America's Colonial Experiment: How the United States Gained, Governed, and in Part Gave Away a Colonial Empire

Pratt, Julius W. (1950). America's Colonial Experiment: How the United States Gained, Governed, and in Part Gave Away a Colonial Empire. New York, NY: Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Abstract: "The sun, in those years, never set upon the Stars and Stripes" (p. 346) writes Mr. Pratt of 1940-1945 when the United States built some 434 war bases, mostly in foreign lands. Abundant and impartial information, on the implications of the broad extension of American presence, should be pressed upon Americans, since public opinion counts for so much in determining our foreign policy. Sensitive to this need, Mr. Pratt has written "a new synthesis of facts more or less familiar" (p. v) in the hope that it may be useful to historical students, political scientists, economists, and knowledgeable laymen. The author is laconic about it. He opens with a thirty-three-page summary of efforts at expansion before 1897. He follows with a running account of dominion expanding beyond the mainland, outlining (1) the circumstances of acquisition and intervention, (2) the central administration by the United States and the movements toward selfsgovemment, and (3) America's ecos nomic and political experiences with colonialism. He closes with a description of the partial retreat from empire and the wartime propulsion back into em- pire, in the quest for security. A lengthy series of intricate happenings has been compressed into 383 smallish pages of easy-to-read type, with fifty additional pages of notes printed in very small type. The book reflects careful use of the literature in this complex field, with many notes constituting bibs liographies of the better material on the episode under consideration. Economy of space dictates economy of personal observation, vetoing any long excursions into the broad significance of America's colonial experiments. But it is frankly revealed that the point of view is revisionist; Mr. Pratt agrees with recent research that colonialism was pressed primarily for political and strategic reasons, more than from economic motives; and that "American imperialism has, on the whole, been benevolent, and it has been so accepted by those living under it" (p. 3).

Extra details:

DOI: 10.2307/1889033
MAG: 1604002458
CorpusID: 161192412
OpenAlex: W1604002458