How to Hide an Empire

This is history that rearranges the furniture in your head. Immerwahr shows that the 'small' United States of the logo map is a postwar invention, and that empire—territorial, military, and economic—runs through everything from Daniel Boone to Hurricane Maria's aftermath in Puerto Rico. Read it if you've ever wondered why the U.S. has 800 overseas bases, why Puerto Ricans are citizens without full rights, or how a country committed to anti-imperialism built one anyway. It's for anyone who likes their national myths gently detonated.

1. 1Chapter 1: The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone

   Daniel Boone kept fleeing the country he founded

   Daniel Boone is the face of American westward expansion. After the 1783 Treaty of Paris set the U.S. western boundary at the Mississippi, Boone himself spent much of his later life moving west to escape U.S. jurisdiction, eventually settling in Spanish-controlled Missouri, where he died in 1820. In 1778, the Shawnee captured him in Kentucky and adopted him into the tribe as Sheltowee—'Big Turtle'—before he escaped to warn Boonesborough of an attack.

   The idea

   Westward expansion was the United States' first empire—continental rather than overseas, but empire all the same. The Boone story works as a hook because it's counterintuitive: the man celebrated as the vanguard of American settlement was trying to stay ahead of the government's reach. Empire, in Immerwahr's telling, starts not with battleships in 1898 but with the expansion across the continent.

   Try this: Pull up a map of the U.S. in 1783 versus 1850 and trace what 'the country' actually meant at each point—then check which version your old textbook used.

2. 2Chapter 2: Indian Country

   The Trail of Tears: 100,000 people, one law

   In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, and the machinery of removal began turning. Roughly 100,000 Native Americans were forced from the southeastern United States to lands west of the Mississippi—the forced migration remembered as the Trail of Tears. The Cherokee removal of 1838 is the sharpest cut: about 16,000 Cherokee were marched from Georgia toward Oklahoma, and an estimated 4,000 died on the way.

   The idea

   Removal wasn't a tragic footnote to expansion—it was the method. The numbers matter: 100,000 removed under one law, 4,000 Cherokee dead in a single year's operation. When the U.S. later acquired overseas territories, it already had a century of practice governing populations it considered separate from the nation itself.

   Try this: Look up which Native nations' land your city or town sits on—it takes five minutes and changes how you read local history.

3. 3Chapter 3: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Guano but Were Afraid to Ask

   Bird poop gave America an empire

   In the 1850s, guano—bird excrement loaded with nitrogen and phosphates—was gold: critical fertilizer and a component of gunpowder. Congress answered with the Guano Islands Act of 1856, which let any U.S. citizen claim an unclaimed, uninhabited guano island for the United States. The result: nearly 100 islands acquired, many in the Pacific and Caribbean—Navassa, Howland, Baker.

   The idea

   The guano islands are the perfect origin story for American empire because they're absurd and completely serious at once. Nearly 100 islands entered the U.S. orbit this way, and many remain U.S. possessions today.

   Try this: Search 'Guano Islands Act' plus 'Navassa' and read how a fertilizer law from 1856 still generates legal disputes today.

4. 4Chapter 4: Teddy Roosevelt's Very Good Day

   Teddy Roosevelt charged the wrong hill and got a presidency

   July 1, 1898, Cuba. Theodore Roosevelt—assistant secretary of the navy, restless, hungry for a war with Spain—charges up Kettle Hill, not the San Juan Hill the songs celebrate. The war ends with Spain ceding Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.

   The idea

   The war delivered three island territories in one year.

   Try this: Read the 1898 Treaty of Paris text—it's short—and note how casually sovereignty over millions of people changes hands.

5. 5Chapter 5: Empire State of Mind

   The Supreme Court ruled the Constitution doesn't follow the flag

   The U.S. has just acquired Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. Do the Constitution's protections travel with the flag? Starting in 1901, the Supreme Court's Insular Cases answered: not fully. In Downes v. Bidwell (1901), the Court held that Puerto Rico was 'foreign to the United States in a domestic sense'—neither a state nor a foreign country—and that Congress could impose tariffs on goods from the island. The doctrine of 'unincorporated territories' was born: places under U.S. sovereignty where the Constitution applies only in part.

   The idea

   'Unincorporated territory' is a category with no clear analogue.

   Try this: Check whether your state's textbooks mention the Insular Cases—most civics curricula skip the ruling that still governs 3.5 million-plus U.S. citizens in territories.

6. 6Chapter 6: Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom

   The Philippine-American War: 200,000 dead and a torture scandal

   The Philippine-American War (1899–1902) became a brutal counterinsurgency against a population of roughly 7 million, with an estimated 200,000 Filipino civilians dying from violence, famine, and disease. In 1901 on Samar, Filipino fighters killed about 48 American soldiers in a surprise attack at Balangiga. Retaliation came from General Jacob H. Smith, who ordered his troops to turn the island into a 'howling wilderness' and kill every male over the age of ten. Meanwhile, U.S. forces used the 'water cure'—forcing water into detainees' mouths to extract information—and reports of it ran in American newspapers, became a political scandal, and reached Congress.

   The idea

   The three-year counterinsurgency that followed the Spanish-American War, with its civilian death toll and torture scandal, gets a footnote in most accounts. The Balangiga retaliation and the water cure are what occupying a population actually looked like.

   Try this: Search historical newspaper archives for 'water cure' + Philippines, 1901–1902, and read the coverage as it appeared—uncensored by hindsight.

7. 7Chapter 8: White City

   The White City and the closing of the frontier

   Chicago, 1893. The World's Columbian Exposition—the White City—rises to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Columbus's arrival, showcasing the U.S. as a technological and imperial power. Among the exhibits: colonized peoples, including Filipinos and Native Americans, displayed for fairgoers. At this same fair, historian Frederick Jackson Turner delivers his 'Frontier Thesis,' arguing that the American frontier is closed and that the nation's character was forged by westward expansion.

   The idea

   Turner's thesis gave intellectual form to the 1898 acquisitions. The exhibit of colonized peoples made the imperial hierarchy visible: Americans could walk through the White City and see the peoples their country now ruled.

   Try this: Look at photos of the 1893 White City and note what's absent: any acknowledgment that the land itself was recently taken.

8. 8Chapter 9: Doctors without Borders

   Mosquitoes, not battleships, built the Panama Canal

   The Canal Zone—a strip 10 miles wide and 50 miles long—was U.S.-controlled from 1903 to 1999, functioning as a sovereign American territory with its own police, courts, and schools. In 1900 in Cuba, the U.S. Army's Yellow Fever Commission under Walter Reed confirmed that the Aedes aegypti mosquito transmits yellow fever. Dr. William Gorgas then ran a 1902–1904 campaign in Panama—draining swamps, screening buildings—that eradicated yellow fever and made construction of the canal possible.

   The idea

   The Canal Zone was a colony in miniature: a decade-wide American enclave inside another country, running its own laws and schools for 96 years. Reed's confirmation and Gorgas's sanitation campaign were military operations.

   Try this: Look up when the U.S. actually handed the Canal Zone back—1999—and ask why that date isn't common knowledge.

9. 9Chapter 7: Outside the Charmed Circle

   Haiti and the Dominican Republic: the Marines rewrite the rules

   In Haiti, the U.S. occupation ran from 1915 to 1934: Marines rewrote the Haitian constitution, controlled its finances, and killed an estimated 2,000 to 15,000 Haitians suppressing resistance. Next door in the Dominican Republic, the 1916–1924 occupation imposed a new tax system, built roads, and disarmed the population—while fighting a guerrilla insurgency led by the 'gavilleros' in the eastern provinces.

   The idea

   These were nineteen-year and eight-year occupations of sovereign nations, with death tolls in the thousands, yet they barely register in the American story of itself.

   Try this: Read Haiti's 1918 constitution and find who authorized it—then check how long U.S. Marines stayed after rewriting it.

10. 10Chapter 10: Fortress America

    Fifty destroyers for a global web of bases

    1940: the U.S. trades 50 aging destroyers for 99-year leases on bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, and other British territories. Then comes World War II, and the U.S. builds or expands over 2,000 military sites globally—airfields, naval bases, supply depots. The war ends; the bases stay. By the Cold War's height, the U.S. has around 1,000 bases abroad.

    The idea

    The destroyer deal shows how it started: a swap of old ships for leases that outlasted the empire that signed them.

    Try this: Count the U.S. bases in one random country you can name—then ask what the local version of that history sounds like.

11. 11Chapter 11: Islands of the Damned

    Guam and Manila: the empire's people pay the bill

    Japan captures Guam on December 10, 1941. Roughly 20,000 Chamorros endure a brutal occupation until U.S. forces retake the island in July 1944—an estimated 1,000 Chamorros killed. In the Philippines, the fall of Corregidor and the Bataan Death March of 1942 leave thousands dead in Japanese captivity—approximately 10,000 Filipino and 650 American prisoners. Then the Battle of Manila in 1945: U.S. forces fight to retake the city, and the fighting destroys it, killing an estimated 100,000 Filipino civilians and leveling one of Asia's most cosmopolitan cities.

    The idea

    The 'greater United States' absorbed the war's blows first—and its people died in numbers the mainland memory of the war rarely counts.

    Try this: Ask five friends when 'the war came to America'—then tell them about December 10, 1941, and watch the surprise.

12. 12Chapter 12: A Pacific Empire

    Bikini: 23 nuclear tests and a people moved again and again

    After World War II, the U.S. takes control of the Marshall, Mariana, and Caroline Islands as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands—2,100 islands spread across an ocean area larger than the continental United States. In the Marshalls, Bikini Atoll becomes the proving ground: 23 U.S. nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958, including the 15-megaton Castle Bravo shot of 1954, the largest U.S. thermonuclear test. Bravo's fallout spreads over inhabited islands, sickens Marshallese and the Japanese fishermen aboard the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (Lucky Dragon No. 5), and forces the Bikinian people from their home—relocated multiple times while their atoll stays contaminated.

    The idea

    The Trust Territory's scale—2,100 islands, an ocean expanse bigger than the lower 48—made it one of the largest jurisdictions on Earth. The Bikinians were displaced repeatedly, their home poisoned by the largest thermonuclear test the U.S. ever conducted.

    Try this: Look up where the Bikinians live today—the displacement from 1946 still isn't resolved, and that's the point.

13. 13Chapter 13: The Empire of the Base

    Okinawa: 27 years of occupation and a base that never left

    Okinawa, occupied by the U.S. after 1945, stays under American administration for 27 years—until reversion to Japan in 1972, with the U.S. keeping its major bases. The island becomes a key staging ground for the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the 1947 Military Bases Agreement grants independence but lets the U.S. keep 23 military bases—including Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base—for 99 years, and those bases are used extensively during Vietnam. On Okinawa, residents have long protested the U.S. military presence, with crimes by servicemen fueling movements for base removal.

    The idea

    Okinawa's 27-year occupation and the Philippines' 99-year base leases show the pattern—flags change, leases don't.

    Try this: Check what fraction of U.S. bases in Japan sit on Okinawa—the concentration there is the story in one statistic.

14. 14Chapter 14: The Logo Map / Epilogue

    The logo map and Hurricane Maria: the empire's living legacy

    The familiar outline of the 48 contiguous states—later plus Alaska and Hawaii—was popularized during World War II, deliberately erasing the overseas territories, bases, and colonies to project a non-imperial nation. Alaska and Hawaii joined the logo map as states in 1959; Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands never did, despite millions of residents. In 2017, hurricanes Irma and Maria devastated Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the federal response was slow and less generous than mainland disasters.

    The idea

    The logo map is the book's master symbol. At its 1945 peak the Greater United States covered roughly 10 percent of the Earth's land and held over 500 million people, a reality national memory has largely deleted.

    Try this: Draw the U.S. from memory, then add the five territories—see how much of the country your mental map drops.

Anyone who thought they knew American history from a map of fifty states. Also essential for readers of imperial history like Howard Zinn or Jane Jacobs fans who want the geographic version of that argument.

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