 In American pop culture, empire is always a signifier of tyranny. It was enough to place Darth Vader at the head of an intergalactic empire; no further backstory was needed to comprehend him fully. (Note how unsatisfying the attempt to give Vader a context was in the so-called "prequels.") A visceral and reflexive anti-imperialism seems to be hard-baked into our freedom-loving republican sensibilities.
Yet empires still persist in the contemporary world, and this blog asserts that the United States is one of them. Clearly there remains considerable enthusiasm for empire, perhaps more widespread than what at first glance appears. What is happening here? Are the Americans alone in their disdain for empire? Or are Americans deluded? Why would anyone want an empire if, as Americans continually tell themselves, empires are engines of bondage, blood, and anguish?
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The aim of this blog is to examine the question whether the United States is an empire, and if so, what the consequences of that reality are for our foreign relations--and even more, for our civic and cultural life. We cannot both address those questions and detail them at length even in several blog posts. So, still in our early days, let’s sketch out in broad strokes what we might be talking about, like a prosecutor making an indictment. Let us say yes, the U.S. is an empire, and state the case as baldly as possible, for ongoing elaboration and amplification. Here, in brief, is an imperial sketch of American history. Most of these descriptions are, I believe, uncontroversial:
Does it matter if we understand the United States as an empire? Republic, democracy, empire--these are simply labels, are they not? Calling the US an empire is simply a matter of nomenclature, no? What does the label "empire" help us to see about ourselves that we might otherwise miss?
Here are a few of my preliminary answers to the question: Is the domain presided over by Alexander the Great quite the same thing as the British empire of millennia later? The empires of the great Khans seem a rather different phenomenon than the law-bound Roman empire, do they not? The Dutch empire was, for the first part of its history, run by a private company. Do maritime empires follow the same set of rules as landed empire? What, really, are we talking about when we talk about empire? And what does the United States have in common with any of this? We don’t intend to settle the matter with one blog post, but we have to start somewhere. And if we are contending, as we are, that the United States is in fact an empire, perhaps it will do for the moment to make a preliminary sketch.
 The American national story is most often told as a revolt against imperial power. Two of our most cherished founding myths--the arrival of the Pilgrims and the American Revolution itself--are traditionally told as rebellions against concentrated power. We instinctively recoil against imperial power, cast as it seems always to be as the villain in our most cherished epics: Darth Vader was the head of a galactic empire, after all.
But concentrated, imperial power is at the center of the American experience. The thirteen original Atlantic colonies, unlike what our myths tell us, were both expressions and engines of imperial power. American colonial history arose out of the interplay of powerful imperial forces: Spanish, Dutch, French, and British maritime empires clashing with each other and contending with potent Native American confederacies on the coasts, around the Great Lakes, and elsewhere. After the extrusion of the colonies from British imperial authority, the now independent United States was immediately thrust into a vortex of inter-imperial rivalry that powerfully shaped American norms, practices, and institutions. The first half-century of American national history after independence is to a very great degree the story of Americans attempting to wrest themselves from the grip of imperial power and carving out the capacity for action free from those imperial powers. Yet even here, a story that for all the world looks avowedly anti-imperial, the Americans were in fact engaged in creating the greatest empire in world history. The next half-century saw an expansion across a continent the scale and scope of which has hardly been matched at any time in world history. And all of this was Constitutionally sanctioned. The next century witnessed a further expansion across the seas, as American commerce, technology, military power, political and legal norms, and popular culture shaped and reshaped the world, sometimes willingly, often less so. We are the heirs of these powerful imperial processes. Thus empire comprises the very essence of American history, driving our foreign policy and shaping our politics. At the same time, the realities and consequences of empire are endlessly negotiated within high and low culture alike. How and why empire occurs, how it is justified, what ends it serves, and how it expresses itself in our culture and elsewhere is the story I hope to explore in this blog. |
AuthorI am an editor and historian of US history, diplomacy, and international relations. Archives
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Why empire?This blog presents new scholarship on American empire, places the American experience in a broader and global imperial context, explores imperial habits throughout American society and culture, uncovers the imperial connections between the foreign and the domestic, and develops “empire” as a critical perspective.
At least two features in the American experience are clarified through the lens of American empire: First, we better understand persistent social inequities in a nation professing a fundamental commitment to equality. Second, even a cursory glance at American history makes plain the chronic violence at the center of US foreign policy, which frequently mounts or supports bloody military conflict abroad. Empire helps us recognize how and why the United States seems to be constantly at war--including often with itself--with all the foreign and domestic consequences thereof. |
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