Several developments in recent years have revived the imperial question in mainstream discussions of American history. Among these, of course, were the traumatic events of September 11, 2001; the Bush administration’s ensuing rhetorical bluster; the expansion of U.S. military bases and commercial interests in Central Asia; the administration’s unprovoked invasion of Iraq; the critique of the invasion by the political and intellectual left-of-center; President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s advocacy and defense of the invasion, as well as their proven deceptive rationales for war; and the assertive public articulation of an imperial worldview by their cohorts and allies on the political and intellectual right-of-center.

Particularly significant in regard to the revival of debate about imperial question was not only the neoconservatives’ call for expansion of the American empire -- the history of which they celebrated as a positive good for civilization as they knew it or wanted it to be -- but also their explicit use of the “E” and “I” words (although in recent months they seem to have muted their empire/imperialism-speak). This latest praise of empire, coming as it did from the Right, which had perennially attacked the Left’s use of the E and I words, seemed to mark a turning point in historiography and popular discourse. At one stroke, they had lowered conceptual, linguistic, and political barriers that had previously deterred timid Americans from seriously discussing the question of imperialism and empire in reference to the United States. It was now more socially, politically, and academically acceptable to talk about empire and imperialism. For the conservatives, of course, this talk was about the global benefits of American empire.

Their argument for an empire of “democracy”must have struck many, as it did me, as analogous to Thomas Jefferson’s case for an “empire of liberty.” It is not a perfect analogy, but the two phrases held in common the explicit use of the E word coupled with the invocation of a reputed American “good.” In Jefferson’s case, it was the spread of liberty for land speculators, pioneering yeoman, and slave-owning planters. In the neoconservative case, it is the spread of one form of American-styled democracy and capitalism to the autocratic, economically stagnant Middle East and the rest of the Second and Third Worlds for the benefit of international corporate capital, as well as to facilitate the flow of oil to the metropolitan center. In both cases empire itself becomes a good, because it is held to be consistent with and beneficial to liberty and democracy (aka “free enterprise”).

In the long history of imperialism from ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome, through the Medieval Christian period in Europe and the imperial dynasties of China and the Ottomans, to pre-Encounter empires of the Western Hemisphere, to the British, Russian, and other empires of the nineteenth century, to the present, there had always been celebrants of empire and imperialism -- as well as critics. But as we all know, in academic historiography and political discourse, the tendency of most Americans was to apply the implicitly pejorative words empire and imperialism to the empires and imperial policies of other countries but not to those of their own country. Instead of applying the E and I words to their own history, most Americans used euphemistic phrases such as “empire of liberty,” “manifest destiny,” “frontier expansionism,” “open door policy,” “Wilsonian mission,” “international security,” “free world,” “superpower responsibility, or credibility,” “global leadership,” “anti-communist containment,” “the American Century,” “the war on terrorism,” and “great power hegemony.” This perhaps innocent fraud was and is similar to that of describing the American economic system with such meaningless but misleading terms as “free enterprise” and “marketplace economy” instead of with the more accurate historic label of "capitalism." These are frauds that elites who have an interest in diverting our attention from economic and foreign policy realities not so innocently encourage.

Whether innocent or not, in American historiography there is no equivalent to the large and sophisticated body of straightforward scholarly historical writing on the British Empire. For the past century and a quarter of professional, academic history, relatively few American historians (save the imperial school of colonial American history, early twentieth-century Progressives, Sixties neo-Marxists, New Leftists, and Cold War revisionists, and a smattering of recent historians) dared use the E and I words or write and talk directly about American imperialism or empire as enduring facts; that is, as intrinsic elements in the historical continuum of American policy and culture. The emergence of postcolonial studies in the past two decades (although salutary in focusing our attention upon the social and cultural history of the colonialized people on the periphery and semi-periphery) has contributed relatively little to the understanding of the dynamics of the imperial metropolitan center or the historiography of the causes of imperialism. This left even postcolonialist scholars, as well as the bulk of the intelligentsia and the citizenry, unprepared to understand the causes and policy implications of the recent and dramatic manifestations of American imperium.

Despite the current revival of interest in American imperialism, at least two obstacles, it seems to me, continue to hamper serious analysis of its history. The first is the persisting controversy about the meaning or definition of empire, imperialism, and related terms, such as colonialism and neocolonialism. The second is the habit of most who write about imperialism -- whether or not they use the E or I words, and whether they are academics or non-academics, liberals, conservatives, neoconservatives, or Marxists -- to confuse descriptive questions about American imperialism (such as, “has the United States been or is the U.S. an imperial nation?”) with normative questions (such as, “was or is American expansionism [aka imperialism] good or bad?”).

If we can put aside for the moment the second problem and focus mainly on the first problem -- the problem of definition -- I want to suggest that there is a solution. It is a solution that is not original with me, yet few who talk and write about imperialism and empire have embraced it.

The path to a solution begins with an acceptance of what should be obvious: imperialism, empire, colonialism, and similar terms are merely words we use to describe real things, behaviors, and policies; that is, real, tangible elements and events of the past and present. But what were and are those elements that some would call imperial and which by any other name would remain imperial in their metaphysical reality? For some time now the discourse about the meaning of imperialism has ossified around the different but hardened answers that conservatives, liberals, Marxists and neo-Marxists give to such questions as whether imperialism is primarily caused by political, ideational, or economic factors, whether those economic causes are intrinsic to capitalism, whether informal or neoimperialism is akin to formal imperialism or colonialism, and, in the case of the United States, whether the U.S. can be said to have practiced informal imperialism. (Often missing from the debate, moreover, was and is an analysis of militarism and its relationship to imperialism.)

The solution to this sterile, frustrating, and often ideologically driven debate, I believe, is to recognize that the word imperialism has etymological roots in ancient Roman Latin and that equivalent terms existed in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Anatolia, India, and China, pre-Encounter Mexico and Peru, and elsewhere in place and time. The varying meanings of imperialism evolved through history, yet what all meanings have in common is the notion of an unequal relationship between one entity (an elite, an ethnicity, or a polity) and another entity (another elite, ethnicity, or polity) that is dependent or subservient in some significant way, often if not always against its will during at least the initial phases of conquest or absorption. Through history, dominant entities have exercised their imperium through formal or informal, direct or indirect, legal or illegal means, by conquering and colonizing territory or not, and/or by establishing political, military, economic, ideational, and/or cultural hegemony over other territories and entities -- whether near to home, over the rivers and mountains, or across the seas. Usually, if not always, the concept of empire has implied great size, which itself is a term that is relative to time and place.

Applied to the history of the territories and peoples who came to constitute the United States, historians can readily appreciate that before and after the Revolution Americans continually exercised one form or another of historic imperialism. They expanded the size of their state and extended its sovereignty through military aggression or settler infiltration by seizing or colonizing territories formerly belonging to or occupied by native populations or foreign powers. In the process, they relocated or killed aboriginal peoples to expropriate their territory for the purposes of settlement, economic exploitation, or the establishment of military bases. They incorporated colonized territories into their polity or exercised dominant economic, military, or political influence over non-incorporated territories. For almost two hundred years they also used slave labor that had forcibly been seized abroad in order to exploit new environments, increase profit margins, and expand a particular way of life.

At present, the United States continues to practice virtually all historical forms of imperialism: military invasion and conquest; the keeping of large and potent military forces in a permanent war posture in far-flung lands; the maintenance of numerous military enclaves in which and out of which American soldiers are beyond the pale of local laws; the possession and governing of non-incorporated territories whose relationship to the United States is in reality colonial; direct and indirect military, political, and economic hegemony over other states and peoples; the practices of regime change and regime protection; and secret and not-so-secret military, paramilitary, and diplomatic alliances with other governments for the purpose of maintaining the empire (aka “status quo”).

Although presently in economic decline, the United States ironically continues to exercise hegemony abroad not only through its military superiority but also through what some have called financial “super-imperialism.” Since the 1970s foreign individuals, corporations, and nations have indirectly financed the American debt, American military spending, and American military adventures, because, having for the time being nowhere else to put their surplus dollars, these foreign entities purchase U.S. Treasury notes and American stocks and bonds.

Even in the political and military seat of the empire, the District of Columbia, the United States taxes indigenous residents but denies them their Constitutional and human right to vote for their own congressional representatives and to practice true local self-rule. The executive and legislative branches of the government of the United States rule the District through imperious committees, appoint judges, operate the court and prison system, prosecute most crimes committed in the district, overturn local laws governing the use of firearms, and control the District’s budget -- even the school system budget.

Whether abroad or at home, America’s imperial practices and policies were not and are not mere intermittent, aberrant, or accidental ones. The American empire was not created in a fit of absentmindedness. Nor can it be said that American imperialism is any less imperial because Americans have considered themselves exceptional in their supposedly noble motives or manifest successes. All imperial elites, ethnicities, or polities with hegemonic power considered themselves exceptional in some sense until they suffered catastrophic defeat and were forced to come to terms with that defeat, recognizing that history’s verdict applies to all. Empire and imperialism by any other names would still constitute the historic elements of empire and imperialism; they would look and feel the same. These are old words, historic words. Let us use them when appropriate, whether or not we think empire or imperialism to be good or bad, welcomed or unwelcomed, and whether one perceives benefits or fears blowback.

Related Links

• Akira Iriye,"Beyond Imperialism: The New Internationalism"
• Cliopatria Symposium,"On Empires"