Conclusion

Abstract

This concluding chapter steers a different course, reflecting on some of the ways that time and history have underpinned visions of Anglo-America. It outlines a discourse of racial union which was usually predicated on a specific account of both space and historical temporality. The chosen people — whether designated Aryan, Teutonic, Anglo-Saxon, or English-speaking — was imagined as superior to all others, their greatness ordained by their unique historical trajectory and extant racial characteristics. They had been, and remained, the pioneers of human progress. This historical story produced stratified global geography: the vanguard of modern humanity was concentrated in specific places, chiefly Britain and its past and present settler colonies in North America and the South Pacific. Ultimately, the chapter discusses W. E. B. Du Bois and T. E. Scholes' ideas about race and empire. While the steampunk literature renarrates the history of Anglo-modernity by erasing the primacy of the United States, Afro-modernists sought to destabilize the historical validation of racial domination, clearing the ground for imagining alternative futures.