Decentering the American Empire

It must have been eight years ago when I read Paul Kramer's article for the first time. Back then, I had just finished my PhD and was developing a new research project thematically located at the intersection of medical, imperial, and global history. One of the particularities of the German academic path when compared to the Anglo-American context is the expectation to embark on a completely different line of inquiry after defending your doctoral dissertation. Postdoctoral researchers venture into an entirely new topic, often take on a new century, and, for good measure, turn to another region of the world. At a time when I was surfacing from a thesis on German post-1945 international history, reading “Power and Connection” was tremendously helpful and instructive in guiding my first steps into the vast terrain of nineteenth-century imperial and colonial history. While its insights into the imperial dimension of U.S. history were fascinating, it was more so its framing of the American case, as a modern empire among others, that led me to the article. Ultimately, this interest evolved into my current project on the policies on epidemics in the nineteenth-century British and American empires. This framing provides the angle for my re-reading of “Power and Connection.” From an imperial historian's perspective, particularly of British imperial history and comparative empire studies, I explore here some of the links between the broader discipline and Kramer's essay up to 2011 when it was published and thereafter.