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A professor of history with expertise in economic history describes how the history of the United States from the colonial era to modern times mirrors that of Western Europe during the same time period

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Compelling, provocative, and learned. This book is a stunning and sophisticated reevaluation of the American empire. Hopkins tells an old story in a truly new way--American history will never be the same again.--Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest OfficeOne of the great British historians of our time reinterprets U.S. history from a truly global perspective, showing how the formation and international rise of the United States was entwined with processes of imperial expansion and global integration. This is a game-changing book that reveals as never before how the United States has fit into global patterns of historical change and development. American Empire is required reading for anyone interested in how we have arrived at our present state of international instability.--Jay Sexton, author of The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century AmericaWith wit and enormous erudition, Hopkins offers us a new view on the phenomenon of the United States in global history, from its colonial origins to the Iraq War, with special attention to how it became itself a colonial power in the Caribbean and Pacific. The originality and power of American Empire begins in its demand that the United States was a postcolonial empire: it both resisted and imitated British and European power, even while it denied such influence and asserted its exceptionality. It is both a foundational work for a new American imperial history and a demonstration of how the problem of the United States can make us think in fresh ways about the broader history of empire and globalization.--Richard Drayton, author of Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the Improvement of the WorldHopkins 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 AmericaHopkins 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