America: The New Imperialism

America: The New Imperialism PDF Author: Victor G. Kiernan
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789609992
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 559

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Book Description
The invasion and occupation of Iraq have sparked considerable discussion about the nature of American imperialism, but most of it is focused on the short term. The classical historical approach of this book provides a convincing and compelling analysis of the different phases of American imperialism, which have now led to America becoming a global hegemon without any serious rivals. Victor Kiernan, one of the world's most respected historians, has used his nuanced knowledge of history, literature and politics to trace the evolution of the American Empire: he includes accounts of relations between Indians and white settlers, readings of the work of Melville and Whitman, and an analysis of the way that money and politics became so closely intertwined. Eric Hobsbawm's preface provides an insight into his own thoughts on American imperialism, and a valuable introduction to Victor Kiernan's work. Together, they shed useful light on today's urgent debates about the uses and misuses of seemingly unlimited military power, a lack of respect for international agreements, and the right to 'pre-emptive defense'.

America: The New Imperialism

America: The New Imperialism PDF Author: Victor G. Kiernan
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1789609992
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 559

Get Book Here

Book Description
The invasion and occupation of Iraq have sparked considerable discussion about the nature of American imperialism, but most of it is focused on the short term. The classical historical approach of this book provides a convincing and compelling analysis of the different phases of American imperialism, which have now led to America becoming a global hegemon without any serious rivals. Victor Kiernan, one of the world's most respected historians, has used his nuanced knowledge of history, literature and politics to trace the evolution of the American Empire: he includes accounts of relations between Indians and white settlers, readings of the work of Melville and Whitman, and an analysis of the way that money and politics became so closely intertwined. Eric Hobsbawm's preface provides an insight into his own thoughts on American imperialism, and a valuable introduction to Victor Kiernan's work. Together, they shed useful light on today's urgent debates about the uses and misuses of seemingly unlimited military power, a lack of respect for international agreements, and the right to 'pre-emptive defense'.

Empire's Workshop

Empire's Workshop PDF Author: Greg Grandin
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
ISBN: 1429959150
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
An eye-opening examination of Latin America's role as proving ground for U.S. imperial strategies and tactics In recent years, one book after another has sought to take the measure of the Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy. In their search for precedents, they invoke the Roman and British empires as well as postwar reconstructions of Germany and Japan. Yet they consistently ignore the one place where the United States had its most formative imperial experience: Latin America. A brilliant excavation of a long-obscured history, Empire's Workshop is the first book to show how Latin America has functioned as a laboratory for American extraterritorial rule. Historian Greg Grandin follows the United States' imperial operations, from Thomas Jefferson's aspirations for an "empire of liberty" in Cuba and Spanish Florida, to Ronald Reagan's support for brutally oppressive but U.S.-friendly regimes in Central America. He traces the origins of Bush's policies to Latin America, where many of the administration's leading lights—John Negroponte, Elliott Abrams, Otto Reich—first embraced the deployment of military power to advance free-market economics and first enlisted the evangelical movement in support of their ventures. With much of Latin America now in open rebellion against U.S. domination, Grandin concludes with a vital question: If Washington has failed to bring prosperity and democracy to Latin America—its own backyard "workshop"—what are the chances it will do so for the world?

Exceptional State

Exceptional State PDF Author: Ashley Dawson
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822338208
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Exceptional State analyzes the nexus of culture and contemporary manifestations of U.S. imperialism. The contributors, established and emerging cultural studies scholars, define culture broadly to include a range of media, literature, and political discourse. They do not posit September 11, 2001 as the beginning of U.S. belligerence and authoritarianism at home and abroad, but they do provide context for understanding U.S. responses to and uses of that event. Taken together, the essays stress both the continuities and discontinuities embodied in a present-day U.S. imperialism constituted through expressions of millennialism, exceptionalism, technological might, and visions of world dominance. The contributors address a range of topics, paying particular attention to the dynamics of gender and race. Their essays include a surprising reading of the ostensibly liberal movies Wag the Dog and Three Kings, an exploration of the rhetoric surrounding the plan to remake the military into a high-tech force less dependent on human bodies, a look at the significance of the popular Left Behind series of novels, and an interpretation of the Abu Ghraib prison photos. They scrutinize the national narrative created to justify the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the ways that women in those countries have responded to the invasions, the contradictions underlying calls for U.S. humanitarian interventions, and the role of Africa in the U.S. imperial imagination. The volume concludes on a hopeful note, with a look at an emerging anti-imperialist public sphere. Contributors. Omar Dahbour, Ashley Dawson, Cynthia Enloe, Melani McAlister, Christian Parenti, Donald E. Pease, John Carlos Rowe, Malini Johar Schueller, Harilaos Stecopoulos

How to Hide an Empire

How to Hide an Empire PDF Author: Daniel Immerwahr
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715122
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune A Publishers Weekly best book of 2019 | A 2019 NPR Staff Pick A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

Imperialism and the Developing World

Imperialism and the Developing World PDF Author: Atul Kohli
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190069627
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Book Description
How did Western imperialism shape the developing world? In Imperialism and the Developing World, Atul Kohli tackles this question by analyzing British and American influence on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America from the age of the British East India Company to the most recent U.S. war in Iraq. He argues that both Britain and the U.S. expanded to enhance their national economic prosperity, and shows how Anglo-American expansionism hurt economic development in poor parts of the world. To clarify the causes and consequences of modern imperialism, Kohli first explains that there are two kinds of empires and analyzes the dynamics of both. Imperialism can refer to a formal, colonial empire such as Britain in the 19th century or an informal empire, wielding significant influence but not territorial control, such as the U.S. in the 20th century. Kohli contends that both have repeatedly undermined the prospects of steady economic progress in the global periphery, though to different degrees. Time and again, the pursuit of their own national economic prosperity led Britain and the U.S. to expand into peripheral areas of the world. Limiting the sovereignty of other states-and poor and weak states on the periphery in particular-was the main method of imperialism. For the British and American empires, this tactic ensured that peripheral economies would stay open and accessible to Anglo-American economic interests. Loss of sovereignty, however, greatly hurt the life chances of people living in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. As Kohli lays bare, sovereignty is an economic asset; it is a precondition for the emergence of states that can foster prosperous and inclusive industrial societies.

Dominion and Civility

Dominion and Civility PDF Author: Michael Leroy Oberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172925X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
Was the relationship between English settlers and Native Americans in the New World destined to turn tragic? This book investigates how the newcomers interacted with Algonquian groups in the Chesapeake Bay area and New England, describing the role that original Americans occupied in England's empire during the critical first century of contact. Michael Leroy Oberg considers the history of Anglo-Indian relations in transatlantic context while viewing the frontier as a zone where neither party had the upper hand. He tells how the English pursued three sets of policies in America—securing profit for their sponsors, making lands safe from both European and native enemies, and "civilizing" the Indians—and explains why the British settlers found it impossible to achieve all of these goals. Oberg places the history of Anglo-Indian relations in the early Chesapeake and New England in a broad transatlantic context while drawing parallels with subsequent efforts by England as well as its imperial rivals—the French, Dutch, and Spanish—to plant colonies in America. Dominion and Civility promises to broaden our understanding of the exchange between Europeans and Indians and makes an important contribution to the emerging history of the English Atlantic world.

The Folly of Empire

The Folly of Empire PDF Author: John B. Judis
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190294825
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A century ago, the Theodore Roosevelt administration believed building an American empire was the only way the U.S. could ensure its role in the world, but came to see the occupation of the Philippines as America's "heel of Achilles." Woodrow Wilson, shocked by the failure of American intervention in Mexico and by the outbreak of World War I, came to see imperialism as the underlying cause of war and set about trying to create an international system to eliminate empires. But, the current Bush administration, despite the lessons of the past, has revived the older dreams of American empire--under the guise of democracy--even touting the American experience in the Philippines as a success upon which the United States could build in attempting to transform the Middle East. With The Folly of Empire, John B. Judis shows that history can teach us lessons and allow political leaders, if sensitive to history, to change their strategy in order to avoid past mistakes. Judis shows how presidents from Franklin Roosevelt to Bill Clinton drew upon what Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson learned about the pitfalls of using American power unilaterally to carve out a world in America's image. Exercising leadership through international institutions and alliances, the United States was able to win the Cold War and the first Gulf War. But by ignoring these lessons, the Bush administration has created a quagmire of terror and ethnic conflict. By examining America's role in the international community--then and now--The Folly of Empire is a sharp and compelling critique of America's current foreign policy and offers a direct challenge to neo-conservatives.

The Forging of the American Empire

The Forging of the American Empire PDF Author: Sidney Lens
Publisher: Pluto Press
ISBN: 9780745321004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
From Mexico to Vietnam, from Nicaragua to Lebanon, and more recently to Kosovo, East Timor and now Iraq, the United States has intervened in the affairs of other nations. Yet American leaders continue to promote the myth that America is benevolent and peace-loving, and involves itself in conflicts only to defend the rights of others; excesses and cruelties, though sometimes admitted, usually are regarded as momentary aberrations.This classic book is the first truly comprehensive history of American imperialism. Now fully updated, and featuring a new introduction by Howard Zinn, it is a must-read for all students and scholars of American history. Renowned author Sidney Lens shows how the United States, from the time it gained its own independence, has used every available means - political, economic, and military - to dominate other nations.Lens presents a powerful argument, meticulously pieced together from a huge array of sources, to prove that imperialism is an inevitable consequence of the U.S. economic system. Surveying the pressures, external and internal, on the United States today, he concludes that like any other empire, the reign of the U.S. will end -- and he examines how this time of reckoning may come about.

America and the Imperialism of Ignorance

America and the Imperialism of Ignorance PDF Author: Andrew Alexander
Publisher: Biteback Publishing
ISBN: 1849542570
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
American incomprehension of the outside world has been the chief problem in international affairs since the end of World War II. In America and the Imperialism of Ignorance, veteran political journalist Andrew Alexander constructs a meticulous case, including evidence gleaned from the steady opening up of Soviet archives, demonstrating why this is so. From starting the Cold War to revisiting unlearned lessons upon Cuba and Vietnam, the Middle East has latterly become the arena in which the American foreign policy approach proved wretchedly consistent. This has created six decades in which war was not the last resort of diplomacy but an early option, and where peace and order breaking out was thought to be the natural conclusion of military intervention. Alexander traces this 'shoot-first' tendency from 1945, arguing that on a grand scale the Cold War was a red herring in which the US and her proxies set out to counter a Soviet expansionism that never truly existed, and that by the time of the George W Bush era, the 'Industrial-Military-Complex' was in office offering little hope of a change in approach.

Visualizing American Empire

Visualizing American Empire PDF Author: David Brody
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226075346
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 174-203) and index.