***** Imperialism Roundtable
"Addressing the Questions"
E. J. Hobsbawm
Rather than comment on any of the papers, let me, as briefly as I can, try to answer your questions. [See MARHO's conference proposal (@ <http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/gosse1.htm#proposal>)]
The peculiarity of U.S. imperialism is that, with marginal exceptions, dating back to the period when the U.S. tried to imitate the current European fashions of 1900, colonial possessions have not been a significant element in it. (Hence it has not been "an imperial culture" in the British or French or even Dutch sense.) On the other hand, unlike the British who abandoned political and military interventions in the "informal" empire (e.g., Latin America in the nineteenth century), the U.S. since the nineteenth century has combined "informal" hegemony with political control or at least the exclusion of rivals, and where necessary a military presence: first in the Caribbean area, then in the Pacific, and after 1945 worldwide. Thus the pax americana was fundamentally different from the pax britannica. We do not know how this will be periodized until it is clear when the U.S. is no longer in a position to exercise this sort of global dominance. This must become more difficult with the breakup of the bloc of western capitalist states, which was partly held together by the Cold War....
<http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/hobsbawm.htm> ***** -- Yoshie
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