黑料传送门

This book is the Japanese translation of A. G. Hopkins’s (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). The author, A. G. Hopkins, is a distinguished British historian who has long been at the forefront of imperial history. His monumental work, spanning more than one thousand pages, distills decades of scholarship on one of world history’s grand themes: globalization and empire.
 
The book’s foremost originality lies in its attempt to reinterpret the long-term transformation of the American empire within a truly global historical context. While Hopkins defines the years 1898 to 1959—when the United States was deeply involved in colonial administration—as the “age of empire,” he devotes substantial attention to what occurred before and after this period, thereby situating the American empire within a broad temporal and spatial framework. According to Hopkins, the history of the American empire unfolds through four major phases:
 
1) Subordination to the British Empire (1756–1865) after independence;
2) The acquisition of modernity and the gradual move toward imperialism (1865–1914);
3) The zenith of the modern empire and its path toward disintegration (1914–1959); and finally,
4) The postcolonial, post-imperial era (after 1959).
 
Another remarkable feature of this book is its comparative analysis of four territories central to the U.S. imperial experience. In addition to the three island colonies traditionally studied separately—the Philippines, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico—Hopkins includes Cuba, which, although never formally a colony, remained effectively under U.S. control. By examining these four cases together, the book not only clarifies the shared historical trajectory through which these regions passed from Spanish to U.S. domination, but also reveals unexpected political, economic, and cultural parallels in the structures of imperial rule and resistance that emerged in each. Where differences appear, Hopkins carefully explains their origins. He identifies 1959, rather than 1945, as the true endpoint of the American empire—a year that saw both the admission of Hawaii and Alaska as states and the Cuban Revolution.
 
Hopkins contends that empire itself is a product of globalization, constantly transformed by it, and that its history must be assessed from a world-historical perspective. His work abounds in comparisons with other Western empires—the British, French, and Spanish, among others—developing a sweeping and intellectually ambitious argument. Some readers may find themselves overwhelmed by the book’s immense scope and wealth of knowledge, yet this is also what makes it invaluable: by systematically synthesizing half a century of prior scholarship, this work provides an ideal point of departure for beginners interested in the study of “empire.”
 

(Written by KAMI Hideaki, Associate Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences / 2025)