This interdisciplinary collection explores the confluence of American and British (neo)imperalism in the Pacific, as represented in various forms of Pacific discourse including literature, ethnography, film, painting, autobiography, journalism, and environmental discourse. It investigates the alliances and rivalries between these two colonial powers during the crucial transition period of the early-to-mid twentieth century, also exploring indigenous Pacific responses to Anglo-American imperialism during and beyond the decolonization period of the late twentieth century. While the relationship between Britain and the US has been analyzed through prominent forms of economic and cultural exchange between Europe, Africa, and the Americas, there is to date no sustained study of the relationship between British and US colonial expansion into the Pacific, which became central to ideas of developing ‘European’ modernity in the late eighteenth century and has played a pivotal in the history of Anglo-American colonialism, from the establishment of plantation economies and settler colonies in the nineteenth century to various forms of military imperialism during and beyond the twentieth century. The wide range of discursive and expressive modes explored in this collection makes for a rich and multifaceted analysis of representations of, and responses to, Anglo-American imperialism, and is in keeping with the current interdisciplinary turn in postcolonial studies.

The focus of this volume is Britain's trans-Pacific empire. This began with haphazard challenges to Spanish dominion, but by the end of the 18th century, the British had established a colony in Australia and had gone to the brink of war with Spain to establish trading rights in the north Pacific. These rights led to formal colonies in Vancouver Island and British Columbia, when Britain sought to maintain a north Pacific presence despite American expansionism. In the later 19th century the international ’scramble for the Pacific’ resulted in new British colonies and protectorates in the Pacific islands. The result was a complex imperial presence, created from a variety of motives and circumstances. The essays selected here take account of the wide range of economic, political and cultural factors which prompted British expansion, creating tension in Britain's imperial identity in the Pacific, and leaving Pacific peoples with a complicated and challenging legacy. Along with the important new introduction, they provide a basis for the reassessment of British imperialism in the Pacific region.

Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago Tribune A Publishers Weekly best book of 2019 | A 2019 NPR Staff Pick A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire We are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited? In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress. In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

How did Western imperialism shape the developing world? In Imperialism and the Developing World, Atul Kohli tackles this question by analyzing British and American influence on Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America from the age of the British East India Company to the most recent U.S. war in Iraq. He argues that both Britain and the U.S. expanded to enhance their national economic prosperity, and shows how Anglo-American expansionism hurt economic development in poor parts of the world. To clarify the causes and consequences of modern imperialism, Kohli first explains that there are two kinds of empires and analyzes the dynamics of both. Imperialism can refer to a formal, colonial empire such as Britain in the 19th century or an informal empire, wielding significant influence but not territorial control, such as the U.S. in the 20th century. Kohli contends that both have repeatedly undermined the prospects of steady economic progress in the global periphery, though to different degrees. Time and again, the pursuit of their own national economic prosperity led Britain and the U.S. to expand into peripheral areas of the world. Limiting the sovereignty of other states-and poor and weak states on the periphery in particular-was the main method of imperialism. For the British and American empires, this tactic ensured that peripheral economies would stay open and accessible to Anglo-American economic interests. Loss of sovereignty, however, greatly hurt the life chances of people living in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. As Kohli lays bare, sovereignty is an economic asset; it is a precondition for the emergence of states that can foster prosperous and inclusive industrial societies.

"Compelling, provocative, and learned. This book is a stunning and sophisticated reevaluation of the American empire. Hopkins tells an old story in a truly new way--American history will never be the same again."--Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office.Office.

In 1812, eight American missionaries, under the direction of the recently formed American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, sailed from the United States to South Asia. The plans that motivated their voyage were ano less grand than taking part in the Protestant conversion of the entire world. Over the next several decades, these men and women were joined by hundreds more American missionaries at stations all over the globe. Emily Conroy-Krutz shows the surprising extent of the early missionary impulse and demonstrates that American evangelical Protestants of the early nineteenth century were motivated by Christian imperialism—an understanding of international relations that asserted the duty of supposedly Christian nations, such as the United States and Britain, to use their colonial and commercial power to spread Christianity. In describing how American missionaries interacted with a range of foreign locations (including India, Liberia, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands, North America, and Singapore) and imperial contexts, Christian Imperialism provides a new perspective on how Americans thought of their country’s role in the world. While in the early republican period many were engaged in territorial expansion in the west, missionary supporters looked east and across the seas toward Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Conroy-Krutz’s history of the mission movement reveals that strong Anglo-American and global connections persisted through the early republic. Considering Britain and its empire to be models for their work, the missionaries of the American Board attempted to convert the globe into the image of Anglo-American civilization.

“Pacific Connections is a shrewd, fascinating, and cogent examination of a Pacific Northwest borderland often taken for granted as a peaceful but inconsequential meeting point between two friendly nations. Chang shows instead how it has been a violent point of contention, shaped by empire and Anglo-American aspirations to hegemony, migration and ubiquitous racism, the creation of boundaries through state formation, and the transgression of those boundaries by the mechanisms of capital. Sharply written and deeply researched, this book brings the Pacific Northwest into both the history of the Pacific World and the literature on borderlands that has until now focused largely on the U.S. and Mexico. Pacific Connections is a brilliant achievement.”—Bruce Cumings, author of Dominion From Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. "This wonderful book combines impressive archival research with a strong grounding in migration studies, political economy, cultural studies, and critical race studies. Chang examines weighty questions through compelling human dramas set in far-flung places across the Pacific Rim. This is transnational history at its best."—David Roediger, coauthor of The Production of Difference. "Kornel Chang grapples with big ideas and big questions. Tracing the global movements behind racial and national borders and unraveling the messy contradictions of empire at the dawn of the twentieth century, Pacific Connections explores a history that continues to haunt us, with particular resonance in our current moment."—Moon-Ho Jung, author of Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. “Pacific Connections is a capacious study that recasts the U.S.-Canadian borderlands as a crucial site of migration, trade, and exclusion within the formation of Pacific empire. Chang shows how Chinese merchants, Japanese and European migrants, indigenous traders, Anglo labor activists, and both South Asian and white radicals played important roles in the negotiations of sovereignty.”—Lisa Lowe, Professor of Comparative Literature, University of California, San Diego.