific .
“ The warfare was won by Chile , who , back by Britain , annex Peru ’s nitrate ( and lithium ) state of Tarapacá , never to allow it again , ” Betancourt wrote in his newspaper publisher . “ Likewise , Bolivia ceded Antofagasta ( and thus its access to the ocean ) to Chile , which to this day it still claim . ”
Still , this would be far from the only external expansionism driven by desire for the doo . Enter the US , who , rather than set up a proxy war to ensure its approach toguano , opted for a more … unilateral overture .
“ Farmers in the United States start pressuring Congress to pass some sort of legislation that will meliorate domestic entree to this full of life excrement , ” Ponsa - Kraus explain . “ The result is the Guano Islands Act , lawmaking that authorized the United States to take control of a guano island if a citizen let on it and undertook certain action to take possession of it . ”
While the idea of the US absorbing islands into its dominion might seem erstwhile hat to us today , what with the being of places like Hawaii , Puerto Rico , Samoa , Guam , and so on , the passage of the Guano Islands Act was amazingly controversial at the time .
“ The whole matter made a few citizenry pretty nervous , ” observe Ponsa - Kraus . “ Was all this , they wondered , some sort of occult plot of land to start set up overseas island colonies ? There ’s immunity to this notion in various one-fourth . ”
Now , what it mean in expert terminus was … not very much , actually . Which was by design – the US wanted the guano on these islands , but not any duty for them : “ You did n’t want to go out and take reign over all these messy places , ” Ponsa - Kraus say . “ From a sound position , that would be a full painfulness ! ”
The upshot , though , was straightaway : in total , something like 100 guano island were plug for the US , with 10 percentage remaining possessions of the country even today . And they ’re not just rocks covered in horseshit , either : over the years , many have been used as military bases for the US , with one – Johnson Atoll , grow through the Act in March 1858 – being used during the Vietnam war to hive away the chemical weaponAgent Orange .
“ The Guano Islands Act [ … ] arguably laid the sound groundwork for American imperialism , ” Ponsa - Kraus argued . “ [ It ] created a very significant and new kind of space [ … ] a weird sort of non - place , from a constitutional position . These islands ‘ belong ’ to the US , but they are n’t really a ‘ part ’ of the United States . ”
A shifty deal
The US ’s indisposition to poke out its border into insular colony did n’t last long . In 1898 , having won the Spanish - American War , it suddenly found itself in possession of a bunch of new small island dust across the Earth : Puerto Rico , the Philippines , and Guam , plus , bet on who you ask , Cuba . Suddenly , multitude needed an answer to the motion : what do wedowith these property ?
Of naturally , you might think that any annexe of your soil is estimable – more land , more people , more in force , asAlexander the Greatonce said ( you sleep together , probably ) . But this was the 19th one C , andpeople werecrazyracist , so “ in fact , the accomplishment of all these islands [ … ] leads to something cheeseparing to a constitutive crisis , ” Ponsa - Kraus said . “ If they are territories , then are they extend to become states ? But they are full of hot - full-blooded , dark-skinned types ! The eugenicists , among others , do n’t like it . ”
The solution ? Well , masses figured , how about we just do what we did with the guano islands ?
“ In the end , the court finesses it , and the Department of Justice conspire up a distinction between two kinds of US soil : ‘ incorporated ’ ( meaning ‘ en route to statehood , ’ i.e. , ‘ containing a good turn of Caucasic Protestants with acceptable mesa manner ’ ) and ‘ unincorporated ’ ( intend , more or less , ‘ the US is in charge here ’ ) , ” Ponsa - Kraus explain .
“ The latter category was basically invented to give constitutional blessing to the US directly governing a connection of colonial island around the existence : they were ‘ unincorporated territories ’ , ” she continued . “ In an international good sense , they were part of the US , but they were n’t really ‘ the US , ’ if you know what I mean . ”
The next guano?
And so , perhaps accidentally , and certainly pretty obliquely , the US had gotten itself an empire – and all thanks to the undeniable need for guano . But are the nation ’s borders going to grow any further in search of dung ?
Well , no . Lucky for us – and the hiss of Peru – we do n’t call for to reap guano any longer . “ Fritz Haber , a German pill roller , discovered a chemic reaction in the other 1900s [ … ] whereby he could use molecular nitrogen gas from the ambiance [ and ] combine it with H in a very muscularity intensive chemical substance response to get ammonia , ” Betancourt explain to Science News .
“ Basically , he discovered the way to synthesise synthetic fertilizer from nitrogen in the tune , ” he sound out , “ which is , to this day , the process whereby most synthetic plant food in the public is produced . ” Today , pretty much the only farmers using Peruvian guano are in Peru – they “ apply it to coffee bean , ” Betancourt said , which “ gets exported to Europe and to the US . ”
But that happy conclusion may not last . The world may not need guano any longer – butit does take atomic number 3 , and lots of it . And one of the best places to get that special mineral is … well , middling much exactly the same area as all that guano .
Exactly what that means for the historically embattled neighborhood “ remains to be see , ” Betancourt write in his newspaper . “ Will a few nations keep turn a profit from and glean the ecological and economic benefit of present - day trade ? Will the twenty - first - century empires succeed at colonize Mars and accomplish what Cecil Rhodes could only dream of 130 years ago ? ”
“ Or will humanness come through at keep up our only habitation as a safe , adequate , and operating space for our specie and the uncounted others with whom we partake it ? ” he asked . “ Only time will recite . ”
