The Age of the American Empire

Unlike European powers, US imperialism has sought to create and maintain its hegemony via puppet regimes or via local elites (see the post below with an extract from David Harvey’s interview), leading to an impression that it is not a colonial power like, say, England or France that ruled their colonies directly and more visibly.

Howard Zinn, well known as the author of the path breaking A People’s History of the United States, unfolds the imperial nature of the American Empire in extensive detail in his latest book, A People’s History of American Empire, in a graphic adaptation format published last month.

I was conscious, like everyone, of the British Empire and the other imperial powers of Europe, but the United States was not seen in the same way. When, after the war, I went to college under the G.I. Bill of Rights and took courses in U.S. history, I usually found a chapter in the history texts called “The Age of Imperialism.” It invariably referred to the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the conquest of the Philippines that followed. It seemed that American imperialism lasted only a relatively few years. There was no overarching view of U.S. expansion that might lead to the idea of a more far-ranging empire — or period — of “imperialism.”

– Howard Zinn in Empire or Humanity

Tomdispatch has an illustrated autobiography of Zinn that his fans may like to read (it too is wonderfully illustrated in the comic book format.)

A short video Empire and Humanity from the site.