United States History- How to Hide an Empire
Description
Your task is to write an essay (approximate length 5-8 pages) analyzing Part I of Daniel Immerwahr’s How to Hide an Empire. Carefully consider the evidence the author provides to make his argument regarding the growth of the Greater United States’ colonial empire far beyond the “logomap.” As the point of the assignment is to analyze Daniel Immerwahr’s argument, do not use any outside sources or outside research. Be sure to include specific examples from the book to support your analysis. Daniel Immerwahr offers an ambitious study of explaining the changing shape and scope of the United States’ territorial expanse and what this has meant for the ways in which the United States projects power in the world. He rejects that America’s territorial empire was “an episode rather than a feature” (14). He claims the history of these places is not a history of U.S. empire, or the history of U.S. expansion, or the history of U.S. colonialism, but U.S. history. In the process, he examines what drove both U.S. continental and overseas expansion. Discuss this transformation, as Immerwahr outlines it, examining in particular how changes in warfare, politics, technology, individual personalities, and popular culture bound nation to empire. Your essay must discuss the Western United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines, drawing from ALL assigned chapters. Immerwahr also argues the Greater United States “reveals…that race has been even more central to U.S. history than is usually supposed” (12). In the second half of your essay, explore the mutual constitution of “the domestic” and “the foreign.” Using examples from the readings and lecture, demonstrate how Americans have debated and contested issues of who Americans” should be, how they should live, and what the role of government at home and in foreign policy should be. Please make sure to include at least three specific examples of these linkages.
