Kristin L. Hoganson

Jay Sexton

Taking U. S. History into Transimperial Terrain

Crossing Empires

An incisive history of the United States for the age of Trump, arguing that our nation has been shaped from the beginning by ruptures much like the 2016 presidential election In A Nation Forged by Crisis, historian Jay Sexton contends that our national narrative is not one of halting yet inevitable progress, but of repeated disruptions brought about by shifts in the international system. Sexton shows that the American Revolution was a consequence of the increasing integration of the British and American economies; that a necessary precondition for the Civil War was the absence, for the first time in decades, of foreign threats; and that we cannot understand the New Deal without examining the role of European immigrants and their offspring in transforming the Democratic Party. A necessary corrective to conventional narratives of American history, A Nation Forged by Crisis argues that we can only prepare for our unpredictable future by first acknowledging the contingencies of our collective past.

A New American History

A Nation Forged by Crisis

Weaving U.S. history into the larger fabric of world history, the contributors to Crossing Empires de-exceptionalize the American empire, placing it in a global transimperial context. They draw attention to the breadth of U.S. entanglements with other empires to illuminate the scope and nature of American global power as it reached from the Bering Sea to Australia and East Africa to the Caribbean. With case studies ranging from the 1830s to the late twentieth century, the contributors address topics including diplomacy, governance, anticolonialism, labor, immigration, medicine, religion, and race. Their transimperial approach—whether exemplified in examinations of U.S. steel corporations partnering with British imperialists to build the Ugandan railway or the U.S. reliance on other empires in its governance of the Philippines—transcends histories of interimperial rivalries and conflicts. In so doing, the contributors illuminate the power dynamics of seemingly transnational histories and the imperial origins of contemporary globality. Contributors. Ikuko Asaka, Oliver Charbonneau, Genevieve Clutario, Anne L. Foster, Julian Go, Michel Gobat, Julie Greene, Kristin L. Hoganson, Margaret D. Jacobs, Moon-Ho Jung, Marc-William Palen, Nicole M. Phelps, Jay Sexton, John Soluri, Stephen Tuffnell

Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain

Ian Tyrrell

Across the course of American history, imperialism and anti-imperialism have been awkwardly paired as influences on the politics, culture, and diplomacy of the United States. The Declaration of Independence, after all, is an anti-imperial document, cataloguing the sins of the metropolitan government against the colonies. With the Revolution, and again in 1812, the nation stood against the most powerful empire in the world and declared itself independent. As noted by Ian Tyrrell and Jay Sexton, however, American "anti-imperialism was clearly selective, geographically, racially, and constitutionally." Empire’s Twin broadens our conception of anti-imperialist actors, ideas, and actions; it charts this story across the range of American history, from the Revolution to our own era; and it opens up the transnational and global dimensions of American anti-imperialism. By tracking the diverse manifestations of American anti-imperialism, this book highlights the different ways in which historians can approach it in their research and teaching. The contributors cover a wide range of subjects, including the discourse of anti-imperialism in the Early Republic and Civil War, anti-imperialist actions in the U.S. during the Mexican Revolution, the anti-imperial dimensions of early U.S. encounters in the Middle East, and the transnational nature of anti-imperialist public sentiment during the Cold War and beyond.

U.S. Anti-imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism

Empire's Twin

Empire's Twin broadens our conception of anti-imperialist actors, ideas, and actions; it charts this story across the range of American history, from the Revolution to our own era; and it opens up the transnational and global dimensions of American anti-imperialism.

Richard Carwardine

Perhaps more than any other American, Abraham Lincoln has become a global figure, one who spoke--and continues to speak--to people across the world. Karl Marx judged Lincoln "the single-minded son of the working class"; Tolstoy reported his fame in the Caucasus; Tomas Masaryk, the first president of Czechoslovakia, drew strength as "the Lincoln of Central Europe"; racially-mixed, republican "Lincoln brigades" fought in the Spanish Civil War; and, more recently, statesmen ranging from Gordon Brown to Pervez Musharraf to Barack Obama have invoked Lincoln in support of their respective agendas. This fascinating volume brings together leading historians from around the world to explore Lincoln's international legacy. The authors examine the meaning and image of Lincoln in many places and across continents, ranging from Germany to Japan, India to Ireland, Africa and Asia to Argentina and the American South. The book reveals that at the heart of Lincoln's global celebrity were his political principles, his record of successful executive leadership in wartime, his role as the "Great Emancipator," and his resolute defense of popular government. Yet the "Global Lincoln" has been a malleable and protean figure, one who is forever being redefined to meet the needs of those who invoke him. The first study of Lincoln's global legacy, this book tells the unknown and remarkable story of the world-wide impact of one of America's great presidents.

The Global Lincoln

Drawing on the archives of London banks and the papers of statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic, this text explores the United States' foreign debt during the mid-19th century, a crucial but previously neglected aspect of the Civil War period.

Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873

Debtor Diplomacy

A Concise History of the (In)Famous Doctrine that Gave Rise to the American Empire President James Monroe's 1823 message to Congress declaring opposition to European colonization in the Western Hemisphere became the cornerstone of nineteenth-century American statecraft. Monroe's message proclaimed anticolonial principles, yet it rapidly became the myth and means for subsequent generations of politicians to pursue expansionist foreign policies. Time and again, debates on the key issues of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century foreign relations—expansion in the 1840s, Civil War diplomacy, the imperialism of 1898, entrance into World War I, and the establishment of the League of Nations—were framed in relation to the Monroe Doctrine. Covering more than a century of history, this engaging book explores the varying conceptions of the doctrine as its meaning evolved in relation to the needs of an expanding American empire. In Jay Sexton's adroit hands, the Monroe Doctrine provides a new lens from which to view the paradox at the center of American diplomatic history: the nation's interdependent traditions of anticolonialism and imperialism.

Jay Sexton

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