In this Book

  • Endless Empire: Spain's Retreat, Europe's Eclipse, America's Decline
  • Book
  • Edited by Alfred W. McCoy, Josep M. Fradera, and Stephen Jacobson
  • 2012
  • Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
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summary
Throughout four millennia of recorded history there has been no end to empire, but instead an endless succession of empires. After five centuries of sustained expansion, the half-dozen European powers that ruled half of humanity collapsed with stunning speed after World War II, creating a hundred emerging nations in Asia and Africa. Amid this imperial transition, the United States became the new global hegemon, dominating this world order with an array of power that closely resembled that of its European predecessors.
    As Brazil, Russia, India, China, and the European Union now rise in global influence, twenty leading historians from four continents take a timely look backward and forward to discover patterns of eclipse in past empires that are already shaping a decline in U.S. global power, including:
• erosion of economic and fiscal strength needed for military power on a global scale
• misuse of military power through micro-military misadventures
• breakdown of alliances among major powers
• weakened controls over the subordinate elites critical for any empire’s exercise of global power
• insufficient technological innovation to sustain global force projection.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. p. 1
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  1. Title Page, Frontispiece, Copyright, Dedication
  2. pp. 2-7
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  1. Contents
  2. pp. vii-11
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. pp. xi-15
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  1. Part 1. Introduction
  2. pp. 1-17
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  1. Fatal Florescence: Europe’s Decolonization and America’s Decline
  2. pp. 3-40
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  1. Part 2. Spain’s Long Imperial Retreat
  2. pp. 41-57
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  1. Eclipse and Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1650-1898
  2. pp. 43-54
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  1. Empires in Retreat: Spain and Portugal after the Napoleonic Wars
  2. pp. 55-73
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  1. Imperial Ambitions in an Era of Decline: Micromilitarism and the Eclipse of the Spanish Empire, 1858-1923
  2. pp. 74-91
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  1. “The Empire Is No Longer a Social Unit”: Declining Imperial Expectations and Transatlantic Crises in Metropolitan Spain, 1859-1909
  2. pp. 92-104
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  1. Part 3. Imperial Transitions in Latin America and the Philippines
  2. pp. 105-121
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  1. Facing South: How Latin America Socialized United States Diplomacy
  2. pp. 107-121
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  1. “Alliance Imperialism” and Anglo-American Power after 1898: The Origins of Open-Door Internationalism
  2. pp. 122-135
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  1. Pro-imperialist Nationalists at the End of Spain’s Caribbean Empire
  2. pp. 136-147
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  1. Imperial Transition in the Philippines: The Making of a Colonial Discourse about Spanish Rule
  2. pp. 148-159
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  1. The Broken Image: The Spanish Empire in the United States after 1898
  2. pp. 160-166
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  1. Part 4. British Global Dominion and Decline
  2. pp. 167-183
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  1. Information and Intelligence in the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Crisis in the British Empire
  2. pp. 169-181
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  1. The Fin de Siècles of Great Britain and the United States: Comparing Two Declining Phases of Global Capitalist Hegemony
  2. pp. 182-190
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  1. The Geopolitics of Decolonization
  2. pp. 191-202
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  1. Part 5. Complexities and Contradictions of French Decolonization
  2. pp. 203-219
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  1. The Absent Empire: The Colonies in French Constitutions
  2. pp. 205-215
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  1. When Did Decolonization End? France and the Ending of Empire
  2. pp. 216-229
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  1. Decolonizing France: L. S. Senghor’s Redemptive Program for African Socialism
  2. pp. 230-243
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  1. Part 6. Subordinate Elites and Imperial Decline in Southeast Asia
  2. pp. 244-261
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  1. Informal Empire: The Case of Siam and the Middle East
  2. pp. 247-261
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  1. Scientific Patriotism: Medical Science and National Self-Fashioning in Southeast Asia
  2. pp. 262-275
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  1. Decolonization and the Roots of Democracy
  2. pp. 276-292
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  1. Part 7. Imperial Decline and National Identities
  2. pp. 293-309
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  1. Natives Who Were “Citizens” and Natives Who Were Indígenas in the Portuguese Empire, 1900-1926
  2. pp. 295-305
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  1. From Subjecthood to Citizenship in South Asia: Migration, Nationality, and the Post-imperial Global Order -
  2. pp. 306-318
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  1. Part 8. U.S. Global Hegemony
  2. pp. 319-335
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  1. The “Three R’s” and the Making of a New World Order: Reparation, Reconstruction, Relief, and U.S. Policy, 1945-1952
  2. pp. 321-333
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  1. Entangled Empires: The United States and European Imperial Formations in the Mid-Twentieth Century
  2. pp. 334-343
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  1. Cold War Transition: Europe’s Decolonization and Eisenhower’s System of Subordinate Elites
  2. pp. 344-359
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  1. Imperial Illusions: Information Infrastructure and the Future of U.S. Global Power
  2. pp. 360-386
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 387-452
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  1. Contributors
  2. pp. 453-456
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 457-477
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