Imperial Material: National Symbols in the US Colonial Empire

“Akiboh’s original and compelling story shows us that empire was as much a matter of stamps, money, and flags as it was about raw colonial domination—and that indeed the latter did not happen without the former.”—Julian Go, University of Chicago

 
 
In Imperial Material, Alvita Akiboh reveals how US national identity has been created, challenged, and transformed through embodiments of empire found in US territories, from the US dollar bill to the fifty-star flag. These symbolic objects encode the relationships between territories—including the Philippines, the Hawaiian Islands, Puerto Rico, and Guam—and the empire with which they have been entangled. Akiboh shows how such items became objects of local power, their original intent transmogrified. For even if imperial territories were not always front and center for federal lawmakers and administrators, their inhabitants remained continuously aware of the imperial United States, whose presence announced itself on every bit of currency, every stamp, and the local flag.
 
Alvita Akiboh is Assistant Professor of History in FAS.