On the Waves of Empire

William D. Riddell is an assistant professor of history at the University of Toronto.

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Seams of Empire A Leak in the Ship of State": Maritime Labor Reform and U.S. Imperial Expansion, 1872-1900 Does Exclusion Follow the Flag? Imperial Labor Mobilization, Domestic Organized Labor, and the Emergence of a U.S. Metropole, 1902-1908 Riding the Waves of Empire: Craft Unionism, the La Follette Seamens Act of 1915, and the Economic Dimensions of U.S. Imperial Power, 1908 -1915 Agents of Empire: Merchant Sailors, the Great War, and the New American Merchant Marine, 1898-1919 They Always Choose Exclusion: Internal Dissent, Postwar U.S. Maritime Policy, and the Fall of the Sailors Unions, 1915-1924 Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

"Riddell shows US sailors struggling for their own emancipation. Especially after 1898, he shows them also as fashioning themselves as white agents of empire. The potential for drama and tragedy is great, and fully realized, in this riveting book."--David Roediger, author of The Sinking Middle Class: A Political History of Debt, Misery, and the Drift to the Right