How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States by Daniel Immerwahr (PDF)

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Named one of the ten best books of the year by the Chicago TribuneA Publishers Weekly best book of 2019 | A 2019 NPR Staff PickA pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empireWe are familiar with maps that outline all fifty states. And we are also familiar with the idea that the United States is an “empire,” exercising power around the world. But what about the actual territories—the islands, atolls, and archipelagos—this country has governed and inhabited?In How to Hide an Empire, Daniel Immerwahr tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light. We travel to the Guano Islands, where prospectors collected one of the nineteenth century’s most valuable commodities, and the Philippines, site of the most destructive event on U.S. soil. In Puerto Rico, Immerwahr shows how U.S. doctors conducted grisly experiments they would never have conducted on the mainland and charts the emergence of independence fighters who would shoot up the U.S. Congress.In the years after World War II, Immerwahr notes, the United States moved away from colonialism. Instead, it put innovations in electronics, transportation, and culture to use, devising a new sort of influence that did not require the control of colonies. Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and compulsively readable work of history.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I’m a professor at the University of California San Diego and I’m assigning this for a graduate class. No other book out there has the level of breadth on the history of US imperialism that this work provides. Even though it packs 400 pages of text (which might seem like a turnoff for non-academic readers), “How to Hide an Empire” is highly readable given Immerwhar’s skills as a writer. Also, its length is part of what makes it awesome because it gives it the right amount of detail and scope.I could not disagree more with the person who gave this book one star. Take it from me: I’ve taught hundreds of college students who graduate among the best in their high school classes and they know close to nothing about the history of US settler colonialism, overseas imperialism, or US interventionism around the world. If you give University of California college students a quiz on where the US’ overseas territories are, most who take it will fail (trust me, I’ve done it). And this is not their fault. Instead, it’s a product of the US education system that fails to give students a nuanced and geographically comprehensive understanding of the oversized effect that their country has around our planet.Alleging that US imperialism in its long evolution (which this book deciphers with poignancy) has had no bearing on the destinies of its once conquered populations is as fallacious as saying that the US is to blame for every single thing that happens in Native American communities, or in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, etc. Not everything that happens in these locations and among these populations is directly connected to US expansionism, but a great deal is.A case in point is Puerto Rico’s current fiscal and economic crisis. The island’s political class share part of the blame for Puerto Rico’s present rut. A lot of it is also due to unnatural (i.e. “natural” but human-exacerbated) disasters such as Hurricane María. However, there is no denying that the evolution of Puerto Rico’s territorial status has generated a host of adverse economic conditions that US states (including an island state such as Hawaii) do not have to contend with. An association with the US has undoubtedly raised the floor of material conditions in these places, but it has also imposed an unjust glass ceiling that most people around the US either do not know about or continue to ignore.To add to those unfair economic limitations, there are political injustices regarding the lack of representation in Congress, and in the case of Am. Samoa, their lack of US citizenship. The fact that the populations in the overseas territories can’t make up their mind about what status they prefer is: a) understandable given the way they have been mistreated by the US government, and b) irrelevant because what really matters is what Congress decides to do with the US’ far-flung colonies, and there is no indication that Congress wants to either fully annex them or let them go because neither would be convenient to the 50 states and the political parties that run them. Instead, the status quo of modern colonial indeterminacy is what works best for the most potent political and economic groups in the US mainland. WouldThis book is about much more than that though. It’s also a history of how and why the United States got to control so much of what happens around the world without creating additional formal colonies like the “territories” that exist in this legal limbo. Part of its goal is to show how precisely how US imperialism has been made to be more cost-effective and also more invisible.Read Immerwhar’s book, and don’t listen to the apologists of US imperialism which is still an active force that contradicts the US’ professed values and that needs to be actively dismantled. Their attempts at discrediting this important reflect a denialism of the US’ imperial realities that has endured throughout the history that this book summarizes.”How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States” is a great starting point for making the US public aware of the US’ contradictions as an “empire of liberty” (a phrase once used by Thomas Jefferson to describe the US as it expanded westward beyond the original 13 colonies). It is also a necessary update to other books on this topic that are already out there, and it is likely to hold the reader’s attention more given its crafty narrative prose and structure

⭐Professor Daniel Immerwahr has written a book that seeks to address Americans’ critical lack of knowledge of the country’s overseas territories and military installations, a lack is not surprising since many college students seem severely lacking in knowledge of their own home states, much less distant places. Immerwahr has said that the problem is not geographical, but if a study he cites that indicates that the people who are under thirty are less likely than older respondents to know that Puerto Ricans are American citizens is truly representative, the decline of map reading skills may well be associated with the rise of GPS devices and smart phones, coupled with the tendency to see distances in term of the time it takes to get somewhere rather than miles, may be a strong contributor to the problem. (Immerwahr does not seem to fault teachers and his fellow professors who are including decreasing amounts of content relating to the United States’ own colonial roots in their courses without replacing it with information about the territories, let alone military bases abroad.)Immerwahr recounts the United States’ acquisition of territories and military bases largely through claim, purchase, and war. He devotes a particularly large amount of text to describing, military operations associated with acquiring and maintaining colonies and employing military bases. While this is important, at times the detail of the descriptions impedes the flow of the narrative and detracts from the subject. A large section on the effects on colonies of post-World War II developments in transportation, communication, and technological standardization seems more relevant to the empires of such colonial powers as Great Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which saw their colonies as being of economic value, than to the United States, which Immerwahr indicates saw its territories as more of a burden than an opportunity, with, perhaps, the exception of the guano islands, which were largely abandoned when guano was no longer needed for American agriculture.One difficulty with the book is its major focus on the Puerto Rico, the territory about which Americans probably know the most, at the expense of the Pacific territories such as the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, of which many are probably unaware. The author might also have devoted more attention to the currently held territories than he does to the former territory of the Philippines.Immerwahr’s inclusion of U. S. military bases abroad as part of the United State “empire,” will surprise many, but he makes an excellent argument for their inclusion. More information about the justification for the approximately 800 foreign bases, some of which are very close together, and the means by which the U. S. government has convinced countries to allow it to station its troops on their soil might also have been helpful in understanding the large United States footprint on the world.One cannot criticize the author for omitting something that he did not intend to include in the first place, but if there is another edition of How to Hide and Empire, it might be appropriate to include at least an appendix about Native American communities at least two of which have, by treaty, rights to have non-voting members of the House of Representatives in the same way that the U. S. territories do. Several of these communities also have reservations that are self-governing and often exempt from state laws regarding taxes and/or gaming; one reservation (the Akwesasne in Northern New York) straddles the U.S.-Canadian border, creating concerns about cross-border transportation of both people and goods (especially cigarettes, but also including drugs and alcohol) for both countries.This work has the potential to be an important book, but many potential readers will find its length daunting (501 pages; 399 pages of text). An easily condensed version would make excellent supplemental reading for classes in such disciplines as United States History, International Relations, Political Science and Constitutional Law. A shorter version might also attract a larger readership among the general public, which the book deserves. The title is highly recommendedThose whose interest in the territories is piqued by How to Hide an Empire might want to read The Not- Quite States of America by Doug Mack, an account of life in the U. S. territories in the twenty-first century, and visit the website www.equalrightsnow.org, which seeks to inform the public about the territories and advocate for the rights of the approximately four million people who live in them.

⭐My. headline says it all: this is history that also should be taught in schools. Excellent history book.

⭐This is an accessible, entertaining and very informative book with some really wild revelations and connections. I consider myself pretty well read in US history in particular and this book still surprised me. I admit, I was ignorant of many of the stories told here (ex: medical experimentation in Puerto Rico; city planning gone wild in the Philippines; labor law loopholes in Saipan). Possibly because the whole view of American history as being one of empire has been obscured, many historical figures involved with it are obscured as well, even if they became more famous in other contexts. For instance Herbert Hoover comes off pretty well here, all things considered. Immerwahl is also more positive on Douglas MacArthur than most other historians I’ve read. MacArthur is normally profiled as the sometimes ineffectual diva-like egomaniac that he transparently was, but in the context of US Empire and its stewardship of the Philippines, he seems like a real mensch because he was seemingly the only American of influence who gave a damn about the Philippines at all.I hope that lots of young people read this book. This is a history that I’d generally categorize as Left, but I think it’s accessible enough that it could introduce a lot of readers to these concepts without any perceived (reactionary) stigma as “a Leftist history book.”

⭐As a Canadian I am more aware of the overt imperialism of the British Empire, and the racism in past and present day Canada.Daniel Immerwahr examines an often overlooked facet of American History. He takes you into an insightful look at American imperialism and colonialism. This is a look at what territories really make up the Untied States of America. The ones that are not usually thought of as being the US; the rest of the Greater U.S.of A. Corporate imperialism is detailed along with the political story, with emphasis on the undemocratic treatment of US territories and their people. It details the overt racism in early twentieth century US society and politics in general, and specifically concerning territories with large indigenous and non-white populations. This is much worse than I had thought. Especially of interest may be the chapters concerning the involvement of the territories in WWI & WWII, and of course the chapter on how bird guano sparked the acquisition of overseas territory.Well written, researched and a good read

⭐At time witty, but more often quite strident this book offers a quick trip through the intricacies and ironies of America’s policies toward the land and countries it has occupied over the centuries. Often not pleasant reading but always thought provoking, it is a worthwhile overview and more scarcely glimpse of the USA’s role in the world today.

⭐The five star reviews are here for a reason! One of the most interesting books I have ever read, deserving of all of the accolades. If you’re a fan of Winchester, Larson, Bryson, etc., you have just found your next great read. Detailed yet entertaining, breathtaking in scope, disturbingly honest, and endlessly fascinating.

⭐I thought that I was pretty well informed about American history — and world history, as well. Yet much of the information in this book was new to me. Thank you, Mr. Immerwahr, for a job well done; I look forward to your next book.

⭐The information is not exactly original (the US built much of its empire by gobbling Pacific islands, which it maintains) but it is cogently presented here in an approachable study.

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