August 18, 2006
Bat Guano Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 03:00 PM EST The era of American imperialism began 150 years ago today, on August 18, 1856. That’s when Congress passed a law enabling the United States to seize territory overseas to secure its supply of a commodity that was vital to America’s industry and military. The commodity in question was the excrement of birds and bats.
Guano, as this substance is called, is rich in nitrates and phosphates, making it an excellent fertilizer as well as a fine source of saltpeter for gunpowder. In the early 1850s, reports began to arrive of uninhabited islands in the Pacific that were rich in guano. To a nation that was expanding rapidly onto increasingly marginal farmland, they were an irresistible target for acquisition.
Over the next several decades American companies found, claimed, and sometimes mined guano on more than 50 islands. Some were simply abandoned when the guano played out; others were settled and remain U.S. territory to this day. In the latter group is Midway Atoll, which played an important role in trans-Pacific transportation for decades and was the scene of an immensely important, momentum-shifting battle with Japan in 1942.
In fact, as an article in our sister publication Invention & Technology recently noted, guano has been responsible for many major events in world history, including Civil War naval clashes and an 1879 war between Chile and Bolivia that the Bolivians are still sore about. In the 1950s, long after the guano boom was over, one company built a tramway a mile and a half long across the Grand Canyon to extract centuries’ worth of bat droppings from a cave. Even in the space age, bat guano was important enough as a propellant that NASA made a special requisition for it during the Mercury and Gemini programs.
To be sure, America’s first venture into empire building was fairly benign, being restricted to uninhabited islands that were not under any nation’s jurisdiction. Later, when people and disputed territorial claims entered the mix, things got stickier. Yet even today, nations contest possession of barren rock outcroppings in order to establish ownership of underwater oil fields, occasionally firing shots in the process. Whether it’s wood, fish, crude oil, beaver skins, or any other indispensable commodity, people have always been willing to travel long distances and use all the machinery of national sovereignty to secure it. The droppings of flying creatures are just one of the more unlikely examples of this rule.
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