Transpacific Studies and the Cultures of U.S. Imperialism

John Carlos Rowe’s “Transpacific Studies and the Cultures of U.S. Imperialism” focuses on the disciplinary role transpacific studies should play in the new American studies with its emphasis on comparative study of the Americas. He addresses where the many different communities of the Pacific belong in the ongoing study of U.S. imperialism and neoimperialism in this crucial contact zone of the Americas. He locates the efforts by formerly colonized states to achieve cultural, economic, and political sovereignty in their relation to the Pacific region both as a geographical area and as a site for a series of commercial, military, and cultural routes, especially those of the U.S. He argues that what Chalmers Johnson has termed the U.S. “empire of bases” needs to be expanded to include specific studies of the Mariana Islands (Guam, Saipan, Tinian, et al.), American Samoa, and other U.S. military bases in the Pacific and Asia that serve the larger colonial purposes of the U.S. military. The U.S. military presence has also had a crucial environmental impact that is a neglected issue in transpacific studies.

Colonialism · Empire · Ethnology · Geography · Management · Political science · Politics · Relation (database) · ROWE · Sovereignty · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law

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