Unexceptional Conquests

Paul T. McCartney is professor of political science at Towson University. He is the author of Power and Progress: American National Identity, the War of 1898, and the Rise of American Imperialism.

"Finally, thanks to Paul T. McCartney, we have a compendium showcasing the most groundbreaking contemporary scholarship on the Spanish-American War and its complex origins, consequences, and meanings and legacies. Essays ranging topically from historiography, Christian nationalism, and gender and racial politics to media culture, labor protest, and constitutional jurisprudence, among other subjects, offer a rich mosaic of interdisciplinary research on the United States's turn to 'saltwater empire' in the 1898 era. The result is an exceptionally illuminating guide to the making of a surprisingly unexceptional imperial nation."-Justin F. Jackson, author of The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines "Unexceptional Conquests brings together leading scholars to examine how the imperial turn of 1898 reshaped American national identity. Through incisive and interdisciplinary essays on law, culture, race, gender, and governance, the volume demonstrates how empire left its imprint on institutions and ideas, giving legal and administrative expression to assumptions about power, belonging, and hierarchy. It is a sharp, historically grounded intervention that places empire at the center of American political development."-Colin D. Moore, Associate Professor, University of Hawai'I, author of American Imperialism and the State, 1893-1921 "With the 2026 invasion of Venezuela by the United States, it is said that we are returning to a 19th century style of imperial geopolitics. If so, then this volume is a crucial guide to the present. McCartney assembles an interdisciplinary line-up of leading scholars to explore the multiple facets of the enduring legacies of 1898 in US history. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the ongoing dynamics of US imperialism in the 21st century."-Adam Dahl, author of The Search for World Democracy: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Politics of Space "In Unexceptional Conquests, Paul T. McCartney brings together an impressive cohort of scholars for a multidisciplinary conversation about how US policymakers and cultural leaders contested the meaning of 'American empire' at the crossroads of 1898. As experts in a variety of fields, the contributors navigate the contradictions in American self-images that the wars in the Caribbean and the Philippines exposed, charting how the nation rationalized the seizing of faraway territories and projecting the legacies that informed US aggressions in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries."-Jimmy L. Bryan Jr., author of The American Elsewhere: Adventure and Manliness in the Age of Expansion