Reviews for Race over empire

The average rating for Race over empire based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-02-11 00:00:00 Andre Kimble "This book is about race, racism, and U.S. imperialism from 1865 to 1900, from the end of the Civil War to the annexations that followed the Spanish-American War" (xi). It challenges the notion that imperialists primarily used racial arguments to justify the expansion of American territory. On the contrary, anti-imperialists used racial arguments--primarily agitated by the inclusion of largely non-white populations (Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, etc.) into the American nation. Racist notions, primarily held by the white working class that held the economic fear of losing jobs to these potential new American, labelled non-white foreigners as unfit for self-government and thus an unnecessary, unwanted, and disadvantageous economic investment for the American government. While Eric Love does not go to great lengths to seek out documents proving the voices of the masses are individually using race to counter imperialist expansion, he relies upon an analogy from astronomy--the fact that "wobbling" stars signal the pull from unseen planets and systems--to focus his attention on policymakers and politicians who may be viewed as "wobbling" in response to their constituents' demands. This is very creative, not entirely ridiculous, but also has some shortcomings in the way of rigorous scholarship. "It is the thesis of this book that in the last decades of the nineteenth century, the weight and inertia of all this history placed a range of formidable racial obstacles in the way of imperialists. I argue that as old obstacles were fortified by many new ones in an age marked by intense, ferocious, even murderous racism--the final suppression of Native Americans, the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1882 and 1892, Jim Crow, the Mississippi Plan, Plessy v. Ferguson, countless race riots and lynchings--policymakers would not, and indeed did not, behave as the dominant narrative insists. They did not use the language of social Darwinism, benevolent assimilation, and the "white man's burden" when taking their arguments to the people: to do so would have the effect of placing hated groups at the center of their policies, disfiguring them, guaranteeing their defeat" (25). In other words, racism was not at the center of the U.S. imperialism debate. It certainly was a factor, but it was not the central argument used to justify military intervention and territorial expansion of the United States in the late 19th and early 20th century as is often taught in history books. This is a strong, controversial thesis but it very well articulated and supported by documentary evidence. (xi-26, 73-200)

Review # 2 was written on 2014-03-03 00:00:00 John M Tama This book offers a counterargument to race being a catalyst to American expansion. Love asserts that race and racism actually hindered expansion due to Americans fear of annexing populations of people who weren't "white." I enjoyed Love's arguments because it is a radically different take on many works on American expansionism, however this book was so boring. As my history prof said, it would have functioned better if it was shortened into an article, and I agree with her. The arguments are sound, however there is a lot of repetition with examples and arguments given for each area of potential American annexation included in this book.