Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire
An ambitious history of flags, stamps, and currency—and the role they played in US imperialism.
 
In Imperial Material, Alvita Akiboh reveals how US national identity has been created, challenged, and transformed through embodiments of empire found in US territories, from the US dollar bill to the fifty-star flag. These symbolic objects encode the relationships between territories—including the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam—and the empire with which they have been entangled. Akiboh shows how such items became objects of local power, their original intent transmogrified. For even if imperial territories were not always front and center for federal lawmakers and administrators, their inhabitants remained continuously aware of the imperial United States, whose presence announced itself on every bit of currency, every stamp, and the local flag.
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Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire
An ambitious history of flags, stamps, and currency—and the role they played in US imperialism.
 
In Imperial Material, Alvita Akiboh reveals how US national identity has been created, challenged, and transformed through embodiments of empire found in US territories, from the US dollar bill to the fifty-star flag. These symbolic objects encode the relationships between territories—including the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam—and the empire with which they have been entangled. Akiboh shows how such items became objects of local power, their original intent transmogrified. For even if imperial territories were not always front and center for federal lawmakers and administrators, their inhabitants remained continuously aware of the imperial United States, whose presence announced itself on every bit of currency, every stamp, and the local flag.
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Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire

Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire

by Alvita Akiboh
Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire

Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire

by Alvita Akiboh

Hardcover(First Edition)

$99.00 
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Overview

An ambitious history of flags, stamps, and currency—and the role they played in US imperialism.
 
In Imperial Material, Alvita Akiboh reveals how US national identity has been created, challenged, and transformed through embodiments of empire found in US territories, from the US dollar bill to the fifty-star flag. These symbolic objects encode the relationships between territories—including the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam—and the empire with which they have been entangled. Akiboh shows how such items became objects of local power, their original intent transmogrified. For even if imperial territories were not always front and center for federal lawmakers and administrators, their inhabitants remained continuously aware of the imperial United States, whose presence announced itself on every bit of currency, every stamp, and the local flag.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780226826363
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Publication date: 11/10/2023
Edition description: First Edition
Pages: 320
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Alvita Akiboh is assistant professor of history at Yale University.

Table of Contents

List of Figures
A Note on Terminology: On Mainlands and Americans
Introduction: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire
1 What Followed the Flag
2 Pocket-Sized Imperialism
3 Symbolic Supremacy
4 The Object(s) of Occupation
5 Symbolic Decolonization
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

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