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This book examines how and why Americans built an informal trading empire and why the British Empire needed to be removed before a Pax Americana could be built.
The Pax Americana is a phenomenon of global significance, and this fascinating book, now available in paperback, offers a systematic explanation for the rise of this super empire and examines in detail how it is governed.
A core feature of the book is a concern with America’s vision of the world and how the USA has attempted (especially since 1945) to export this vision across the globe. The book identifies and examines the underlying discourses and belief systems that gave rise to a Pax Americana. An eclectic range of methodologies and theories are deployed to explain the phenomenon of this informal empire, ranging from materialist (political economy) explanations of ‘US imperialism’ through to those explanations grounded in the non-materialist realm of values, ideas and world views. The result is an exploration of the curious phenomenon of an ‘anti-imperialist’ empire with both ‘economic’ and ‘moral’ roots.
List of maps
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Acknowledgements
1. What is the Pax Americana?
2. The twentieth-century power-shift
3. Manifest destiny and the rise of American power
4. The British Empire as obstacle to American power
5. Planning for a future Pax Americana
6. Promoting decolonization: de-legitimating European imperial power
7. Getting Britain to deconstruct its empire
8. Cloning America 1: selling ‘development’
9. Cloning America 2: the German/Japan model
10. Cloning America 3: Hollywood and Soft Power
11. The Empire strikes back: 9/11 and beyond
Maps
Select bibliography
Index