Thinking with Paul Kramer's “Power and Connection”

I am delighted to have an opportunity to reflect on Paul Kramer's rich and highly influential “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World.” Since its publication in 2011, “Power and Connection” has been a cornerstone of my graduate U.S. in the World classes and has been invoked in every graduate qualifying exam. The essay has had a direct and indirect influence on the wave of innovative scholarship that has been produced in the past decade. I first want to note some of the essay's important interventions. Then, rather than attempting to extend or update Kramer's extensive historiographical review, I want to think with “Power and Connection” by taking up two of Kramer's suggestions and discussions. First, I take up his suggestion to think about imperial power through a Gramscian frame of domination and consent, arguing that the concept of hegemonic struggle is critical for thinking about power within empires and shifts in global imperial formations. Second, I engage Kramer's discussion of the relationship between imperial and transnational histories, arguing that scholars need to consider transnationalism as a highly specific and contingent political formation, as well as an analytic category and sometimes actors' category.