Overview

Few topics are more important to understanding the origins of the modern world than decolonization, and few countries have played a more important role in that history than the United States. In this book, Sean T. Byrnes provides a definitive, single-volume account of the relationship between the United States, decolonization, and world order. Through a lively narrative history that ranges across four centuries, Byrnes reveals how the process of ending and replacing empires defined the American relationship to the world from the colonial era to the present. Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of the American Revolution, hierarchies born of the imperial age—and defined by ideas about race, capitalism, and civilization—fundamentally shaped American views of who was entitled to sovereignty and when. Therefore, far from building a world of “Westphalian” sovereign equality, the United States instead manipulated, expanded, and then attempted to dominate globe spanning structures of wealth and power that served the few at the expense of the many. From early interactions with Native Americans and a decolonizing Latin America, to efforts to bolster global hierarchies after the World Wars and influence the postcolonial “Third World”, The United States and the Ends of Empire, tells the story of a US that may not always have embraced formal empire but nevertheless still sought to organize the world in imperial ways. In the process, it reveals how Americans helped build today’s modern, globalized world—and the unequal hierarchies of wealth and power that define it.

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9781350341661

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Reviews

Associated with the late twentieth century, the decolonization of the modern world was symbolized by the birth of the United States in 1776 — a country that then had to grapple with the meaning of its own emancipation for its growing power in a world of other peoples. The great historian Sean Byrnes has written an epic and masterful survey of America’s struggle with empires — including its own — over two centuries. Whether and how empires end turn out to be defining American questions. * Samuel Moyn, Yale University, USA * I’m so grateful I read this book, and you will be too. Sean Byrnes has done something extraordinary with The United States and the Ends of Empire, a sweeping and incisive survey of the history of the US in the world from Thomas Jefferson to Donald Trump. Byrnes is an unfailingly judicious guide to the paradoxical career of this self-proclaimed “empire of liberty.” Whether you’re a student encountering this material for the first time or a seasoned historian, I promise there is something here for you. Because the story Byrnes tells isn’t just about US foreign policy. It’s about the noble ideals, acid realities, and relentless struggles that made our world—and just might point the way to something better. * Timothy Shenk, George Washington University, USA *

Associated with the late twentieth century, the decolonization of the modern world was symbolized by the birth of the United States in 1776 — a country that then had to grapple with the meaning of its own emancipation for its growing power in a world of other peoples. The great historian Sean Byrnes has written an epic and masterful survey of America’s struggle with empires — including its own — over two centuries. Whether and how empires end turn out to be defining American questions. * Samuel Moyn, Yale University, USA *

Author Information

Sean T. Byrnes is a General Education Instructor at Western Governors University and an Adjunct Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland Global Campus. He is the author of Disunited Nations: U.S. Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism, and the Rise of the New Right (2021). His work has appeared in publications including, Time, Dissent, The New Republic, Jacobin and Diplomatic History. He holds a Ph.D. in history from Emory University.

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