Reconstruction and Empire - (Reconstructing America) by David Prior (Paperback)

About the Book

"This volume examines the historical connections between the United States' Reconstruction and the country's emergence as a geopolitical power a few decades later. It shows how the processes at work during the postbellum decade variously foreshadowed, inhibited, and conditioned the development of the United States as an overseas empire and regional hegemon. In doing so, it links the diverse topics of abolition, diplomacy, Jim Crow, humanitarianism, and imperialism. In 1935, the great African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois argued in his Black Reconstruction in America that these two historical moments were intimately related. In particular, Du Bois averred that the nation's betrayal of the South's fledgling interracial democracy in the 1870s put reactionaries in charge of a country on the verge of global power, with world-historical implications. Working with the same chronological and geographical parameters, the contributors here take up targeted case studies, tracing the biographical, ideological, and thematic linkages that stretch across the postbellum and imperial moments. With an Introduction, eleven chapters, and an Afterword, this volume offers multiple perspectives based on original primary source research. The resulting composite picture points to a host of countervailing continuities and changes. The contributors examine topics as diverse as diplomatic relations with Spain, the changing views of radical abolitionists, African American missionaries in the Caribbean, and the ambiguities of turn-of-the century political cartoons. Collectively, the volume unsettles familiar assumptions about how we should understand the late nineteenth-century United States, conventionally framed as the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It also advances transnational approaches to understanding America's Reconstruction and the search for the ideological currents shaping American power abroad"--

Book Synopsis

This volume examines the historical connections between the United States' Reconstruction and the country's emergence as a geopolitical power a few decades later. It shows how the processes at work during the postbellum decade variously foreshadowed, inhibited, and conditioned the development of the United States as an overseas empire and regional hegemon. In doing so, it links the diverse topics of abolition, diplomacy, Jim Crow, humanitarianism, and imperialism.

In 1935, the great African American intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois argued in his Black Reconstruction in America that these two historical moments were intimately related. In particular, Du Bois averred that the nation's betrayal of the South's fledgling interracial democracy in the 1870s put reactionaries in charge of a country on the verge of global power, with world-historical implications. Working with the same chronological and geographical parameters, the contributors here take up targeted case studies, tracing the biographical, ideological, and thematic linkages that stretch across the postbellum and imperial moments. With an Introduction, eleven chapters, and an Afterword, this volume offers multiple perspectives based on original primary source research. The resulting composite picture points to a host of countervailing continuities and changes. The contributors examine topics as diverse as diplomatic relations with Spain, the changing views of radical abolitionists, African American missionaries in the Caribbean, and the ambiguities of turn-of-the century political cartoons.

Collectively, the volume unsettles familiar assumptions about how we should understand the late nineteenth-century United States, conventionally framed as the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. It also advances transnational approaches to understanding America's Reconstruction and the search for the ideological currents shaping American power abroad.

Review Quotes

. . . Reconstruction and Empire is worthy of a read by those who have a keen interest in Reconstruction and empire. The essays within this volume raise many nuanced questions worthy of future research.-- "H-Net Reviews"

Reconstruction and Empire is an invaluable contribution to a growing transnational scholarship.-- "Journal of the Civil War Era"

. . . [A] wonderful scholarly contribution. David Prior and Fordham University Press should be commended. Reconstruction and Empire will be of special interest to historians of the period from the Civil War to the Progressive Era and to historians of imperialism more broadly.-- "The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era"

. . . Reconstruction and Empire is now an essential starting point for historians seeking to understand how, within a half century, "the United States government went from conducting one of the most radical experiments in the history of democracy to constructing a racist empire."-- "Journal of Southern History"

Although the 1860s and 1890s feature prominently in most histories of U.S. foreign policy, it is perhaps time that we pay more attention to how Americans in the 1870s and 1880s interacted with the world around them. If anyone is interested in doing so, Reconstruction and Empire is a good place to start.-- "The Journal of Arizona History"

Although historians of Reconstruction have broadened their scope to encompass the U.S. conquest of western North America, they have hesitated to venture into the Caribbean and Pacific. This collection bridges the scholarly gulf between Reconstruction and overseas imperialism. It expands chronologies, reframes geographies, and traces connections in eye-opening ways, revealing how the age of emancipation bled into the age of empire.---Kristin Hoganson, The Stanley S. Stroup Professor of United States History, The University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

David Prior is Associate Professor of History at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Between Freedom and Progress and the editor of Reconstruction in a Globalizing World (Fordham). He edits the online forums H Nationalism and H-Slavery.