Trade, Money, and Empire
S06
Geoffrey Pigman
How have two large imperial powers, Britain in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the United States since World War II, been able to dominate the global economy and society? How do the experiences of the British and American empires inform what we understand ‘empire’ to be? Can empire be sustained through economic policies alone? How, if at all, does empire differ from hegemony? Can empire be democratic? What strategies of resistance are open to those who are the objects of imperial rule? Beginning with contemporary texts on empire, such as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire and Multitude and Niall Ferguson’s Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World and Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire, we shall then study the history of the British and American empires, focusing on trade and monetary instruments of global governance. We shall consider the social, cultural, and political implications of the economic policies of hegemonic governments.