Bibliographic Details
Joshua K. Bol. Princeton University Press, 2022.
Thesis Statement
Bol argues that the United States’ transformation into a global power between 1900 and 1955 was not a linear or inevitable process, but rather a contested, often improvised project shaped by domestic political struggles, racial ideologies, and the deliberate expansion of presidential war powers, leaving a lasting legacy of imperial governance that continues to define American foreign relations.
Summary
In American Empire: The Rise of a Global Power, 1900-1955, Joshua K. Bol offers a sweeping reinterpretation of the first half of the twentieth century, challenging the traditional narrative that America’s rise to global dominance was a natural or benign progression. Bol centers his analysis on the concept of “empire,” not as a term of opprobrium but as a descriptive framework for understanding how the United States acquired, managed, and justified its overseas territories and global influence. The book meticulously traces this trajectory from the aftermath of the Spanish-American War through the Cold War’s early years.
Bol begins by examining the “imperial moment” of 1898–1903, when the U.S. formally acquired the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam, and established a protectorate over Cuba. He argues that this initial phase was marked by deep ambivalence and fierce domestic debate about the morality and practicality of empire. The book then moves through the Progressive Era, showing how reformers sought to apply “scientific” and “benevolent” governance principles to colonial administration, often with racist undertones. The First World War, Bol contends, was a crucial turning point, as President Woodrow Wilson expanded executive power and articulated a new vision of internationalism that cloaked imperial ambitions in the language of self-determination.
The interwar period is analyzed as a time when the U.S. sought to maintain its hemispheric hegemony (through interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean) while officially retreating from formal colonialism. Bol devotes significant attention to the Great Depression and the New Deal, arguing that Franklin Roosevelt’s foreign policy, while more cooperative with Latin America via the Good Neighbor Policy, nevertheless consolidated American economic and military dominance in the hemisphere. The book’s final chapters cover World War II and the early Cold War, demonstrating how wartime mobilization permanently centralized power in the executive branch and created the institutional foundations—the National Security Council, the CIA, a massive permanent military—for a global empire. Bol concludes by arguing that the U.S. empire was not simply a response to external threats but was actively constructed through domestic politics, racial ideology, and the relentless pursuit of economic and strategic advantage.
Chapter-by-Chapter Breakdown
- Chapter 1: The Imperial Moment, 1900-1903 – Examines the acquisition of the Philippines and the debate over empire, highlighting the role of race and the suppression of the Philippine-American War.
- Chapter 2: The Benevolent Empire, 1903-1913 – Analyzes Progressive-era colonial administration in Puerto Rico and the Philippines, focusing on the contradictions between reformist rhetoric and coercive control.
- Chapter 3: The Wilsonian Empire, 1913-1921 – Explores Wilson’s military interventions in Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, and his attempt to reorient empire through the League of Nations.
- Chapter 4: The Informal Empire, 1921-1933 – Covers the interwar period, examining U.S. economic dominance in Latin America, the rise of private financial imperialism, and the continuation of military occupations.
- Chapter 5: The New Deal Empire, 1933-1941 – Investigates FDR’s Good Neighbor Policy alongside continued interventionism, and the use of economic leverage to maintain hemispheric control.
- Chapter 6: The Arsenal of Empire, 1941-1945 – Details the wartime expansion of the presidency, the establishment of global military bases, and the foundations of the postwar order at Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks.
- Chapter 7: The Cold War Empire, 1945-1955 – Analyzes the consolidation of the national security state, the Korean War as an imperial conflict, and the permanent embedding of U.S. power worldwide.
- Conclusion: Offers reflections on the enduring nature of American empire and its implications for democratic governance.
Scholarly Reception
American Empire was widely praised for its ambitious synthesis of political, diplomatic, and intellectual history. Critics lauded Bol’s ability to weave together domestic politics and foreign policy, showing how racial attitudes and constitutional debates at home directly shaped imperial projects abroad. The book was awarded the 2023 Bancroft Prize, one of the highest honors in American history writing. Some reviewers, however, questioned whether Bol’s framework overemphasized continuity at the expense of acknowledging significant changes between the formal colonialism of the early 1900s and the informal hegemony of the Cold War era. Others noted that the book could have engaged more deeply with the experiences of colonized peoples themselves, rather than focusing primarily on American policymakers.
Representative Scholarly Quotes
“Bol’s great achievement is to show that American empire was never simply a reaction to external events, but a carefully constructed political project, driven by domestic interests and sustained by racial ideologies that persisted long after the formal trappings of colonialism had been discarded.” — American Historical Review
“By refusing to treat ’empire’ as a dirty word and instead analyzing it as a functional system of control, Bol forces us to reconsider the entire trajectory of U.S. global power. His account is sobering, meticulous, and indispensable for understanding how we arrived at the present moment.” — Journal of American History