Into the Stacks: Article Relaunch: “Power and Connection”: “An Indispensable Tool”: Reflections on Imperial Interpretations in Recent Immigration Histories

Abstract

Published in 2011, Paul Kramer's “Power and Connection: Imperial Histories of the United States in the World,” has become something of a classic text in the historiography of the United States. Twelve years and nearly 400 citations after its publication, historians of the United States who specialize in everything from empire proper to foreign relations to labor and capitalism have looked to this article for methodological grounding, direction, and insight. Countless historians across many subfields have found their work imprinted by Kramer's call for a more systemic and deliberate engagement with the imperial, beyond the “superficial and invocatory” threads of previous generations, such as (though hardly exclusively) those found in the New Left and cultural studies traditions (1348).