Why "Empire"?

Americans generally deny that the United States is an empire, even after achieving a position of global prominence that would be envied by any other empire-building people in history. But is it true that the United States is not an empire, and does it matter if it is?

​At least two crucial features in the American experience are clarified when we understand U.S. history as imperial. 

First, we better understand persistent social inequities in a nation usually professing a fundamental commitment to equality. As we will discover, empires are fundamentally committed to the extension and maintenance of social and political hierarchies. This was as true in the class-conscious British empire as it is in the racially stratified American empire. Social hierarchies abroad are necessary to produce the wealth that is then sifted through a no-less socially-stratified hierarchy at home. Much about the American experience makes sense when viewed as a more or less typical model of imperial stratification. 

Second, even a cursory glance at American history makes plain the chronic violence at the center of U.S. foreign policy, which frequently mounts or supports bloody, if not always sustained, 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.

This blog is dedicated to presenting new scholarship on American empire, placing the American experience in a broader and global imperial context, exploring imperial discourse and habits throughout American society and culture, uncovering the imperial connections between the foreign and the domestic, and developing “empire” as a critical perspective. I welcome your comments on blog posts and your emails at [email protected]. 

-- David J. Snyder, fractalpast.com