Imperialism History

A crucial, clear-eyed accounting of Puerto Rico's 122 years as a colony of the US. Since its acquisition by the US in 1898, Puerto Rico has served as a testing ground for the most aggressive and exploitative US economic, political, and social policies. The devastation that ensued finally grew...

The bestselling author of Overthrow and The Brothers brings to life the forgotten political debate that set America’s interventionist course in the world for the twentieth century and beyond. How should the United States act in the world? Americans cannot decide. Sometimes we burn with...

Transcending the mythology of “American exceptionalism”, the acclaimed historian Walter Hixson unveils a long history of war and imperialism, one that is deeply embedded in the American national DNA. From Columbus to the “forever wars” of the modern Middle East, Americans have sought imperial domination over other peoples, invariably deemed inferior, and have regularly chosen to go to war with them. The consequences of the nation’s violent aggression have been severe yet not fully analyzed owing to the powerful boundaries erected by patriotic nationalism.

They built some of the first communal structures on the empire's frontiers. The empire's most powerful proconsuls sought entrance into their lodges. Their public rituals drew dense crowds from Montreal to Madras. The Ancient Free and Accepted Masons were quintessential builders of empire, argues Jessica Harland-Jacobs.

In this vivid history, master storyteller and world-renowned historian Juan Cole tells the story of Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798. Revealing Napoleon's reasons for leading the expedition against Egypt and showcasing the young general's fascinating views of the Orient, Cole delves into the psychology of both the military titan and his entourage.

Humanity's interstellar empire died in fire and blood, leaving wrecked star systems to face the long night of barbarism. One tiny spark of civilization remains: The Republic of Lyonesse, tucked away at the end of a wormhole cul-de-sac. Yet that last bastion could suffer the same dire fate.

Gore Vidal has been described as the last “noble defender” of the American republic. In Imperial America, Vidal steals the thunder of a right wing America - those who have camouflaged their extremist rhetoric in the Old Glory and the Red, White, and Blue - by demonstrating that those whose protest arbitrary and secret government, those who defend the bill of rights, those who seek to restrain America’s international power, are the true patriots.

This scathing critique of US political culture is a brilliant analysis of the Iran-Contra scandal. Chomsky offers a message of hope, reminding us resistance is possible.

Light in Gaza is a seminal, moving, and wide-ranging anthology of Palestinian writers and artists. It constitutes a collective effort to organize and center Palestinian voices in the ongoing struggle. As political discourse shifts toward futurism as a means of reimagining a better way of living, beyond the violence and limitations of colonialism, Light in Gaza is an urgent and powerful intervention into an important political moment.

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' 1494 arrival in Guantanamo Bay through the 250-year expansion of a global US empire.

The Napoleonic Wars radically altered the old, established European power dynamics, and in 1795, the British, now emerging as the globe’s naval superpower, assumed control of the Cape as part of the spoils of war. In doing so, they recognized the enormous strategic value of the Cape as global shipping routes were developing and expanding. Possession passed back and forth once or twice, but more or less from that point onward, the British established their presence at the Cape, which they held until the unification of South Africa in 1910.

Mythen haben Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine den Boden bereitet. Von der Erfindung eines geeinten russischen Volks durch den deutschen Mönch Innozenz Giesel bis zum Narrativ einer russischen Krim – russische Propaganda nimmt die Ukraine und ihre Geschichte seit Jahrzehnten in Geiselhaft. In seinem die Jahrhunderte umspannenden Buch führt uns Mikhail Zygar zu den Ursprüngen von Russlands Imperialismus – und weist so den Weg aus seinen zerstörerischen Wahnvorstellungen.

From the #1 bestselling author of Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys, a startling new look at the events that set the stage for WWII. In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt dispatched Secretary of War William Howard Taft on the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in history to Hawaii, Japan, the...

In a series of penetrating and alarming essays, whose centerpiece is a commentary on the events of September 11, 2001 (deemed then too controversial to publish), Gore Vidal challenges the comforting consensus following September 11th and goes back and draws connections to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. He asks were these simply the acts of “evil-doers?”

Recalling the classic warnings against militarism, from George Washington's farewell address to Dwight Eisenhower's denunciation of the military-industrial complex, Johnson explores the trend of militarism that is bankrupting the United States and creating conditions for a new century of virulent blowback.

The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich andinspiring one. This volume, a sequel to the India's Struggle forIndependence, analyses the challenges India has faced and the successes ithas achieved in the light of its colonial legacy and century-long struggle...

In the decade before the onset of the Civil War, groups of Americans engaged in a series of longshot - and illegal - forays into Mexico, Cuba, and other Central American countries in hopes of taking them over. These efforts became known as filibustering, and their goal was to seize territory to create new independent fiefdoms, which would ultimately be annexed by the still-growing United States. Most failed miserably. William Walker was the outlier. Soft-spoken with no military background, in 1856 he managed to install himself as president of Nicaragua.

This audiobook is the first to offer a concise, accessible overview of the evolution of the Soviet Union as a multiethnic empire. It reflects on how the Soviet Union was home to many ethnic minorities, and how their fates, and that of the USSR itself, were bound to the question of how the Soviet state responded variously throughout its existence to the fundamental question of ethnic difference across its vast and diverse territory. The audiobook then examines how the Soviet collapse in 1991 fractured the Union along markedly national lines.

The essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions.

“Your husband is a landowner,” they told her. “Food and clothing is so plentiful, it grows on trees.” “You will be able to go to school.” Of the three lies the matchmaker told Willow before she left home as a picture bride in 1918, the third hurt the most. Never one to be deterred, Willow does all that she can to make the best of her unexpected circumstance. But it isn't long before her dreams for this new life are shattered.