In Fugitive Empire, Andy Doolen investigates the relationships among race, nation, and empire in colonial and early national America, revealing how whiteness and American identity were conflated to stabilize racial hierarchy and to repulse challenges to national policies of slavery, war, and continental expansion.

Fugitive Empire begins not in 1776 but in 1741 with the New York Conspiracy trials. Linking them to the British conflict with the Spanish in the West Indies, Doolen describes how white colonists were led to suspect all foreigners, particularly slaves, as...

In contrast to later imperial pursuits in Mexico, Cuba, and the Philippines, the early United States extended its boundaries through less sensational modes of territorialization: land deals, slavery expansion, treaty diplomacy, immigration and settlement, and the addition of new states on the border. Never the exclusive top-down product of any single strategic plan, empire building relied rather on a hazy, ever-shifting boundary between state and non-state action.

Territories of Empire examines the border writings of U.S. explorers, politicians, travelers, novelists, merchants,...