How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

How to Hide an Empire covers a long period—from colonial America to the present—from the standpoint of the establishment and development of the American Empire. For this reason, it is important to briefly examine key aspects of US history and foreign policy.

Rebelling against Britain in 1776, the Americans living in the original Thirteen Colonies perceived themselves as a republic. The Founding Fathers in the New World sought to avoid the imperial pursuits and entanglements of the Old World. This image of the US as a republic was formative to the self-perception of Americans and persists even today. However, it was already in the 19th century that the United States began its transformation into an empire.

The Monroe Doctrine (1823) sought to prevent further European colonization of the Americas. It had a defensive purpose but, at the same time, delineated North and South America as the sphere of influence of the United States. On the mainland, Americans, inspired by the frontier drive, explored and settled farther west toward the Pacific coast. They were also inspired by “Manifest Destiny”—a 19th-century belief in America’s destiny to settle the entire continent. The population explosion among white settlers pushing out the Indigenous people of North America and government policies such as the Indian Removal Act (1830) led to the forced relocation of Indigenous Americans from their ancestral lands.