American Empire: A Global History

by A. G. Hopkins

Overview

A new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its head

American Empire is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the United States. Taking readers from the colonial era to today, A. G. Hopkins shows how, far from diverging, the United States and Western Europe followed similar trajectories throughout this long period, and how America's dependency on Britain and Europe extended much later into the nineteenth century than previously understood. A sweeping narrative spanning three centuries, American Empire goes beyond the myth of American exceptionalism to place the United States within the wider context of the global historical forces that shaped Western empires and the world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691196879
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	08/27/2019
Series:	America in the World , #25
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	1008
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 2.30(d)

About the Author

A. G. Hopkins is Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge and former Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include Global History, Globalization in World History, and British Imperialism, 1688–2015.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xiii

Preface xv

Prologue: Lessons of Liberation: Iraq, 1915-1921 1

Chapter 1 Three Crises and an Outcome 10

The Choice among Alternatives 10

Beyond "The National Ideology of American Exceptionalism" 15

Empire: "A Rose by Any Other Name…"? 21

Globalization and Empires 25

Time and Motion 32

"The Growing Labours of the Lengthen'd Way" 41

Part I Decolonization and Dependence, 1756-1865 43

Chapter 2 The Advance and Retreat of the Military-Fiscal State 45

Cause and Chronology 45

A Great Convergence? 48

The Glorious Revolution, and the Exceptional Military-Fiscal State 53

The Evolution of Britain's Military-Fiscal State 60

The New Global Order 64

War, Reconstruction, and Reform 71

Britain: "The Union of Permanence and Change" 76

"A Vast Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets" 83

"The Image of the Past Projected on the Mist of the Unknown" 90

Chapter 3 From Revolution to Constitution 95

Harry Washington and the Emerging Global Order 95

Toward "The New Colony-System" 98

John Company at Work 105

A Revolution of Declining Expectations 107

"An Indissoluble Union of the States under One Federal Head" 123

"Spectacles of Turbulence and Contention" 129

"Not an Empire, but the Project of an Empire" 135

Chapter 4 The Struggle for Independence 142

Midnight's Children 142

The Rhetoric and the Reality of Revolution 146

Dilemmas of Dependent Development 158

Cultural Continuities 172

"Converting the Forests of a Wilderness into the Favourite Mansion of Liberty" 185

Chapter 5 Wars of Incorporation 191

"The Great Nation of Futurity" 191

"The Bright Idea of Property, of Exclusive Right" 194

1812: The Second War of Independence? 208

"America Knows How to Crush as Well as How to Expand" 212

"An Irrepressible Conflict between Opposing and Enduring Forces" 217

"For God's Sake, Let Us If Possible Keep Out Of It" 228

War and Peace Revisited 234

Part II Modernity and Imperialism, 1865-1914 239

Chapter 6 Uneven Development and Imperial Expansion 241

"The Earth, Restive, Confronts a New Era" 241

"Via Pecunia": The Road to Modem Globalization 243

"O, My Brothers, Love Your Country" 249

The Great Deflation 255

Globalization and "New" Imperialism 261

Lions, Jackals, and the Scramble for Empire 267

"This Is a New Age; The Age of Social Advancement Not of Feudal Sports" 281

Chapter 7 Achieving Effective Independence 287

"In the Midst of Confusion and Distress" 287

"All Has Been Lost, Except Office or the Hope of It" 289

"Beautiful Credit! The Foundation of Modern Society" 306

The Culture of Cosmopolitan Nationalism 316

From "Union" to "America" 332

Chapter 8 Acquiring an Unexceptional Empire 337

"Our World Opportunity, World Duty, and World Glory" 337

The Battle Over the Wars of 1898 339

Don Quixote's Last Ride 343

Mobilizing the Means of Destruction 352

"The Irresistible Tendency to Expansion… Seems Again in Operation" 355

"We Come as Ministering Angels, Not as Despots" 362

"Destiny, Divinity and Dollars" 373

Chapter 9 Insular Perspectives on an Intrusive World 383

"The Wheels of the Modern Political Juggernaut" 383

Sugaring the Pill 386

Cuba: "A Lot of Degenerates Absolutely Devoid of Honor and Gratitude" 390

Puerto Rico: "Into History as a Picnic" 399

The Philippines: "Land that I Idolise, Sorrow of my Sorrow" 403

Hawai'i: "A People Fast Passing Away" 417

Wars of Choice 427

Intermission Tarzan's Mirror to Modernity 437

Part III Empires, and International Disorder, 1914-1959 441

Chapter 10 The Modern Imperial System: From Conquest to Collapse 443

The "American Century"? 443

Isolation or Integration? 446

World War I and the Return to Normality 450

"One of the Greatest Economic Catastrophes of Modern History" 456

The War to Break and Re-Make Empires 465

The Second Colonial Occupation 470

Liberation-Colonial Style 483

The End of the Affair 489

Chapter 11 Ruling the Forgotten Empire 494

Buyers' Remorse 494

"A Greater England with a Nobler Destiny" 497

The Modernizing Mission 504

Owning an Empire: Congress and the Constitution 509

Lobbies and Liberties 512

"A Course of Tuition under a Strong and Guiding Hand" 521

"Hardly a Ripple of Failure upon the Stream of Our Success" 530

Prospective 533

Chapter 12 Caribbean Carnival 539

Pleasure Islands 539

Puerto Rico: "An Example of the Best Methods of Administering Our Insular Possessions" 543

Cuba: "That Infernal Little Republic" 559

"Now, No Longer Can We Be Unmoved" 588

Chapter 13 Paradise in the Pacific 592

"Where Skies of Blue Are Calling Me" 593

"Hawai'i: A World of Happiness in an Island of Peace" 594

The Philippines: "Substituting the Mild Sway of Justice and Right for Arbitrary Rule" 607

"Ours Not to Rest Till Our Banner Wave" 632

The Insular Empire in Retrospect 635

Chapter 14 "The Twilight of Confused Colonialism" 639

"Surrendering Authority and Retaining Responsibility" 639

The Global Setting 641

Holding On 643

Protection in the Pacific 649

Coercion and Collaboration in the Caribbean 657

Moving On 662

Progress in the Pacific? 669

Contrasts in the Caribbean 674

Conclusion: "A Shining Example of the American Way for the Entire Earth" 683

Part IV The Outcome: Postcolonial Globalization 689

Chapter 15 Dominance and Decline in the Postcolonial Age 691

"The One Duty We Owe to History Is to Rewrite It" 691

Globalization and Empires 692

Postcolonial Globalization 696

The United States: The Aspiring Hegemon 707

Captain America: To Be Continued? 721

Epilogue: Lessons of Liberation: Iraq, 2003-2011 730

Notes 739

Index 933

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Compelling, provocative, and learned. This book is a stunning and sophisticated reevaluation of the American empire. Hopkins tells an old story in a truly new way—American history will never be the same again."—Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office

"One of the great British historians of our time reinterprets U.S. history from a truly global perspective, showing how the formation and international rise of the United States was entwined with processes of imperial expansion and global integration. This is a game-changing book that reveals as never before how the United States has fit into global patterns of historical change and development. American Empire is required reading for anyone interested in how we have arrived at our present state of international instability."—Jay Sexton, author of The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America

"With wit and enormous erudition, Hopkins offers us a new view on the phenomenon of the United States in global history, from its colonial origins to the Iraq War, with special attention to how it became itself a colonial power in the Caribbean and Pacific. The originality and power of American Empire begins in its demand that the United States was a postcolonial empire: it both resisted and imitated British and European power, even while it denied such influence and asserted its exceptionality. It is both a foundational work for a new American imperial history and a demonstration of how the problem of the United States can make us think in fresh ways about the broader history of empire and globalization."—Richard Drayton, author of Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the "Improvement" of the World

"Hopkins has written a remarkable, learned work that makes its central point well and provides numerous leads for future scholarship. He argues that American empire can be understood only within the dynamics of globalization and worldwide imperial formation and contestation. American Empire is likely to become a standard book in U.S. and world history."—Ian Tyrrell, author of Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt's America

"Hopkins situates the history of the United States within a broader global history, overcoming the confines of exceptionalist thought and connecting developments in American empire to a narrative that encompasses British and European imperialism as well. This is an ambitious work."—Julian Go, author of Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present

Editorial Reviews

One of BBC History Magazine's Books of the Year

From the Publisher

12/11/2017
Hopkins (British Imperialism, 1688–2015), emeritus professor of Commonwealth history at Cambridge, highlights the imperial context that indelibly shaped political change in the U.S., both at its founding in 1776 and during its late 19th-century overseas expansion. The roots of the drive toward the Pacific, Hopkins contends, can be found not in the exceptional character of American expansionism, but in the legacy of the “military-fiscal” states of 18th-century Europe. This legacy bequeathed to the American colonies an emphasis on land rights as well as an evolving notion of political sovereignty that would allow them to defeat the British Empire and become the world’s first decolonized nation. Hopkins is a master of storytelling on a grand scale, and the narrative abounds with moments—the little-known life story of Harry Washington, one of George Washington’s slaves; the siege of British-occupied Kut, Iraq, in 1915—that resonate across the centuries. But the chapters devoted to U.S. history sit uneasily in the context of the volume as a whole. Rather than connecting back to the book’s imperial themes, they read as textbook-level summaries that bear little relation to the complex imperial networks that Hopkins sketches. This is a good book, if overly long, and Hopkins’s call to read U.S. history as imperial history is hardly new. Maps. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

2017-11-12
A doggedly detailed history of imperial America, beginning before the establishment of the republic and continuing to the present.There's more than one way to found an empire, which, writes Hopkins (Emeritus, History/Univ. of Cambridge; editor: Global History: Interactions Between the Universal and the Local, 2006, etc.), "is a species of the genus expansion." In the instance of the Roman and British systems, imperial power was imposed from outside by way of conquest and annexation, though with a few exceptions—e.g., Scotland was "acquired principally by negotiation and depended on local magnates to manage indigenous populations." The word "manage" is particularly meaningful, for the author's tome is largely a species in the genus economic history, and his principal concerns are the economic forces that propel and sustain empire. In the American case, empire was built in very modest measure on the actual acquisition of land—Hawaii being a strong case in point, one that figures prominently in the narrative as an economic and geopolitical prize—but more so on the hegemonic expansion of economic patronage. The collapse of tariffs and other market barriers enabled the spread of Pax Americana during the period between the Civil War and World War I, when, having "decolonized" by shaking off the last vestiges of membership in the British system, the U.S. became a power and then superpower. There is some question about how effective America has been as an imperial power. Certainly, Americans do not perceive of themselves as being part of an imperialist system, and isolationism is a constant thread in the nation's history, for which reasons Henry Luce's formulation of the last one as the "American Century" really doesn't kick in until 1945. Still, there's good cause for Hopkins to begin his vast book with the British experience in Iraq, a place to which more than one empire has gone to die, and to place the American experience in turn in the larger context of empires across history.Ambitious though overly long; some streamlining would have been welcome. Still, a definitive account of a complex subject that's hard to pin down.

Kirkus Reviews