Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors [Hardcover]

Charles S. Maier (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0674021894 | ISBN-13: 978-0674021891 | Publication Date: April 24, 2006

Contemporary America, with its unparalleled armaments and ambition, seems to many commentators a new empire. Others angrily reject the designation. What stakes would being an empire have for our identity at home and our role abroad?

A preeminent American historian addresses these issues in light of the history of empires since antiquity. This elegantly written book examines the structure and impact of these mega-states and asks whether the United States shares their traits and behavior. Eschewing the standard focus on current U.S. foreign policy and the recent spate of pro- and anti-empire polemics, Charles S. Maier uses comparative history to test the relevance of a concept often invoked but not always understood. Marshaling a remarkable array of evidence--from Roman, Ottoman, Moghul, Spanish, Russian, Chinese, and British experience--Maier outlines the essentials of empire throughout history. He then explores the exercise of U.S. power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, carefully analyzing its economic and strategic sources and the nation's relationship to predecessors and rivals.

To inquire about empire is to ask what the United States has become as a result of its wealth, inventiveness, and ambitions. It is to confront lofty national aspirations with the realities of the violence that often attends imperial politics and thus to question both the costs and the opportunities of the current U.S. global ascendancy. With learning, dispassion, and clarity, Among Empires offers bold comparisons and an original account of American power. It confirms that the issue of empire must be a concern of every citizen.

(20070601)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Harvard historian Maier's brilliant study of the nature of imperial power throughout history offers a glimpse not only at the character of empire but also at how the current American political regime measures up to past empires. Maier distinguishes between "being" an empire (such as Rome) and "having" an empire (such as Britain); in the latter, power is exercised from afar and colonies are treated in ways that the imperial power's own citizens wouldn't accept. All empires require military supremacy as well as a class of elite rulers who seek to control human and natural resources. Violence is a component of empires, both on the part of those who resist empire and on the part of the ruling class. Empires, according to Maier, set out to mark out their frontiers, in order to control the movement of people and to settle colonists in defined areas. Finally, every empire in history has experienced a decline and fall. Modern America contains many, but not all, of these seeds of empire, writes Maier; for instance, the U.S. dominates through consumer capitalism rather than violence. America acts much like an empire in its quest to make the world more like itself. Maier's subtle study brooks no rivals in its assessment of American empire. 4 b&w illus. (Apr.)
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Review

This is a truly masterly essay, which brilliantly succeeds in setting the phenomenon of American ascendancy in its proper historical context—as the one of many forms of imperial organization. Much has been written of late on the subject of American empire. In its multi-faceted erudition and its scrupulous ambivalence, Among Empires is in a league of its own. I cannot praise it too highly. I envy its author's scholarship and the wonderful subtlety of his analysis.
--Niall Ferguson, author of Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power (20070621)

Many of us wonder in what ways our country is--and is not--like the empires of the past. We wonder, too, if we can profit from their triumphs or learn from their failures. In this elegantly written tour de force of fair-minded comparative history, Charles Maier provides us with the materials for answering these questions for ourselves.
--Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity

Charles Maier's explorations of imperial predicaments are both broad and deep. His historically rich and analytically focused approach illuminates America's ascendancy in world affairs. This elegant book is a gem of circumspect wisdom.
--Peter J. Katzenstein, author of A World of Regions: Asia and Europe in the American Imperium

Powerful in analysis, rich in learning, dazzling in historical sweep and elegant in style, Among Empires will become a modern classic, indispensable to our understanding of the powerful forces that govern our world.
--Ronald Steel, author of Temptations of a Superpower

Maier's brilliant study of the nature of imperial power throughout history offers a glimpse not only at the character of empire but also at how the current American political regime measures up to past empires...Maier's subtle study brooks no rivals in its assessment of American empire. (Starred review) (Publishers Weekly )

Maier has a masterful historic grasp and his analysis is wide-ranging and comprehensive. However, this is by no means an introductory book, and students who wish to know more about the subject will be challenged by its discursive and reflective style. On the other hand, for those who have an understanding of the issues, Maier's virtuoso analysis and its broad historic sweep will be both informative and entertaining. The book makes a major contribution to current debates and should be widely consulted by anyone interested in contemporary international events. (Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare )

Having defined empire and laid out the precedents, Maier traces the last sixty years of American action on the world stage. Readers can judge for themselves if and when the U.S. turned imperial.
--James Morone (London Review of Books )

Charles Maier has pulled off a remarkable feat by writing a book on empire that dwells largely on the recent history of the United States and that is explicitly and even agressively nonpartisan.
--Harold James (Journal of Modern History )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (April 24, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674021894
• ISBN-13: 978-0674021891
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Ruminations, not research, September 19, 2007

By 

J.R. Price (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Hardcover)

This book has a poses a timely question at the outset -- is America an empire, like the old Roman or British Empires, for example? And what does it mean to be an empire anyway? The author in his brief forward previews an historical essay that will examine the role of territorial frontiers, ethnic groups, and the military in Empires, among other things.

What follows is not a tight essay, but 300 pages of stream of consciousness ruminations. Names and ideas are sprayed with a firehose across these all-too-copious pages. The author is impressed with the range and breadth of his erudition, and he wants us to be impressed too. The Mansabars of the Mughals and their jagirs are compared to the Catholic cantons of the Engadine, and the Chingassid conquests. And so on. The book is such a dizzying maze of comparisons and analogies -- some enlightening, some pointless - interspersed with political science jargon ("We cannot really understand the structural ordering of domestic and international politics apart from each other" - who's to argue with that?), that is it very difficult to pick up the book and discern where the argumentation is leading.

The arbitrariness with which things are turned into principles can awaken impatience and boredom. "As with all real-life historical experiences, American ascendancy was partially a contingent outcome." (p.146) "As in all imperial systems, the drawing and enforcement of boundaries during the cold war was critical to politics at the center." (p.147) These generalities are so broad that they do not stir thought, but rather smother the reader in a down comforter of words. "If they last for a generation or more, imperial systems are scalar, like fractals or, more precisely, Mandelbrot patterns." (p.146) Indeed. The final word on that subject.

The author is deeply cultured, and we are reminded of that frequently. He has seen Michael Frayn's "witty play" Noises Off. The play sets off in his mind analogies and intellectual connections that are too delicious to be repressed. If we, he writes, "substitute for the lovers' quarrels in Michael Frayn's theatrical mayhem discrete CIA interventions, training in interrogation, fomented coups, and assassinations...one has a model of how American covert policies play abroad." Well, that clears it up!

Along with the analogy spillage, there is an irritating tendency to affect pop culture comparisons a la Tom Friedman of the New York Times. Napoleon's famous saying that every French soldier has a marshal's baton in his knapsack, is for Maier, "hoop dreams for the Grande Armee." Arggh!

Finally, given that Harvard University Press published this tome, there were a surprising number of misspellings and errors. As examples of American soft power, the author cites the "influence garnered over the years by Jackson Pollock, Van Cliburn, Bruce Springsteen, McKenzie, and MacDonald's." McKenzie? The first McKenzie I found on Google was an escort agency in Leeds.... One assumes he means McKinsey, the management consulting company. MacDonald's? Does he mean the venerable hamburger purveyor McDonald's? Anyway, the alliteration works. Perhaps the author does not often dine at "MacDonald's," but rather more often among the elites at "frequent convocations of opinion leaders at prestigious conferences, often abroad as at Ditchley or Konigswinter." Brace yourselves, elites at Ditchley and Konigswinter.

16 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An empire by any other name, June 28, 2006

By 

viktor_57 "viktor_57" (Fairview, Your Favorite State, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Hardcover)

Professor Maier's "Among Empires" may be the most careful and balanced look yet at the similarities between late 20th and early 21st century America and the heights of both the Roman and British empires. Unlike his fellow Harvard colleague Niall Ferguson's "The Roman Predicament" (which I also favorably reviewed), Maier does not assume American imperialism, but rather "compares some of the recurring elements of empires and asks to what extent the United States shares these attributes and what are some of the possible consequences for our current political choices."

Maier looks at these possible consequences and political choices both abroad and at home, arguing that the transnational structure of empire both depends on and consolidates "social cleavages throughout its domain," which seems to define the operative political mode in the U.S.

Whether or not the growing American hegemony benefits more than simply the powerful and well-connected, or even the citizens at home, Maier adduces many economic criteria, but the damage to cultures, ethnic identities, and values other than consumerism must be balanced against the potential for greater, though not always equitable, economic prosperity. If we are to continue the spread of American dominance, then discussions like these must be part of the public dialogue, because individual citizens can no longer simply ignore the rest of the world when making political choices. We have already seen the consequences of such complacency.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but perhaps too detailed, January 4, 2007

By 

Erkki Bahovski "Estonian book friend" (Estonia, Tallinn) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Hardcover)

The latest book by Charles S. Maier is an interesting overview on the life of empire. The best part of it can be connected with the theoretical evaluation of the empire, especially regarding how the empire treats its borders.
However, after the theoretical part one cannot escape the impression that the books turns too detailed. It is doubtful whether the long discussions about the US foreign policy during the Cold War could help to understand the essence of empire. And Maier delicately avoids answering to the question whether US is empire or not. And sometimes the text may be difficult for non-American (I'm Estonian).
Still, the book can be recommended to the readers who are familiar with issues of the international relations and contemporary history. For the beginners the book may be too difficult.