America's Grand Faustian Bargain: Alexander Mikaberidze on How the Louisiana Purchase Made the United States

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. It's Friday, July the 3rd. Just one more day until the big celebration, the 250th anniversary of the American Republic, July the 4th, 1776 And when one thinks of the last 250 years of American history, one could argue that the decisive moment wasn't so much the War of Independence, but the Louisiana Purchase that happened a few years after Independence. And as it happens today, there's a new book out on the Louisiana Purchase by my guest, Alexander Mikaberidze, who is a professor of history at LSU and is joining us today from Freeport, Louisiana, where he lives. Alex, happy Independence Day. It's tomorrow. You're originally from Georgia. How are you going to celebrate Georgia in the Caucasus rather than Georgia in America? How are you going to celebrate Independence Day tomorrow?

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (1:40)
Well, first of all, happy Independence Day. And thank you so much for having me on your wonderful show. And I do it traditional kind of all-American way, hot dogs and burgers and getting together with friends and discussing kind of how fortunate really in many ways we are to be here.
I've been in the United States for 26 years, almost 26 years. And this has been quite a journey. And everything I have is really because of the wonderful people of this country that I now call home.

**Andrew Keen** (2:21)
I'm not American, Alex, but I'm thanking you on behalf of the American nation. Your new book, which is published by Oxford University Press, has the subtitle, The Grand Bargain and the Making of America. Could one indeed argue that it is the critical moment in the creation of the United States? Had it not happened, you certainly wouldn't be there because you'd probably be living in Spain or France or some independent Latin American, Central American state.
And the history of America or the United States would have been entirely different?

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (2:57)
Absolutely. Certainly Oxford University thinks so because it has a series called Pivotal Moments of American History for which this book has been written and having spent the last almost six years now working on it, I certainly believe that it is one of the most important moments, not just in American history, but in fact, I would say in world history.
And there are so many different ways you can approach this claim. It certainly was an event that over the next or subsequent decades and generations reshaped the American imagination and really stirred the ideas of the uniqueness of American experiment. You know, the Monroe Doctrine, for example, if nothing else, that came out just shortly after the Louisiana Purchase is clearly rooted in the discussions that began in Louisiana Purchase.

**Andrew Keen** (3:58)
We'll get to the Monroe Doctrine in a few minutes. But one of the things that I think surprises people who aren't experts on this is when one thinks of the Louisiana Purchase, of course, one thinks, well, the US purchased Louisiana from the French. But when one looks at the map, it's the entire Midwest. I mean, it's about a third of the continent of the United States. Give us some numbers, Alex, on the size of the purchase in terms of the acquisition price and the size of the land that the United States actually acquired.

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (4:40)
So let me kind of divide my answer in two ways. One is what ultimately we agree as historians and maybe as decision-makers, agree upon what the extent of the territory that is acquired. And today, the number that we all accept is 828,000 square miles, which is about 530 million acres of territory. But at the height of American claims as in 1803 to about 1806, the United States actually claimed almost 1.3 million acres of land, which is far larger than the 530 million that we ultimately talked about.
So, hold on. Can I repeat myself or is it?

**Andrew Keen** (5:31)
No, you're allowed to repeat yourself. Did you make a mistake?

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (5:35)
Yeah, I think what I said is 1.3 million acres, when it's 1.3 million square miles as opposed to 828,000 square miles. So, that's it.

**Andrew Keen** (5:48)
Coming back to the map, I mean, maybe I'll put you on the spot in terms of numbers. I mean, it's a huge amount of land. I mean, even today when we look at it, it's the heart of the United States, it includes all of Oklahoma, Kansas, both Dakotas, much of Montana, Wyoming, Iowa. It's an astonishing amount of land.

**Alexander Mikaberidze** (6:11)
It's 13 states, to be precise, that ultimately kind of were formed from it. But the reason I'm talking about discrepancies is because one of the fascinating things about the Louisiana Purchase is that when it was negotiated in sign, ultimately the borders were not specified. It took United States another 16 years of prolonged negotiations and arm twisting to actually settle the boundaries. As part of that discussion and debate over what exactly we acquired in 1803, for example, one of the hot topics was whether Texas was included. In fact, if you look at the earlier maps of Louisiana, at least how France envisioned Louisiana territory, the border ran on the Rio Grande.