America’s First Asian Fantasy

In 1846, Senator Thomas Hart Benton (D-MO) gave a speech on the Senate floor titled “The Destiny of the Race.” This fundamental articulation of Manifest Destiny and its sibling white supremacy not only justifies American expansion around the world, but reads like the nation’s first Asian sex fantasy. In part:

The van of the Caucasian race now top the Rocky Mountains, and spread down to the shores of the Pacific. In a few years, a great population will grow up there, luminous with the accumulated lights of European and American civilization. Their presence in such a position cannot be without its influence upon eastern Asia….The sun of civilization must shine across the sea; socially and commercially, the van of the Caucasians, and the rear of the Mongolians must intermix. They must talk together, and trade together, and marry together. Commerce is a great civilizer–social intercourse is great–and marriage greater. The White and Yellow races can marry together….Moral and intellectual superiority will do the rest; the White race will take the ascendant.

The van of the Caucasians and the rear of the Mongolians indeed.

Part of what Benton is doing here is basically providing an intellectual justification for the great taboo of American history–interracial sex because he so clearly means white men and Asian women while providing assurance that some sort of mongrel race like the Mexicans (which is how antebellum Americans viewed Mexicans) will not develop for long, thanks to the obvious superiority of Euro-American culture and blood.

I grabbed this speech out of a textbook years ago when I was first writing lectures and came across it again today when reviewing some lecture notes. Some other excerpts from this speech are here, although not the entire thing.