Interior’s Exterior: The State, Mining Companies, and Resource Ideologies in the Point Four Program*

Abstract

“Interior’s Exterior” investigates an unexamined material lineage of the Point Four program, the foreign policy initiated by President Truman in 1949 to offer technical assistance to the developing world. Unlikely foreign diplomats hailing from the Department of the Interior spearheaded efforts within participating Point Four countries to target and unearth foreign minerals. Decision makers rationalized the hidden mineral agenda within development by citing two resource-based ideologies, “resource globalism” and “resource primitivism,” which posited that minerals by nature evaded national sovereignty and primitive people’s understanding. To enact this plan, Interior technicians utilized procedures, from geological reconnaissance to juridical reform, to develop new commodity markets and ease foreign investments. Such procedures were historically and simultaneously used in the domestic context in order to dispossess Native Americans of their minerals. Building upon the history of U.S. settler colonialism, Interior field agents materially re-ordered foreign landscapes in preparation for the globalization of American capitalism.