• Race, Empire, and Capital in St. Louis From William Clark to Michael Brown
• Jacob F. Lee (bio)

On August 9, 2014, police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri, one of the many small cities carved out of the St. Louis metropolitan area. Brown was jaywalking near his grandmother’s house when Wilson stopped him. After a short encounter, Brown lay dead. In the months that followed, journalists and investigators uncovered a program of for-profit policing through which the city of Ferguson funded its operations by citing and fining its Black residents. Their reports would reveal to the world what Black people in Ferguson already knew: Brown’s death was the consequence of racist wealth extraction through hyper-policing. A crowd gathered on Canfield Drive as Brown’s body remained in the middle of street for hour after hour, and soon that crowd sparked an uprising against the forces that had killed Brown. As Walter Johnson writes, “On August 9, 2014, the disinherited of St. Louis rose again to take control of their history” (p. 431).

In The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States, Johnson examines the two centuries of St. Louis history that culminated in Brown’s death and the Ferguson Uprising. The dynamics in Ferguson in August 2014 were the city’s past in microcosm. As Johnson explains, “The history of the city turns out to be less a matter of timeless midwestern conservatism than of reaction: to the consequential efforts of conquered, stigmatized, poor, and radical people to transform their lives and their society into the image of a fuller humanity” (p. 4). Radicalism and reaction have long existed cheek by jowl in St. Louis. “Ferguson”— as a shorthand both for police violence and for the Black Lives Matter movement—embodied that antagonistic, often violent history stretching back to Lewis and Clark.

Throughout The Broken Heart of America, Johnson displays his skills as a writer and a synthesist. He nimbly unspools a sprawling, complex story about “genocide, removal, and the expropriation and control of land—all justified in the name of white supremacy” (p. 6). No one familiar with Johnson’s [End Page 149] previous books or his essays in venues like Boston Review will be surprised that his writing is evocative and often moving. As a synthesis, Johnson’s book rests on two foundations: the rich body of scholarship on St. Louis by Henry W. Berger, Andrea S. Boyles, Cecil Brown, Keona K. Ervin, Colin Gordon, Peter J. Kastor, Clarence Lang, Lisa Martino-Taylor, Malcolm McLaughlin, Robert W. Rydell, and Lea VanderVelde, among others, as well as the theoretical insights of W.E.B. Du Bois and Cedric Robinson. Johnson’s analysis is particularly indebted to Robinson’s ideas about “racial capitalism,” which Johnson succinctly summarizes as “imperial dispossession and capitalist exploitation” rationalized by white supremacy (p. 6).¹ At its best, Johnson’s book fuses broad analytical frameworks and the specific history of St. Louis to demonstrate that, from William Clark to Michael Brown, “empire, slavery, and segregation have been distinct aspects of a single common history” (p. 10).

Johnson begins his story in 1804—the year that the United States took possession of St. Louis following the Louisiana Purchase. Soon after, the city became the “eastern hub” of the U.S. empire (p. 44). From his office in St. Louis, William Clark, most famous for his role in the Corps of Discovery, negotiated treaties with Indian nations that dispossessed them of more than 400 million acres of land. These cessions laid the groundwork for the federal policy of Indian Removal as well as the “settler imperialism” of white agrarians celebrated by Clark’s patron, Thomas Jefferson (p. 39). One of Missouri’s first U.S. Senators, Thomas Hart Benton picked up the mantle of Jeffersonian empire and led the charge to distribute these lands to white settlers as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Then, in...

• 圣路易斯的种族，帝国和首都从威廉·克拉克到迈克尔·布朗
• 雅各布·李（生物）

2014年8月9日，警察达伦·威尔逊（Darren Wilson）在密苏里州弗格森（Ferguson）的坎菲尔德路（Canfield Drive）开枪杀死了迈克尔·布朗（Michael Brown），这是从圣路易斯大都市区雕刻出来的众多小城市之一。威尔逊拦住布朗时，布朗正在他祖母家附近乱穿马路。短暂相遇后，布朗死了。在随后的几个月中，记者和调查人员发现了一项营利性警务计划，通过该计划，弗格森市通过援引和罚款黑人居民为其运营提供资金。他们的报告将向世界揭示弗格森的黑人已经知道的一切：布朗之死是通过超级警务夺取种族主义财富的结果。布朗的尸体一小时接一个小时地呆在街中央，人群聚集在坎菲尔德路（Canfield Drive）上，不久，那群人引发了一场起义，对杀死布朗的部队进行了起义。正如沃尔特·约翰逊（Walter Johnson）写道：“在2014年8月9日，被剥夺了圣路易斯风俗的人再次站起来控制他们的历史”（第431页）。

在《美国破碎的心》中：圣路易斯与美国的暴力历史约翰逊研究了圣路易斯的两个世纪历史，最终导致布朗的去世和弗格森起义。2014年8月，弗格森（Ferguson）的变化是这座城市的缩影。正如约翰逊所解释的那样：“对于历史悠久的中西部保守主义而言，这座城市的历史与其说是反应，不如说是对被征服，被污名化，贫穷和激进的人们进行的相应努力，以将其生活和社会转变为世俗的形象。更加人性化”（第4页）。在圣路易斯，激进主义和反应长期存在。“弗格森”（Ferguson）-既是警察暴力活动又是“黑住事”运动的简称-体现了对立的，经常是暴力的历史，可以追溯到刘易斯和克拉克。

在整个《美国伤心》中，约翰逊展示了自己的作家和综合能力。他轻描淡写地发表了一个关于“种族灭绝，搬迁以及对土地的征用和控制，所有这些都以白人至上为名”的复杂而复杂的故事（第6页）。在诸如《波士顿评论》之类的场所，没有人熟悉约翰逊的[End Page 149]以前的书籍或他的论文。他的作品令人回味无穷，并且经常感动，他会感到惊讶。作为综合，约翰逊的书有两个基础：亨利·W·伯杰，安德里亚·博伊尔，塞西尔·布朗，基奥纳·K·埃文，科林·戈登，彼得·J·卡斯托尔，克拉伦斯·朗， Lisa Martino-Taylor，Malcolm McLaughlin，Robert W.Rydell和Lea VanderVelde等人，以及WEB Du Bois和Cedric Robinson的理论见解。约翰逊的分析特别归结于鲁滨逊关于“种族资本主义”的思想，约翰逊将其概括为“白人至上主义合理化的”帝国主义剥夺和资本主义剥削”（第6页）。^1个约翰逊的书在最好的情况下融合了广泛的分析框架和圣路易斯的特定历史，以证明从威廉·克拉克到迈克尔·布朗，“帝国，奴隶制和种族隔离是单一共同历史的不同方面”（第10页） ）。

约翰逊（Johnson）于1804年开始他的故事，那年是美国在路易斯安那州购买之后占有圣路易斯的那一年。此后不久，这座城市成为美国帝国的“东部枢纽”（第44页）。威廉·克拉克（William Clark）在他位于圣路易斯的办公室中，以在探索团中的作用而闻名，他与印度各国家谈判了条约，这些条约将他们剥夺了超过4亿英亩的土地。这些让步为印度驱逐的联邦政策以及克拉克的赞助人托马斯·杰斐逊（Thomas Jefferson）庆祝的白人耕种者的“定居者帝国主义”奠定了基础（第39页）。密苏里州的第一批美国参议员之一，托马斯·哈特·本顿（Thomas Hart Benton）夺取了杰斐逊帝国的地标，并负责将这些土地尽快，尽可能便宜地分配给白人定居者。然后，在...