The controversial story of American invasions throughout history - how the world's superpower came to be what it is today.

American Civil Wars takes readers beyond the battlefields and sectional divides of the U.S. Civil War to view the conflict from outside the national arena of the United States. Contributors position the American conflict squarely in the context of a wider transnational crisis across the Atlantic world, marked by a multitude of civil wars, European invasions and occupations, revolutionary independence movements, and slave uprisings—all taking place in the tumultuous decade of the 1860s. The multiple conflicts described in these essays illustrate how the United States' sectional strife was caught up in a larger, complex struggle in which nations and empires on both sides of the Atlantic vied for the control of the future. These struggles were all part of a vast web, connecting not just Washington and Richmond but also Mexico City, Havana, Santo Domingo, and Rio de Janeiro and--on the other side of the Atlantic--London, Paris, Madrid, and Rome. This volume breaks new ground by charting a hemispheric upheaval and expanding Civil War scholarship into the realms of transnational and imperial history. American Civil Wars creates new connections between the uprisings and civil wars in and outside of American borders and places the United States within a global context of other nations. Contributors: Matt D. Childs, University of South Carolina Anne Eller, Yale University Richard Huzzey, University of Liverpool Howard Jones, University of Alabama Patrick J. Kelly, University of Texas at San Antonio Rafael de Bivar Marquese, University of Sao Paulo Erika Pani, College of Mexico Hilda Sabato, University of Buenos Aires Steve Sainlaude, University of Paris IV Sorbonne Christopher Schmidt-Nowara, Tufts University Jay Sexton, University of Oxford

America has invaded 43% of the countries in the world, and it has been militarily involved with nearly all the rest. This book offers a global tour of America's military activity, arranged by country, relating a history of gallantry and sacrifice as America has spread its power and influence worldwide.--Publisher.

Of back of book.

2020 L.A. Times Book Prize Finalist, History A provocative examination of how the U.S. military has shaped our entire world, from today’s costly, endless wars to the prominence of violence in everyday American life. The United States has been fighting wars constantly since invading Afghanistan in 2001. This nonstop warfare is far less exceptional than it might seem: the United States has been at war or has invaded other countries almost every year since independence. In The United States of War, David Vine traces this pattern of bloody conflict from Columbus's 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global U.S. empire. Drawing on historical and firsthand anthropological research in fourteen countries and territories, The United States of War demonstrates how U.S. leaders across generations have locked the United States in a self-perpetuating system of permanent war by constructing the world’s largest-ever collection of foreign military bases—a global matrix that has made offensive interventionist wars more likely. Beyond exposing the profit-making desires, political interests, racism, and toxic masculinity underlying the country’s relationship to war and empire, The United States of War shows how the long history of U.S. military expansion shapes our daily lives, from today’s multi-trillion–dollar wars to the pervasiveness of violence and militarism in everyday U.S. life. The book concludes by confronting the catastrophic toll of American wars—which have left millions dead, wounded, and displaced—while offering proposals for how we can end the fighting.

American Invasions: Canada to Afghanistan, 1775 to 2010 is a thought-provoking analysis of the reasons for American invasions and warmongering over the last two centuries. Contrary to the views expressed by the Western media and Western historians the American Empire is not a force for the promotion of free thinking and democracy but instead a force for imperial conquests and imposed dictatorships through the use of a military-industrial complex, fed by the American Empire outspending the rest of the world combined, on weapons of mass destruction. The American Empire has used and will continue to use the most sophisticated weapons, from nuclear bombs to bunker-busting bombs to land mines to chemical and biological weapons, on defenseless men, women, and children to feed its insatiable appetite for warmongering and imperial expansion. It combines military bases around the world with military prisons used for torture and extraction of information. Its navy patrols every corner of the globe, and its planes can rain down bombs from the heavens on every civilian on the planet.

A history of the numerous attempts of European invaders to conquer North America details the successful efforts of the Native American peoples to repel these invasions