The American Empire w/ Daniel Immerwahr

The Road to Now

Benjamin Sawyer

Society & Culture, History

4.8 • 628 Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Is the United States an empire? US citizens have struggled with this question for a long time. Though our historical narrative traces our origins to the war for independence against the British Empire, we often forget that the US has presided over territories since the very beginning. Today about 4 million people in the territories of American Samoa, the Northern Marinara Islands, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands are subject to the US government, yet cannot vote for President and have only symbolic representation in congress. At the same time, the US maintains a global network of about 800 military bases in 80 countries.

For these reasons and more, Daniel Immerwahr says the United States is definitely an empire. In this episode, Daniel explains how this happened, the ways that US citizens have debated their country's role in the world, and how a country born of an anti-imperialist revolution became the thing it professed (and still professes) to despise. He also shares some fascinating stories about how the US military helped make The Beatles, why some people claimed John McCain was not eligible to be President, and how citizens of the United States of America began referring to their country as simply "America."

Daniel Immerwahr is Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University, and author of the book How To Hide An Empire: A History of the Greater United States (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2019). You can follow him on twitter at @dimmerwahr.

How To Hide An Empire is available on audiobook from libro.fm. Click here and use promo code RTN at checkout to get this book and two more for just $15!

This episode is a reair of RTN #134, which originally aired on July 1, 2019.

The original conversation was edited by Gary Fletcher. This reair was edited by Ben Sawyer.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ben Sawyer and this is The Road to Now.
0:09.1	Today's episode is a conversation with Daniel Imrevar about his book How to Hide an Empire,
0:14.9	A History of the Greater United States.
0:17.0	This is one of the best books I've read in years and it really makes you reflect upon the role of the United States in the world, how the history of this country is played out in the territories we have.
0:30.2	These parts of the world that we oftentimes don't even think about, yet really tell a story of who we are.
0:36.1	I think most of us know about Puerto Rico, but we don't really
0:38.3	think about American Samoa. We don't really think about Guam. And the people who live in those
0:43.5	territories are a part of our country's history as well. And so I think bringing them back into the
0:48.2	story was a brilliant idea to put it in one volume. Can't say enough good about this book. I keep returning back to it. There's so much in there that it's really hard to learn everything the first time through, which is why we decided to re-air it. This is one of my favorite episodes we've ever done, and so I hope you guys enjoy it. I just want to say, before we get to the interview, welcome to all the new listeners
1:11.2	of the road to now. How do I know there are new listeners? Well, friends, because October of
1:17.4	2021 was the best month we've ever had in terms of overall listeners, in terms of downloads.
1:23.4	It's amazing to see this happening. Thank you so much to everyone who's come. I know we've got
1:27.8	people that have come in who are listeners of History That Doesn't Suck with Greg Jackson.
1:32.6	It's an honor to have you here. We love Greg. I know there's people that are here who learned
1:36.8	about us from the Constitution Center. Thank you to everyone there for coming in and joining us
1:41.7	for this podcast. And also, thanks to everyone who's stuck with us.
1:46.0	It's really a delight to everyone who's been listening, giving us feedback, and to those who
1:50.4	support us on Patreon. You guys have kept us going, and we cannot say thank you enough times,
1:56.3	so we will keep on trying to get there. Thank you. So for Bob Crawford, this is Ben Sawyer.
2:01.8	I hope you guys enjoyed this fantastic conversation with Daniel Emmervar on his book,
2:07.1	How to Hide an Empire, A History of the Greater United States.
2:12.9	Daniel Emmervar, welcome to the road to now.
	...

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