Duke University Press Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain (American Encounters/Global Interactions)

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 Review " Crossing Empires features a number of disciplinary approaches.... Collectively, the essays in the volume demonstrate the value of interrogating and deliberately disregarding the categories that have arbitrarily defined the way histories of empires have been approached."--Katharine Bjork "Western Historical Quarterly" (10/11/2021 12:00:00 AM) "A fresh perspective on the study of U.S. history through the analytical lens of empire.... Crossing Empires offers an invaluable primer to a fast-developing scholarship on transimperial history in the U.S. context. Its great strength lies in the richness of its individual chapters, each making its own contribution yet also speaking to the same broader analytical concern.... Wholly successful in its purpose, Crossing Empires will serve as an important touchstone for future scholarship on U.S. transimperial history."--Dirk Bönker "Pacific Historical Review" (9/29/2020 12:00:00 AM) "Perhaps most striking, and in contrast to most transnational history, is the contributors' attention to the role of the state--or, rather, multiple states--in the lives of imperial subjects."--Sarah Miller-Davenport "Journal of Historical Geography" (1/1/2021 12:00:00 AM) "The editors and authors should be commended for their efforts. This volume should be read by American historians seeking to understand the US and empire."--J. Rogers "Choice" (1/2/2021 12:00:00 AM) "This collection will be of particular use in graduate seminars, though it is of value to all scholars thinking through the ways that we understand movements across, interactions between, and comparisons of empires."--Sarah Steinbock-Pratt "H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews" (8/1/2020 12:00:00 AM) " Crossing Empires makes a compelling case that a transimperial history is necessary if we are to lay bare the power dynamics structuring transnationalism and globalization. The essays present rich empirical case studies that show how transimperial connections buttressed imperial rule and sustained colonial violence and exploitation while they simultaneously integrated the world into tighter global circuits of capital, culture, technology, and power. A welcome addition to the scholarship on U.S. imperialism and comparative empires."--Kornel Chang, author of "Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands" "This excellent, accessible, and carefully curated collection recenters United States history in the most powerful of ways. Superbly deploying the concept of the transimperial in an astonishing array of case studies, this volume offers vital new understandings of imperial formations and will help scholars identif