On the Road to Empire

Abstract

Scholars have long considered the transcontinental railroad as the hallmark of U.S. modernity. Historians have poured ink over the robber barons, industrial might, and the ability of railroads to shrink time and space. Yet, as the United States undergoes what might be a second “Gilded Age”—with the increasingly uneven distribution of wealth as well as anxieties over immigration and unrestrained corporate development—the transcontinental railroad evokes the excesses of the past and the present. American Studies scholar Manu Karuka argues the transcontinental railroad resulted from continental imperialism, a system that persists in the United States and the world. Empire’s Tracks features nine thematic chapters rather than offering a chronological narrative. One can read the book all the way through or pick and choose between essays that explore rumor and archive; case studies of Indigenous modes of relationships; or a global history of railroad colonization. The book concludes with an assessment of...