American imperial exceptionalism? Texas secondary World History depictions of American empire, 1925–2016

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ABSTRACT This article explores the connection between American exceptionalism and empire denialism by examining high-school World History textbooks approved for use in the state of Texas from the 1920s to 2016. Scholarship suggests that the powerful ideology of American exceptionalism is deeply uneasy about the role of the United States as an imperial power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But despite this widespread assumption, World History textbooks for the past century have routinely labelled the United States an empire, and directly compared US actions with those of European colonising powers. Some textbooks portrayed this as a unique and aberrant time in US history. But other textbook accounts over the past century have made the case that US imperialism brought about material and political benefits to colonised peoples. In other words, a common thread in World History textbooks suggests that America created an exceptional empire. American imperialism was linked to an underlying narrative of the spread of European or Western civilisation, viewed as a cornerstone of modern world history.