Essay and reflection: On the American empire from a British imperial perspective

International History Review

Volumn 29, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 83-108

  Kennedy, Dane ^a  

^a GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949935403     PISSN: 07075332     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/07075332.2007.9641120     Document Type: Review

References (159)

1. It also gave rise to the important work of William Appleman Williams and his students, who reshaped the history of US foreign policy with their studies of US imperialism. See, e.g., W. A. Williams, The Roots of the Modern American Empire (New York, 1969)
2. Wm. R. Louis, 'Suez and Decolonization: Scrambling Out of Africa and Asia', in Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez, and Decolonization (London, 2006), p. 6
3. Both Britain in the nineteenth century and the United States since 1945 are characterized as hegemonic states, not empires, by I. Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC, 2005)
4. and Two Hegemonies: Britain 1846-1914 and the United States 1941-2001, ed. P. K. O'Brien and A. Cleese (Aldershot, 2002)
5. For a vigorous critique of US exceptionalism, see Rethinking American History in a Global Age, ed. T. Bender (Berkeley, 2002)
6. C. Robin, 'Grand Designs: How 9/11 Unified Conservatives in Pursuit of Empire', Washington Post, 2 May 2004, B1. This remark echoes the one that Bill Clinton's secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, directed to Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff: 'What's the point of having this superb military you are always talking about if we can't use it?'
7. For a fascinating analysis of one of the intellectual sources of neo-conservatism and its endorsement of empire, see A. Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven, 2004)
8. Project for the New American Century, 'Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces, and Resources for a New Century' (Sept. 2000), iv, i. Available online at www.newamericancentury.org
9. T. E. Ricks, 'Empire or Not? A Quiet Debate over US Role', Washington Post, 21 Aug. 2001, A1, A13
10. P.J. Buchanan, A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America's Destiny (Washington, DC, 1999)
11. D. Remnick, 'War without End?', New Yorker, 21, 28 April 2003
12. In Britain, the prime minister, Tony Blair, and his advisers share the view of the Bush administration about the need for an assertive foreign policy that is unabashed by the label 'imperial'. See R. Cooper, 'Why We Still Need Empires', Sunday Observer, 7 April 2002, accessed online
13. N. Ferguson, 'The Empire Slinks Back', New York Times Sunday Magazine, 27 April 2003, pp. 52-7
14. N. Ferguson, 'The "E" Word', Wall Street Journal, 6 June 2003, A10
15. N. Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (New York, 2004), pp. 29, 2
16. M. Boot, 'The Case for American Empire', Weekly Standard, 15 Oct. 2001
17. M. Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York, 2002)
18. Among the conservative commentators who have endorsed the notion of American empire are C. Krauthammer, 'The Unipolar Moment Revisited', National Interest, lxx (Winter 2002/2003), 5-17
19. and D. D'Souza, 'Two Cheers for Colonialism', Chronicle of Higher Education, 10 May 2002, B7-B9
20. M. Ignatieff, 'The Burden', New York Times Magazine, 5 Jan. 2003, pp. 22-54. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and the Washington Post columnist Sebastian Mallaby have taken similar positions
21. For an early endorsement of empire as a vehicle of humanitarian intervention, see D. Rieff, 'Liberal Imperialism', World Policy Journal, xvi, 2 (Summer 1999), 1-10
22. D. Lal, In Praise of Empires: Globalization and Order (New York, 2004)
23. N. Ferguson, Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (New York, 2003)
24. T. P. M. Barnett, The Pentagon's New Map: War and Peace in the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2004)
25. A. S. Tyson, 'A Brain the Pentagon Wants to Pick', Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2005, A19
26. R. D. Kaplan, Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos (New York, 2002)
27. R. D. Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground (New York, 2005)
28. E. A. Cohen, 'History and the Hyperpower', Foreign Affairs, lxxxiii, 4 (July/Aug. 2004), 61
29. See http://www.nationalwarcollege.org/EMPlRES/
30. R. Suskind, 'Without a Doubt', New York Times Sunday Magazine, 17 Oct. 2004, 51
31. The following list of books includes only ones that refer to 'empire' or 'imperialism' in their titles: B. R. Barber, Fear's Empire: War, Terrorism, and Democracy (New York, 2003)
32. S. Landau, The Pre-Emptive Empire: A Guide to Bush's Kingdom (London, 2003)
33. M. Mann, Incoherent Empire (London, 2003)
34. J. Newhouse, Imperial America: The Bush Assault on the World Order (New York, 2003)
35. R. Burbach and J. Tarbell, Imperial Overstretch: George W. Bush and the Hubris of Empire (London, 2004)
36. G. Dorrien, Imperial Designs: Neoconservatism and the New Pax Americana (New York, 2004)
37. I. Eland, The Empire Has No Clothes: US Foreign Policy Exposed (Oakland, 2004)
38. J. Garrison, America as Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power? (San Francisco, 2004)
39. H. Harootunian, The Empire's New Clothes (Chicago, 2004)
40. J. B.Judis, The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (New York, 2004)
41. R. Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (Boston, 2004)
42. Anonymous [M. Scheuer], Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror (Dulles, VA, 2004)
43. C. Boggs, Imperial Delusions: American Militarism and Endless War (Lanham, MD, 2005)
44. The New American Empire, ed. L. C. Gardner and M. B. Young (New York, 2005)
45. J. B. Foster, Naked Imperialism: The US Pursuit of Global Dominance (New York, 2006)
46. N. Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (New York, 2006)
47. N. Chomsky and D. Barsamian, Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (New York, 2005)
48. N. Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (New York, 2004). The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, recommended the last in his speech to the United Nations in Sept. 2006
49. D. Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford, 2003)
50. C.Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism:, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (New York, 2004)
51. C.Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire (New York, 2000)
52. A.J. Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War (New York, 2005)
53. A.J. Bacevich, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA, 2002)
54. The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire, ed. A.J. Bacevich (Chicago, 2003)
55. The argument that the United States is not an empire has been made by J. Nye, 'Lessons in Imperialism', Financial Times, 16 June 2002, accessed online
56. V. D. Hanson, 'What Empire?', in Imperial Tense, ed. Bacevich, pp. 146-55
57. A. Pagden, 'Imperialism, Liberalism, and the Quest for Perpetual Peace', Daedalus, cxxxiv, 2 (2005), 46-57
58. The most prescient spokesman for this position is I. Wallerstein, The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World (New York, 2003)
59. For a recent reiteration of this view, see J. Schell, 'Too Late for Empire', Nation, cclxxxiii, 5 (14-21 Aug. 2006), 13-24
60. C. Preble, "Empire' - A Losing Political Issue', The Hill, 20 April 2004, accessed from the Cato Institute website: http://www.cato.org
61. Francis Fukuyama has broken with his colleagues over Iraq in America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven, 2006)
62. N. Ferguson, 'Empires with Expiration Dates', Foreign Policy (Sept./Oct. 2006), p. 52
63. Newhouse, Imperial America
64. Landau, Pre-Emptive Empire
65. F. Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992)
66. Boggs, Imperial Delusions
67. Garrison, America as Empire
68. M. Walker, 'What Kind of Empire?', Wilson Quarterly, xxvi, no. 3 (2002), 36-49
69. T. Barfield, 'The Shadow Empires: Imperial State Formation along the Chinese-Nomad Frontier', in Empires: Perspectives from Archaeology and History, ed. S. Alcock et al. (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 10-41
70. D. Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and Its Rivals (New Haven, 2002), p. xiii
71. Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power, ed. C. Calhoun, F. Cooper, and K. W. Moore (New York, 2006)
72. Daedalus, cxxxiv, 2 (Spring 2005)
73. See also the forum on 'An American Empire?', in Wilson Quarterly, xxvi, no. 3 (Summer 2002)
74. Khalidi, Resurrecting Empire
75. K. Meyer, The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland (New York, 2003)
76. C. S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, MA, 2006), pp. 3, 9, 41, 3
77. M. Jasanoff, 'What New Empires Inherit from Old Ones', History News Network, 12 Dec. 2005, pp. 1-2
78. W. R. Louis and R. Robinson, 'The Imperialism of Decolonization', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, xxii (1994), 462-511
79. J. Goldberg, 'A Little Learning: What Douglas Feith Knew, and When He Knew It', New Yorker, 9 May 2005, p. 36
80. See A. Cowell, 'Britain's Imperial Lessons', New York Times Week in Review, 31 March 2002, p. 4
81. L. Colley, 'What Britannia Taught Bush', Guardian, 20 Sept. 2002, accessed online
82. D. Pryce-Jones, 'The End of the Pax Britannica', Wall Street Journal, 23 Sept. 2002, A16
83. Ferguson, Empire
84. Ferguson, Colossus
85. For a penetrating critique of the first book, see F. Cooper, 'Empires Multiplied', Comparative Studies of History and Society, xlvi (2004), 247-72
86. C. Elkins, 'Royal Screwup', New Republic, 19 Dec. 2005, pp. 16-17
87. W. Dalrymple, 'An Essay in Imperial Villain-Making', Guardian, 24 May 2005, accessed online
88. J. Cole, 'Empires of Liberty? Democracy and Conquest in French Egypt, British Egypt, and American Iraq', in Lessons of Empire, ed. Calhoun et al., pp. 94-115
89. Meyer, Dust of Empire
90. and E. Ingram, 'Pairing off Empires: The United States as Great Britain in the Middle East', in Controlling the Uncontrollable? The Great Powers in the Middle East, ed. T. T. Petersen (Trondheim, 2006), pp. 5-24
91. L. Colley, 'Imperial Trauma: The Powerlessness of the Power', Common Knowledge, xi (2005), 198-214
92. B. Porter, Empire and Superempire: Britain, America, and the World (New Haven, 2006), p. 71
93. B. Porter, The Absent-Minded Imperialists: What the British Really Thought about Empire (Oxford, 2004)
94. Mann, Incoherent Empire, p. 13
95. The emphasis on the formal empire was enshrined in The Cambridge History of the British Empire, 9 vols., ed. E. A. Benians et al. (Camhridge, 1929-59)
96. and persists in works such as T. O. Lloyd, The British Empire, 1558-1995, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1996)
97. F. Anderson and A. Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (New York, 2005)
98. M. Adas, 'From Setder Colony to Global Hegemon: Integrating the Exceptionalist Narrative of the American Experience in World History', American Historical Review, cvi (2001), 1692-720
99. The Frontier in History: North America and Southern Africa Compared, ed. H. Lamar and L. Thompson (New Haven, 1981)
100. The experiences of American Indians may be more comparable with the incorporation of Britain's Celtic fringe, as detailed by M. Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (London, 1975)
101. See J. Go, 'Imperial Power and Its Limits: America's Colonial Empire in the Early Twentieth Century', in Lessons of Empire, ed. Calhoun et al., pp. 201-14
102. Wm. R. Louis, Imperialism at Bay, 1941-5: The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire (Oxford, 1977)
103. Boot, 'Case for American Power'
104. J. Osterhammel, 'Britain and China, 1842-1914', in The Oxford History of the British Empire: III: The Nineteenth Century, ed. A. Porter (Oxford, 1999), pp. 146-69
105. The term 'triple assault' comes from D. B. Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires, 1415-1980 (New Haven, 2000)
106. S. Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York, 2006)
107. G. Steinmetz, 'Imperialism or Colonialism? From Windhoek to Washington, By Way of Basra', in Lessons of Empire, ed. Calhoun et al., p. 155
108. J. Gallagher and R. Robinson, 'The Imperialism of Free Trade', Economic History Review, 2nd series, vi, 1 (1961), 187-208
109. Though a remarkably incompetent one, according to R. Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (New York, 2006)
110. J. L. Anderson, 'The Man in the Palace', New Yorker, 6 June 2005, p. 73
111. J. Siegel, Endgame: Britain, Russia, and the Final Struggle for Central Asia (London, 2002), refers to Afghanistan as a 'semi-protectorate'
112. T. Dodge, Inventing Iraq: The Failure of Nation-Building and a History Denied (New York, 2003)
113. Maier, Among Empires, p. 20
114. Cohen, 'History and the Hyperpower'
115. J. Jolfe, Überpower: The Imperial Temptation of America (New York, 2006)
116. Johnson, Sorrows, pp. 1, 154
117. Bacevich, American Empire, p. 167
118. Some political scientists may disagree: see the table that quantifies the decline of British naval power in W. R. Thompson, 'Martian and Venusian Perspectives on International Relations: Britain as System Leader in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries', in Bridges and Boundaries: Historians, Political Scientists, and the Study of International Relations, ed. C. Elman and M. F. Elman (Cambridge, MA, 2001), p. 287
119. For the standard interpretation of the rise and fall of British power, see P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1988)
120. For forceful rebuttals, see the special issue of International History Review, xiii (1991) on 'The Decline of Great Britain', with essays by G. Martel, K. Neilson, J. R. Ferris, and B.J. C. McKercher
121. and E. Ingram, 'Hegemony, Global Reach, and World Power', in The British Empire as a World Power (London, 2003), pp. 16-48
122. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York, 1976)
123. B. M. Gough, 'The Royal Navy and Empire', in The Oxford History of the British Empire: V: Historiography (Oxford, 1999), pp. 327-41
124. Ingram, British Empire, p. 25, passim
125. C. E. Callwell, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice, 3rd ed. (1906; Lincoln, 1996)
126. T. A. Heathcote, The Indian Army: Garrison of British Imperial India, 1822-1922 (London, 1974)
127. See J. Lunt, Imperial Sunset: Frontier Soldiering in the 20th Century (London, 1981)
128. Barnett, Pentagon's New Map
129. Eland, Empire Has No Clothes, p. 13
130. T. E. Ricks, 'Shift from Traditional War Seen at Pentagon', Washington Post, 3 Sept. 2004, A1, A5
131. B. Graham, 'Pentagon Considers Creating Postwar Peacekeeping Forces', Washington Post, 24 Nov. 2003, A16
132. See D. Avant, The Market for Force: The Consequences of Privatizing Security (Cambridge, 2005)
133. This includes a company of Gurkhas: T. E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York, 2006), pp. 176, 371
134. M. B. Young, 'Imperial Language', in New American Empire, ed. Gardner and Young, p. 44
135. J. A. Hobson, Imperialism: A Study (1902; Ann Arbor, 1972)
136. V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916; Moscow, 1970)
137. Also see D. K. Fieldhouse, The Theory of Capitalist Imperialism (London, 1967)
138. P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688-2000, 2nd ed. (Harlow, 2002)
139. Jomo K. S., 'Imperialism is Alive and Well: Globalization and East Asia after September 11', in Lessons of Empire, ed. Calhoun et al., pp. 253-68
140. W. Finnegan, 'The Economics of Empire: Notes on the Washington Consensus', Harper's Magazine, May 2003, pp. 41-54
141. P. K. O'Brien, 'The Pax Britannica and American Hegemony', in Two Hegemonies, ed. O'Brien and Cleese, pp. 3-64
142. Harvey, New Imperialism
143. A notable exception is M. T. Klare, Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency (New York, 2004)
144. See J. Carroll's epic House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (Boston, 2006)
145. Hobson, Imperialism, part2, ch. 1
146. K. Pomeranz, 'Empire and "Civilizing" Missions, Past and Present', Daedalus, cxxxiv, 2 (2005), 34-45
147. M. Davis, Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (London, 2001)
148. M. Adas, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission (Cambridge, MA, 2006)
149. Harootunian, Empire's New Clothes
150. E. Rhodes, 'Onward, Liberal Soldiers?: The Crusading Logic of Bush's Grand Strategy and What Is Wrong with If, in New American Empire, ed. Gardner and Young, pp. 227-52
151. U. S. Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago, 1999)
152. D. Milbank and C. Babington, 'Bush Visits Hill to Reassure Republicans', Washington Post, 21 May 2004, A4
153. F. Cooper, 'States, Empires, and Political Imagination', in Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), p. 201
154. T. R. Metcalf, 'Ideologies of the Raj', The New Cambridge History of India: III, 4 (Cambridge, 1994), p.x
155. 'Proclamation by the Queen in Council to the Princes, Chiefs, and People of India', 1 Nov. 1858 [London, British Library, Oriental and India Office Collections], MSS Eur. D 620
156. P. Wolfe, 'Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race', American Historical Review, cvi, no. 3 (2001), 866-905
157. Metcalf, Ideologies, ch. 2
158. See Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series: Gender and Empire, ed. P. Levine (Oxford, 2004)
159. I thank Marilyn Young for helping me to sharpen this distinction