"The story of how the United States' identity was formed is almost invariably told by looking east to Europe. But as Greg Grandin vividly demonstrates, the nation's unique sense of itself was in fact forged facing south-no less than Latin America's was indelibly stamped by the looming colossus to the north. In this stunningly original reinterpretation of the New World Grandin reveals how North and South emerged from a constant, turbulent engagement with each other. America, América traverses half a millennium, from the Spanish Conquest-the greatest mortality event in human history-through the eighteenth-century wars for independence, the Monroe Doctrine, the coups and revolutions of the twentieth century, and beyond. Grandin shows, among other things, how royalist Spanish America, by sending troops and supplies, helped save the republican American Revolution; how in response to U.S. interventions, Latin Americans remade the rules, leading directly to the founding of the United Nations; and how the Good Neighbor Policy allowed FDR to assume the moral authority to lead the fight against world fascism. Grandin's book sheds new light on well-known historical figures like Bartolomé de las Casas, Simón Bolívar, and Woodrow Wilson, as well as lesser-known actors such as the Venezuelan Francisco de Miranda, who almost lost his head in the French Revolution and conspired with Alexander Hamilton to free America from Spain; the Colombian Jorge Gaitán, whose unsolved murder inaugurated the rise of Cold War political terror, death squads, and disappearances; and the radical journalist Ernest Gruening, who in championing non-interventionism in Latin America, helped broker the most spectacularly successful policy reversal in United State history. This is a monumental work of scholarship that will fundamentally change the way we think of slavery and racism, the rise of universal humanism, and the role of social democracy in staving off extremism. At once comprehensive and accessible, America, América shows that centuries of bloodshed and diplomacy not only helped shape the political identities of the United States and Latin America but also the laws, institutions, and ideals that govern the modern world. A culmination of a decades-long engagement with hemispheric history, drawing on a vast array of sources, and told with authority and flair, this is a genuinely new history of the New World"-- Provided by publisher
The Imperial History Behind the Raid on Venezuela
Peter Beinart interviews scholar Greg Grandin on the history of US intervention in Latin America and what Trump’s new “doctrine” may portend.
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus is a 2005 non-fiction book by American author and science writer Charles C. Mann about the pre-Columbian Americas. It was the 2006 winner of the National Academies Communication Award for best creative work that helps the public's understanding of topics in science, engineering or medicine.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United …
A pathbreaking history of the United States' overseas p…
New Latin American Perspectives on the History of Neoliberalism — History & Political Economy Project
A roundtable discussion with César Castillo-García, Matilde Ciolli, and José Antonio Galindo Domínguez
How The US Took Over The World
Book Review of Making All the World America
Steven T. Newcomb reviews Timothy Bowers Vasko’s Making All the World America: Native Information and the Doctrine of Discovery (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026).
annotations: La tiers-mondisation de l'Amérique
traduction française du billet de blog "The third-worlding of America" de Paul Krugman
Marxism & the Global South
A critical history of imperialism and dependency theory, from Marx on colonialism and Eurocentrism to Baran, Frank, Wallerstein, and Samir Amin.
Marxism & the Global South
A critical history of imperialism and dependency theory, from Marx on colonialism and Eurocentrism to Baran, Frank, Wallerstein, and Samir Amin.
Further Back to the Future: Neo-Royalism, the Trump Administration, and the Emerging International System
With the Liberal International Order (LIO) in decline, scholars have focused increasingly on the possible return to a Westphalian great power system marked by sovereigntist claims and balancing among states. The actions of the Trump administration, however, raise a number of significant puzzles for such accounts—the US seems willing to sign deals with traditional adversaries including Russia and China, while targeting long-standing allies like Canada and Denmark. At the same time, transactional politics often serve narrow personalist interests rather than national objectives. In short, a Westphalian lens focused on states and sovereignty may generate intellectual blinders that misreads the emerging international order. To overcome these limitations, we propose an alternative account, which we label neo-royalism. The neo-royalist order centers on an international system structured by a small group of hyper elites, which we term cliques. Such cliques seek to legitimize their authority through appeals to their exceptionalism in order to generate durable material and status hierarchies based on the extraction of financial and cultural tributes. This short paper lays out the key elements of the neo-royalist order, differentiating it from the Westphalian and Liberal International Orders, and applies its insights to better grapple with the emerging system being promoted by the United States under Donald J. Trump. For policymakers and scholars, the neo-royalist approach clarifies recent events in US foreign policy. Theoretically, the field should take contending ideas of international order seriously, and establish a research agenda beyond a backward looking view to the Westphalian moment.
Book: The Face of Imperialism — The Michael Parenti Political Archive
In the last half-century we have witnessed a dramatic expansion of American corporate power into every corner of the world, accompanied by an equally awesome growth in U.S. military power. These phenomena are often treated as independent developments. Here, Michael Parenti brings them together in a sharp critique aimed as much at errant liberals and certain Marxists as at the dominant political actors who have perpetrated the imperial lie.
CRISES AVERTED. How A Few Past Societies Found Adaptive Reforms in the Face of Structural-Demographic Crises
Historians and social scientists have long been preoccupied with understanding and documenting periods of crisis. Such emphasis is only growing, and becoming more pressing, as the world continues to face a number of interrelated stressors in the form of irreversible climate change, major ecological shocks and disease outbreaks, eruptions of military violence, economic disruptions and deepening inequalities, political polarization and unrest, the rise of authoritarian and nationalist regimes. Crises in these domains are not new, but have been recurrent features of past societies. Although these periods have typically led to massive loss of life, the failure of critical institutions, and even complete societal collapse, there are instances in the historical record of societies managing to turn the tide of crisis even as violence and social turmoil grow. Here, we focus on four such cases of crises mitigated with structural reforms revealed from our previous historical analyses: early Republican Rome, mid-19th century England and Russia, USA during the the late 20th to early 21st centuries. Utilizing structural demographic theory as a lens to explore these cases, we seek to expose the pressures that built up leading to crisis and the early signs of violent confrontation revealed by these societies, as well as to examine the conditions and key decisions made in the midst of this unrest that allowed these societies to turn the tide and enact significant structural adaptations. Our findings have clear relevance to understanding and navigating similar crises in contemporary societies.
Inégalités : à la recherche des racines de l'exceptionnalisme américain
Traduction française de « A la recherche of the roots of US inequality “exceptionalism”» de Branko Milanovic
America's been arguing over trade for more than 250 years
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of declaring its independence from Britain, Americans continue a tradition begun even longer ago: debating trade and tariffs. In recent years, disagreements over the US role in the world economy have grown particularly intense amid rising geopolitical tensions. A brief look at history offers an opportunity to reflect on the importance of international trade to the US economy over time.
How conspiracy theories conquered America
Things have changed a lot since January 6th, 2021.
