Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900

Generations of historians have maintained that in the last decade of the nineteenth century white-supremacist racial ideologies such as Anglo-Saxonism, social Darwinism, benevolent assimilation, and the concept of the “white man’s burden” drove American imperialist ventures in the nonwhite world. In Race over Empire, Eric T. L. Love contests this view and argues that racism had nearly the opposite effect.

From President Grant’s attempt to acquire the Dominican Republic in 1870 to the annexat...