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Through much of its history, the United States maintained a comparatively small military and lacked an organised, international bureaucracy capable of projecting power abroad. Yet by 1945, the US commanded the world’s premier military, economic, and cultural empire. By the 1990s, it stood alone as the unchallenged superpower. How did the US manage to become a world-spanning colossus built on a barebones imperial administration and relatively few Americans abroad?

From colonisation to the present, the US has relied on small outposts of Americans to build and shape its commercial, cultural, and territorial empire. Soldiers stationed in once ramshackle forts and now sprawling military bases dotted across the globe were key. But so too were missionaries leading women’s schools in Shanghai, merchants plying sea cucumbers and copra from their Fijian posts, walrus hunters boiling blubber and carving ivory tusks in their Alaskan camps, and cowboys herding creole cattle herds across expansive Brazilian ranches carved out of the Pantanal wetlands.

This 15 credit undergraduate module explores how different kinds of outposts became key sites for directing and negotiating the different forms of US empire, from the early days of colonisation to the recent past. Each week we will explore a different kind of outpost, often focusing on one particular beachhead of American power. Likewise, we will analyse the outsized influence of Americans abroad and assess how the creation and maintenance of different kinds of outposts helped form the structure and sinews of the US empire. This module combines different strands of transnational history, particularly the histories of empire, capitalism, and ecology. Students will produce a written essay and a pod cast on an outpost of their choosing.

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