America Used to Have an Overseas Empire. What Happened to It?

“One of the truly distinctive features of the United States’ empire is how persistently ignored it has been,” the historian Daniel Immerwahr writes in his introduction to How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States, his new book on the United States’ overseas empire. From the early 19th century through the 20th, the U.S. assembled a sprawling overseas empire, which grew to include the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, Hawaii, Alaska, the Panama Canal Zone, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa, comprising millions of colonial subjects. While many commentators on U.S. empire have sought to shock Americans out of what the historian Niall Ferguson has called America’s “imperial denial” by focusing searing attention on its misdeeds, Immerwahr’s book is not primarily an exposé.

Source: nymag.com