Crossing Empires

“Crossing Empires makes a compelling case that a transimperial history is necessary if we are to lay bare the power dynamics structuring transnationalism and globalization. The essays present rich empirical case studies that show how transimperial connections buttressed imperial rule and sustained colonial violence and exploitation while they simultaneously integrated the world into tighter global circuits of capital, culture, technology, and power. A welcome addition to the scholarship on U.S. imperialism and comparative empires.” - Kornel Chang, author of Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands

“This excellent, accessible, and carefully curated collection recenters United States history in the most powerful of ways. Superbly deploying the concept of the transimperial in an astonishing array of case studies, this volume offers vital new understandings of imperial formations and will help scholars identify important new directions and questions in the study of global empires.” - Daniel E. Bender, coeditor of Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism

“This collection will be of particular use in graduate seminars, though it is of value to all scholars thinking through the ways that we understand movements across, interactions between, and comparisons of empires.”

"The editors and authors should be commended for their efforts. This volume should be read by American historians seeking to understand the US and empire." - J. Rogers, Choice

“Perhaps most striking, and in contrast to most transnational history, is the contributors' attention to the role of the state—or, rather, multiple states—in the lives of imperial subjects.” - Sarah Miller-Davenport, Journal of Historical Geography

"A fresh perspective on the study of U.S. history through the analytical lens of empire.… Crossing Empires offers an invaluable primer to a fast-developing scholarship on transimperial history in the U.S. context. Its great strength lies in the richness of its individual chapters, each making its own contribution yet also speaking to the same broader analytical concern.… Wholly successful in its purpose, Crossing Empires will serve as an important touchstone for future scholarship on U.S. transimperial history." - Dirk Bönker, Pacific Historical Review

“Crossing Empires features a number of disciplinary approaches.... Collectively, the essays in the volume demonstrate the value of interrogating and deliberately disregarding the categories that have arbitrarily defined the way histories of empires have been approached.” - Katharine Bjork, Western Historical Quarterly

“Individually these essays make useful specialized contributions to the understanding of the 19th-century imperial world, including across the Asia-Pacific region. Collectively, they will stimulate further research on the non-exceptional character of American empire as part of global imperial formations.” - Ian Tyrrell, Journal of Pacific History

"Attention to detail exempifies the contributions to Crossing Empires. Each author takes care to reveal not only hitherto obscured connections, but to describe, understand, and situate them in their varied, overlapping imperial contexts." - David C. Atkinson, H-Diplo Forum

"The essays included in Crossing Empires push transimperial and U.S. in the world historiographies in new directions. . . . While the authors dissect the transimperial nature of U.S. empire and American imperial actors in the world, they never do so at the expense of colonized people." - Jeannette Eileen Jones, H-Diplo Forum

"Crossing Empires thus showcases cutting-edge scholarship that will transform our conversations about empires over the ensuing decades. This volume with its thoughtfully curated essays with an insightful introduction is a must-read. . . ." - Jayita Sarkar, H-Diplo Forum

“[Crossing Empires] offer[s] the latest in cutting edge scholarship in the field. . . . As the field continues to shift, grow, and change, this volume will stand as a testament to a particularly generative moment.” - Alvita Akiboh, Journal of Social History