A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World, 1830-1910
FAIN: FA-57256-13
Steven Howard Hahn
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)
A book-length study of U.S. history that reconfigures the customary framework and narrative by focusing on the complex relationship between empire- and nation-building, by making the trans-Mississippi West central to the story, by considering the history of the South and the West in close embrace, and by placing the American experience in a very broad international context. Beginning and ending in Mexico--first with the Texas Revolution of the 1830s and then with the Mexican Revolution of the 1910s--the book challenges the ideas that an American nation-state emerged in the early national period and that American politics and political economy developed chiefly along North/South sectional lines. It argues instead that a nation-state only emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction, on the ashes of failed imperial ambitions and as the federal government attempted to extend its authority over the South and West, anticipating later projects in the Americas and the Pacific.