The Early Days of Imperial America
On this episode of American Prestige, Emily Conroy-Krutz on the global history of the early American republic.
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Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
On this episode of American Prestige, Emily Conroy-Krutz on the global history of the early American republic.
On this episode of American Prestige, we sit down with Emily Conroy-Krutz, historian of nineteenth-century America specializing in the global history of the early American republic, to talk about the volume she co-edited with Michael Blaakman and Noelani Arista, The Early Imperial Republic: From the American Revolution to the U.S.–Mexican War. They explore the delineation of empire vs. republic vs. nation-state, challenging the narrative of 1898 being America’s imperial turn, settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous Americans, shifting notions of imperialism over time, and how the framing of America as an imperial project from the beginning can better help us understand its history.
You can also grab a copy of Emily’s book Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations.
Further Reading:
- Michael Blaakman – Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic
- Daniel Immerwahr – How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
- Paul Kramer
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Missionary Diplomacy
On this episode of American Prestige, we sit down with Emily Conroy-Krutz, historian of 19th-century America specializing in the global history of the early American republic, to talk about the volume she coedited with Michael Blaakman and Noelani Arista The Early Imperial Republic: From the American Revolution to the U.S.–Mexican War. They explore the delineation of empire vs. republic vs. nation-state, challenging the narrative of 1898’s being America’s imperial turn, settler colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous Americans, shifting notions of imperialism over time, and how the framing of America as an imperial project from the beginning can better help us understand its history.
You can also grab a copy of Emily’s book Missionary Diplomacy: Religion and Nineteenth-Century American Foreign Relations.
Further Reading:
- Michael Blaakman – Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic
- Daniel Immerwahr – How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
- Paul Kramer

Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
On this episode of American Prestige, William Hartung — senior research fellow focusing on the arms industry and US military budget at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft — joins the program to discuss reports that the Trump administration is planning “sweeping budget cuts” for the Pentagon. We talk about these “cuts” being more accurately termed “reinvestments” into other areas, the enormous amount of defense spending and the culture that engendered this, how the defense industry has changed in the past 20 years, actual moves that could meaningfully reduce the military budget like reducing bloated systems (F-35s, aircraft carriers) and overseas bases, whether there exists an influential constituency to support military budget cuts, and more.
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