How to Hide an Empire
America beyond its borders - an empire that hides in plain sight
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
A revelatory history of expansion, influence and the making of American power.
Historian Daniel Immerwahr exposes a forgotten truth: the United States has always been an empire. From Puerto Rico to Guam, the Philippines to a network of global military bases, How to Hide an Empire uncovers how U.S. territories and influence extend far beyond its 50 states.
Blending archival research with witty storytelling, Immerwahr reveals the surprising ways empire has shaped American politics, culture and identity. Eye-opening and deeply relevant, this book forces readers to reconsider what it means to be “American” - and how power really works in the modern world.
‘Wry, readable and often astonishing’ New York Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Immerwahr argues in this substantial work that the U.S. is more than the 50 states its name references, and that, despite its identification with anti-imperialism, for more than two centuries the U.S. has been "a partitioned country, divided into two sections, with different laws applying in each" in short, a kind of empire. The second section is made up of territories, many of which were once called colonies, and which are now barely acknowledged in popular conceptions of the country: first, native lands near the "frontier" of the nascent country; then for a time Hawaii, Alaska, and the Philippines; and to this day places including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. (And, Immerwahr goes on, the U.S. engages in other kinds of empire-building, through, for example, its massive network of overseas military bases and economic globalization.) Present-day residents of territories "have no representation in Congress... cannot vote for president... rights and citizenship remain a gift from Washington," and their status as U.S. citizens is unknown by almost half of the states' population. This insightful, excellent book, with its new perspective on an element of American history that is almost totally excluded from mainstream education and knowledge, should be required reading for those on the mainland.
Customer Reviews
I learned a lot
4.5 stars
Author
American. Associate professor of history at Northwestern University. Author of Thinking Small: The United States and the Lure of Community Development (2014), which won the Organization of American Historians’ Merle Curti Award. (No, me either, but according to Wikipedia, Prof Curti (1897–1996) was a leader in the fields of social history (e.g. quantitative methods based on census samples), intellectual history and peace studies, and taught at both Columbia and the University of Wisconsin, where he supervised 86 successful Ph.D. dissertations.)
Summary
During the Cold War, it was common practice for Americans to refer to the Soviet Empire (read evil empire) without ever acknowledging they had an empire of their own. Prof I elucidates the often disturbing story of that empire, which stretched from the Philippines to Puerto Rico thanks in no small part to the Spanish-American War. While Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” (7 December 1941, Pearl Harbor Day) speech emphasises the attack by the Japanese empire (there’s that word again) on the then American territory of Hawaii, he barely mentioned the more severe and prolonged attack on the Philippines, which happened at the same time (except it was 8 December there because of the date line), and nothing of the concurrent attacks on Guam, Wake Island, and Midway. (The British held territories of Hong Kong, Malaya, and Singapore copped it too, along with independent Thailand. Tojo wasn’t messing around.) As for the Yanks developing surveillance techniques in the Philippines, or letting loose chemical weapons on the people of Puerto Rico as part of the development of anticancer drugs, I had no idea.
Writing
Clear, lucid prose that melds incomplete material from a range of primary sources to create a comprehensible and informative whole. There wasn’t much about Guam. Maybe there’s not a lot to say.
Bottom line
Enjoyable read from which I learned a great deal.