The Price of Empire Grynaviski Evers Hardback Cambridge University Press

The Price of EmpireAmerican Entrepreneurs and the Origins of America's First Pacific Empire\nAuthor(s): Miles M. Evers, Eric Grynaviski\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9781009396363, 978-1009396363\nSynopsis\nThe United States was an upside-down British Empire. It had an agrarian economy, few large investors, and no territorial holdings outside of North America. However, decades before the Spanish-American War, the United States quietly began to establish an empire across thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. While conventional wisdom suggests that large interests the military and major business interests drove American imperialism, The Price of Empire argues that early American imperialism was driven by small entrepreneurs. When commodity prices boomed, these small entrepreneurs took risks, racing ahead of the American state. Yet when profits were threatened, they clamoured for the US government.