Seminar: American Empire: An Alternative History presented by Professor Antony Hopkins
Date: 7 November 2014 Time: 12.10 pm Venue: Murphy Lecture Theatre 101 (MY101), Victoria University of Wellington The History Programme is pleased to host Professor Antony Hopkins, who will speak on his forthcoming study American Empire: An Alternative History . American Empire: An Alternative History seeks to rethink the United States and empire in an international setting, using the UK as the prime comparator. Conventional wisdom suggests that ‘empire’ applies to the United States before 1783 and after 1945. Professor Hopkins suggests, instead, that the decades between require reconsideration. While in 1783 the USA achieved formal independence, what followed was a long struggle to secure real sovereignty, during which the US remained heavily dependent on the UK. The conventional narrative of the pioneering nation and its progress towards liberty and democracy can be seen instead as an increasingly fraught search for development a