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Convergences: Inventories of the Present
The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture
The United States has always imagined that its identity as a nation is insulated from violent interventions abroad, as if a line between domestic and foreign affairs could be neatly drawn. Yet this book argues that such a distinction, so obviously impracticable in our own global era, has been illusory at least since the war with Mexico in the mid-nineteenth century and the later wars against Spain, Cuba, and the Philippines. In this book, Amy Kaplan shows how U.S. imperialism--from "Manifest Destiny" to the "American Century"--has profoundly shaped key elements of American culture at home, and how the struggle for power over foreign peoples and places has disrupted the quest for domestic order.
The neatly ordered kitchen in Catherine Beecher's household manual may seem remote from the battlefields of Mexico in 1846, just as Mark Twain's Mississippi may seem distant from Honolulu in 1866, or W. E. B. Du Bois's reports of the East St. Louis Race Riot from the colonization of Africa in 1917. But, as this book reveals, such apparently disparate locations are cast into jarring proximity by imperial expansion. In literature, journalism, film, political speeches, and legal documents, Kaplan traces the undeniable connections between American efforts to quell anarchy abroad and the eruption of such anarchy at the heart of the empire.
The neatly ordered kitchen in Catherine Beecher's household manual may seem remote from the battlefields of Mexico in 1846, just as Mark Twain's Mississippi may seem distant from Honolulu in 1866, or W. E. B. Du Bois's reports of the East St. Louis Race Riot from the colonization of Africa in 1917. But, as this book reveals, such apparently disparate locations are cast into jarring proximity by imperial expansion. In literature, journalism, film, political speeches, and legal documents, Kaplan traces the undeniable connections between American efforts to quell anarchy abroad and the eruption of such anarchy at the heart of the empire.
272 pages, Paperback
First published February 17, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 5, 2007
The Anarchy of Empire is a brilliant, engaging and well-written work. The title comes from WEB Du Bois’s Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil (1920), a text Kaplan analyzes in her final chapter.
Kaplan’s overarching argument is that America as empire collapses the boundaries between the domestic and the foreign even as it polices them. The anarchy of empire is both the “anarchy” the empire justifies itself in preventing, even as it is the anarchy caused by empire, and the resistance that threatens it. Her first chapter, Manifest Domesticity examines the relationship between domestic fiction in the 1850s and manifest destiny. Here she explores the double-meaning of domestic as both a feminized sphere in relationship to the masculine sphere of commerce and wilderness, and the domestic as the national rather than the foreign. As such women’s domestic fiction and the female sphere in the 1850s is intimately connected to America’s role in the world, and the project of national expansion. It polices the boundaries of what is and isn’t domestic simultaneously expanding and contracting at the same time as the nation. The second chapter examines the influence of Mark Twain’s travels and writings about Hawaii on the rest of his work, demonstrating how America’s imperial adventures mark the work of an author considered the most American of American. Romancing the Empire, Chapter Three, looks at the re-emergence of the historical romance in the 1890s, and the way in which “New Woman” heroines enact the role of the new imperial subject who is modern enough to liberate herself from old traditions and hierarchies (the primitive) while simultaneously becoming subject to the “real live man” (representative of the US). Chapter Four, equally engaging, provides a comparative reading of the participation of African American soldiers in the Spanish-American War from the perspective of Theodore Roosevelt, and the African American press, which was filled with the observations of black soldiers. While black soldiers asserted their bravery as part of a campaign to win black officers, TR and others perceived black soldiers (Blacks in Blue) as a threat to the nation reminiscent of reconstruction. TR asserted his dominance over African Americans in representations to discipline a domestic threat to disorder as part of asserting national dominance over empire. In Chapter Five, Kaplan engages with representations of the Spanish-American war in American Cinema, most notably Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane . She argues that the Spanish-American War is intertwined with the ability of “moving pictures” to cast a master narrative, to tell a story. Her final chapter, “The Imperial Cartography of W.E.B. Du Bois” analyzes the contradictory ways Du Bois understood empire as he created a new cartography of the world in the post WW I era that provides the potential global challenge to white supremacy even as it repeats an imperial position for African Americans as representative of the US as nation.
One of the most brilliant sections of the book is the introduction, which examines the production of meaning of domestic and foreign through the insular cases. For those of you who are more interested in activism and not academia, I would recommend you skip The Anarchy of Empire , but read Kaplan’s engaging article “Where is Guantanamo?” published in the American Quarterly . This article captures many of Kaplan’s best points from the introduction in relationship to the current events. It articulates well the importance of America’s history of empire to its present incursions into empire.
If you are interested in either US Literature or theorizing the American Empire, this book is highly recommended for you.
Kaplan’s overarching argument is that America as empire collapses the boundaries between the domestic and the foreign even as it polices them. The anarchy of empire is both the “anarchy” the empire justifies itself in preventing, even as it is the anarchy caused by empire, and the resistance that threatens it. Her first chapter, Manifest Domesticity examines the relationship between domestic fiction in the 1850s and manifest destiny. Here she explores the double-meaning of domestic as both a feminized sphere in relationship to the masculine sphere of commerce and wilderness, and the domestic as the national rather than the foreign. As such women’s domestic fiction and the female sphere in the 1850s is intimately connected to America’s role in the world, and the project of national expansion. It polices the boundaries of what is and isn’t domestic simultaneously expanding and contracting at the same time as the nation. The second chapter examines the influence of Mark Twain’s travels and writings about Hawaii on the rest of his work, demonstrating how America’s imperial adventures mark the work of an author considered the most American of American. Romancing the Empire, Chapter Three, looks at the re-emergence of the historical romance in the 1890s, and the way in which “New Woman” heroines enact the role of the new imperial subject who is modern enough to liberate herself from old traditions and hierarchies (the primitive) while simultaneously becoming subject to the “real live man” (representative of the US). Chapter Four, equally engaging, provides a comparative reading of the participation of African American soldiers in the Spanish-American War from the perspective of Theodore Roosevelt, and the African American press, which was filled with the observations of black soldiers. While black soldiers asserted their bravery as part of a campaign to win black officers, TR and others perceived black soldiers (Blacks in Blue) as a threat to the nation reminiscent of reconstruction. TR asserted his dominance over African Americans in representations to discipline a domestic threat to disorder as part of asserting national dominance over empire. In Chapter Five, Kaplan engages with representations of the Spanish-American war in American Cinema, most notably Birth of a Nation and Citizen Kane . She argues that the Spanish-American War is intertwined with the ability of “moving pictures” to cast a master narrative, to tell a story. Her final chapter, “The Imperial Cartography of W.E.B. Du Bois” analyzes the contradictory ways Du Bois understood empire as he created a new cartography of the world in the post WW I era that provides the potential global challenge to white supremacy even as it repeats an imperial position for African Americans as representative of the US as nation.
One of the most brilliant sections of the book is the introduction, which examines the production of meaning of domestic and foreign through the insular cases. For those of you who are more interested in activism and not academia, I would recommend you skip The Anarchy of Empire , but read Kaplan’s engaging article “Where is Guantanamo?” published in the American Quarterly . This article captures many of Kaplan’s best points from the introduction in relationship to the current events. It articulates well the importance of America’s history of empire to its present incursions into empire.
If you are interested in either US Literature or theorizing the American Empire, this book is highly recommended for you.
April 13, 2014
Amy Kaplan centers her argument on the polarity of "domestic" and "foreign" in American culture beginning specifically with the Downes v. Bidwell Supreme Court case in 1901 that ruled that Puerto Rico was "foreign in a domestic sense" to the United States. This awkward political limbo status of U.S. territories acquired during the Spanish-American War a few years prior to the case has persisted to the present day demonstrating how complex the imperialistic expansion of the United States has been. In her attempt to re-map the field of American Studies, Kaplan explores how issues of gender, race, and class have been involved in American history's cultural development. The title comes from the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois suggesting that the control and order of empire and its ambitions ultimately results in confusion and disorder. Drawing from popular literature (Uncle Tom's Cabin), film (Citizen Kane), and biographical analysis of American figures (Mark Twain), Kaplan argues for a greater transnational vantage point of American history in order to better understand its imperial history: slavery, Native American expulsion, and continual "domestic" racial issues are included as an inseparable part of America's imperial history. This is a very compelling and well-written book but at times it speaks a little too broadly. Overall, however, it raises some very important issues and provides a good working model for American Studies methodology.
March 9, 2012
Beautifully written, argued, and organized. I want to write like her.
November 16, 2020
One of the few monographs I’ve read in just a couple of sittings. Excellent thread of perspective that keeps you turning the pages as if you were selecting ‘next episode’ on Netflix.
September 24, 2025
A classic banger of the anti imperial turn in American Studies. I returned to it for pleasure and inspiration on how to write compelling cultural analysis. The last chapter on Du Bois, from whom she gets the phrase of the title, and the readings of Citizen Kane were the highlights for me.
March 20, 2023
Speculative at times but very good example of the cultural/literary turn in history.
February 5, 2010
This is a well-argued book showing how the growth of imperial power structures relies on the creation of anarchy both within and without the borders of a nation. By looking at media in the 19th and 20th century, specifically literature and cinema, Kaplan shows how the representation of gender, race, and nation are inextricably tied. Though there are many questions left unanswered with regard to agency and counter-discourse, it is a foundational read.
June 9, 2012
Key turn in American Studies to shift to the field into a more international/transnational approach. Kaplan's point is that the "domestic" and the "foreign" always mutually inform one another. As a rule her readings of popular novels, journalism, and film from the 1850s through the 1940s are excellent and insightful, though in her first chapter she elides domesticity, the home, and femininity in maybe too liberal a sweep.
March 24, 2013
Good arguments and fresh insights dragged down by pompous descriptions and reiterations of the same ideas; she seems to enjoy writing compound sentences to the extreme. "Manifest Domesticity" is a great chapter, though, and the same goes for the final chapter on Du Bois.
March 20, 2011
I only read the "Manifest Domesticity" chapter for my orals exam, but really enjoyed it.
September 22, 2012
Nice analysis of what it means to being foreign vs. domestic in light of US imperialism, American nationhood as well as concepts of masculinity and domesticity.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews