It is fast becoming conventional wisdom that the power of the United States today closely resembles that of the United Kingdom roughly a century ago. In the conclusion of my latest book, I attempted a brief comparison between British and American imperial rule, and I am far from the only historian to think along these lines: both Walter Russell Mead and Joseph Nye have also alluded to the continuities in their recent work. Nevertheless, whereas the British were generally quite open about the fact that they were running an empire, few American politicians today would use the “e” word as anything other than a term of abuse. Americans, in short, don’t “do” empire; they do “leadership” instead, or, in more academic parlance, “hegemony.” That is the concept that needs to be employed, therefore, to make any systematic comparison between the British and the American experience of overseas power.
