American Empire: A Global History - Paperback

by A. G. Hopkins (Author)

A new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its head

American Empire is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the United States. Taking readers from the colonial era to today, A. G. Hopkins shows how, far from diverging, the United States and Western Europe followed similar trajectories throughout this long period, and how America's dependency on Britain and Europe extended much later into the nineteenth century than previously understood. A sweeping narrative spanning three centuries, American Empire goes beyond the myth of American exceptionalism to place the United States within the wider context of the global historical forces that shaped Western empires and the world.

Back Jacket

"Hopkins has written a remarkable, learned work that makes its central point well and provides numerous leads for future scholarship. He argues that American empire can be understood only within the dynamics of globalization and worldwide imperial formation and contestation. American Empire is likely to become a standard book in U.S. and world history."--Ian Tyrrell, author of Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: Empire and Conservation in Theodore Roosevelt's America

"Hopkins situates the history of the United States within a broader global history, overcoming the confines of exceptionalist thought and connecting developments in American empire to a narrative that encompasses British and European imperialism as well. This is an ambitious work."--Julian Go, author of Patterns of Empire: The British and American Empires, 1688 to the Present

Author Biography

A. G. Hopkins is Emeritus Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at the University of Cambridge and former Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include Global History, Globalization in World History, and British Imperialism, 1688-2015.