Overviews of antebellum American foreign relations include Max Savelle, The Origins of American Diplomacy: The International History of Anglo-America, 1492–1763 (New York, 1967), a still-valuable comprehensive survey. Bradford Perkins, The Creation of a Republican Empire, 1776–1865 (Cambridge, 1993), offers a useful framework for conceptualizing antebellum American foreign relations. Walter LaFeber, The American Age: U.S. Foreign Policy at Home and Abroad 1750 to the Present (New York, 1994), traces the expansionist roots of American foreign relations. John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, 2004), argues that contemporary American foreign policy actions are rooted in antebellum precedents. Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (New York, 2006), is a provocative work that connects the nation’s pugnacious expansionism with the spread of liberal capitalism. George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (New York, 2008), is a comprehensive survey by an esteemed scholar.

D. W. Meinig’s The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years of History, volume 2, Continental America, 1800–1867(New Haven, 1993), is, along with the other three volumes, a landmark achievement of multidisciplinary scholarly research and historical insight. It is an indispensable tool for understanding the geographic basis of the American Empire. James D. Drake, The Nation’s Nature: How Continental Presumptions Gave Rise to the United States of America (Charlottesville, 2011), also emphasizes the importance of geography in the conception of the American Empire.

William Appleman Williams and Richard W. Van Alstyne provide starting points for the study of the antebellum American Empire. See Williams, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, 1961); and Van Alstyne, The Rising American Empire (New York, 1974; first published 1960); Empire and Independence: The International History of the American Revolution (New York, 1965); and Genesis of American Nationalism (Waltham, Mass., 1970).

Major Wilson, Space, Time, and Freedom: The Quest for Nationality and the Irrepressible Conflict, 1815–1861 (Westport, Conn., 1974), remains a conceptually valuable contribution.

Books dealing with the topic of empire more generally include Michael W. Doyle, Empires (Ithaca, 1986), a perceptive comparative study, and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987), which situates the U.S. experience amid the Age of Europe. Marc Engal, A Mighty Empire: The Origins of the American Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), provides a detailed account of the expansionist factions in each colony in the years before the revolution. Andrew Bacevich, ed., The Imperial Tense: Prospects and Problems of American Empire (Chicago, 2003), contains a range of ideological perspectives on the topic. Craig Calhoun, Frederick Cooper, and in Kevin W. Moore, eds., Lessons of Empire: Imperial Histories and American Power (New York, 2006), a distinguished group of scholars assesses American empire from a comparative framework. Charles S. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, Mass., 2006), is a sophisticated study by a senior scholar. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000), links U.S. imperial ideology and action to that of Great Britain. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, 2000), an important theoretical approach to empire; Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (Cambridge, 2002), emphasizes the centrifugal aspect of imperial conquests; Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York, 2004), is vigorously argued if at times problematic in its assumptions and conclusions. Ann Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacies in North American History (Durham, N.C., 2006), offers a postcolonial view of American Empire. Eric Hobsbawm, On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy (New York, 2008), features four short essays by a leading British historian. Richard Immerman, Empire for Liberty (Princeton, 2010), traces the history of the American Empire through biographical sketches of six of its key architects. Eliga Gould, Among the Powers of the Earth: The American Revolution and the Making of a New World Empire (Cambridge, Mass, 2012), situates the rise of the United States as a part of the European imperial struggle for North America.

The American Empire cannot be understood apart from the creation of an American nationalism. Books on that topic include Ernest L. Tuveson, Redeemer Nation: The Idea of America’s Millennial Role (Chicago, 1968), which traces the origins of redeemer nation ideology, and Conrad Cherry, ed., God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny, revised and updated edition (Chapel Hill, 1998; first published, 1971). Carolyn Marvin and David W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation: Totem Rituals and the American Flag (New York, 1999), offers a sophisticated analysis of war and patriotism as key bonding agents in the creation of American nationalism. Thomas Bender, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Los Angeles, 2002), is a collection of essays by a diverse group of scholars that places U.S. history in a global context. James A. Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History (New Haven, 2003), emphasizes the role of Christianity in the creation of American nationalism. Thomas Bender, A Nation Among Nations: America’s Place in World History (New York, 2006), is an insightful discussion by a leading authority on American nationalism; and Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, This Violent Empire: The Birth of an American National Identity (Chapel Hill, 2010), details the role of violence as a cultural bonding agent.

There is a growing literature that views U.S. continental expansion from a Native American perspective. It includes Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building (Minneapolis, 1980); Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land (Cambridge, Mass., 2003); and Paul Van der Velder, Savages and Scoundrels: The Untold Story of the American Road to Empire Through Indian Territory (New Haven, 2009).

Authorities on the Seven Years War include Francis Jennings, Empire of Fortune: Crown, Colonies & Tribes in the Seven Years War in America (New York, 1988). Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673–1800 (Cambridge, 1997), presents an anthropological-historical analysis of power relations in the Ohio country. Timothy J. Shannon, Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Convention of 1754 (Ithaca, 2000), is now the best work to date on an early stop on the way to forging the Union. Fred Anderson has made a major multivolume contribution with Crucible of War: The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754–1766 (New York, 2000). Fred Anderson, ed., George Washington Remembers: Reflections on the French and Indian War (Lanham, Md., 2004) is a marvelously illustrated story of Washington’s early career; and Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500–2000 (New York, 2005), situates U.S. expansionism amid the legacy of previous European imperial efforts, and Gregory E. Dowd, War Under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, 2002), offers a fresh, largely sympathetic view of a major “conspirator” for Native American unity. Matthew C. Ward, Breaking the Backcountry: The Seven Years War in Virginia and Pennsylvania, 1754–1765 (Pittsburgh, 2003), offers an insightful and detailed history of an often neglected front of the French and Indian War. William M. Fowler, Jr., Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle for North America, 1754–1763 (New York, 2005) is a readable overview; Andrew R. C. Cayton and Frederika J. Teute, eds., Contact Points: American Frontiers from the Mohawk Valley to the Mississippi, 1750–1830 (Chapel Hill, 1998) offers a social history of the frontier from top scholars; Andrew Cayton and Stuart D. Heiss, eds., The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country and the Early Republic (Athens, Ohio, 2005), offers a comprehensive look at “the first imperial frontier.” Richard Middleton, Pontiac’s War: Its Causes, Course, and Consequences (London, 2007), is another recent text stressing the importance of Native Americans as actors on the imperial stage. Matt Schuman and Karl Schweizer, The Seven Years War: A Transatlantic History (London, 2008), places the war in international context.

The rich literature on Benjamin Franklin includes Gerald Stourzh, Benjamin Franklin and American Foreign Policy (Chicago, 1954), which remains the best analysis of Franklin’s expansionist vision. H. W. Brands, The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2002) is the best recent full-length biography; Gordon S. Wood, The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin (New York, 2004), reveals how Franklin was an expansionist and a speculator before he became “the first American.”

George Washington has been reexamined in Richard Norton Smith, Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (Boston, 1993), which is especially insightful on Washington’s time as president. Joel Achenbach, The Grand Idea: George Washington’s Potomac River and the Race to the West (New York, 2004), details Washington’s lifelong interest both as speculator and a visionary in a river route to the West; Francois Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington’s Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York, 2006), provides a detailed if at times questionable analysis of the construction and evolution of the Washington myth, and Ron Chernow, George Washington (New York, 2011), is taking its place as a foundational text on Washington.

Important works on the War of Independence include Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Diplomacy of the American Revolution (Bloomington, 1957; first published, 1935); the passage of time has not diminished the usefulness of this text by an acknowledged past master in the field. Richard B. Morris, The Peacemakers: The Great Powers and American Independence (New York, 1965), frames the Treaty of Paris as an essential first step to the Northwest Ordinance and the Constitution. Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill, 1969), is a classic text on the first two decades of American political history. Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York, 1992), argues that the widespread emergence of a capitalist ethos in America is the revolution’s greatest legacy. Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderlands of the American Revolution (New York, 2006), is the best study yet on the civil war aspect of the revolution. Simon Schama, Rough Crossings: Britain, the Slaves, and the American Revolution (New York, 2006) vividly recounts the hitherto overlooked role of slaves in the struggle; Douglas R. Egerton, Death or Liberty: African Americans and Revolutionary America (New York, 2009), presents the Redcoats as an army of liberation for black slaves.

Robert H. Patton, Patriot Pirates: The Privateer War for Freedom and Fortune in the American Revolution (New York, 2008), is a highly readable tale on the key role of private naval forces in the revolution. Leonard J. Sadowsky, Revolutionary Negotiations: Indians, Empires, and Diplomats in the Founding of America (Charlottesville, 2009), emphasizes the role of Native Americans as catalytic agents in North American diplomacy. The ongoing war on Native America is covered in Glenn F. Williams, Year of the Hangman: George Washington’s Campaign Against the Iroquois (Yardley, Pa., 2005), and Barbara Mann, George Washington’s War on Native America (Westport, Conn., 2005). John Grenier, The First Way of War: American War Making on the Frontier, 1607–1814 (New York, 2005), argues that the give-no-quarter conflicts with Native Americans served as the initial template of the Anglo-American warmaking tradition.

Overviews of the era include Eric McKittrick and Stanley Elkins, The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993), which is both insightful and encyclopedic in its treatment of the 1790s. Wide ranging, detailed, and insightful, Gordon Wood’s opus, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815 (New York, 2009), is a foundational text for the era by a leader in the field. Marie Jeanne Rossignol, Le Ferment Nationaliste: Aux Origins de la Politique Exterieure des Etats Unis, 1789–1812 (Paris, 1994; English language edition, Columbus, 2004, translated by Lillian A. Parrott), is a valuable work that argues that American nationalism was intimately connected to expansionism. Peter S. Onuf, Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (Bloomington, Ind., 1987), is the best single volume on this critical legacy of the Confederation government; Peter S. Onuf, Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776–1814 (Madison, 1993), is a foundational work by an acknowledged leader in the field.

Arthur Preston Whitaker, The Spanish-American Frontier, 1783–1815 (Lincoln, 1927), is an older work that remains valuable by an early giant in the field. Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York, 1986), sheds light on this key event from both local and national perspectives.

Frederick W. Marks III, Independence on Trial: Foreign Affairs and the Making of the Constitution, 2nd ed. (Wilmington, Del., 1986), casts the impotence of the Confederation government in foreign affairs as a prime motive for creation of the Constitution. Roger H. Brown, Redeeming the Republic: Federalists, Taxation, and the Origins of the Constitution (Baltimore, 1993), emphasizes the need for a reliable taxation power as the underlying motive for scrapping the confederation system. Max L. Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State (New York, 2003), describes the creation of a strong national state in spite of widespread opposition to the idea, and Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman, The Constitution of Empire: Territorial Expansion and American Legal History (New Haven, 2004), offers an authoritative account of the imperial dimension of the Constitution. Ralph Ketcham, The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Debates (New York, 1986, rept. ed., 2003), offers a representative sampling of anti-Federalist thought. Richard Beeman, Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (New York, 2009), a lively narrative of the work of the framers, is a bit Whiggish in its assumptions.

In Burton Kaufman, ed., Washington’s Farewell Address: The View from the 20th Century (New York, 1969), the author’s “A Statement of Empire” is especially valuable. Jeffrey L. Pasley, “The Tyranny of Printers”: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic (Charlottesville, 2004), details the emergence of the newspaper culture in the United States. Todd Estes, The Jay Treaty Debate, Public Opinion, and the Evolution of Early American Political Culture (Amherst, 2006), establishes the foundational importance of the Jay Treaty ratification fight. Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton (New York, 2004), is a masterful biography of the preeminent centralizer of the early republic. Stacey Schiff, A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (New York, 2005), offers a detailed and gracefully written view of Franklin’s diplomacy;

There is an abundant literature on the Jeffersonians and their policies, including Henry Adams’s foundational The History of the United States of America during the Administrations of Jefferson and Madison, 9 vols. (New York, 1889–1891). Merrill Peterson, Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation (New York, 1970), is the classic one-volume biography. Alexander DeConde, This Affair of Louisiana (Baton Rouge, 1976), is a still valuable account of the purchase. In Burton Spivak, Jefferson’s English Crisis: Commerce, Embargo, and the Republican Revolution (Charlottesville, 1979), the author’s meticulous research and measured judgments paint a damning portrait of Jefferson’s schemes of “economic coercion.” Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic (Chapel Hill, 1980), remains valuable for its understanding of the role of expansionism in republican ideology. Robert W. Tucker and David C. Hendrickson, Empire of Liberty: The Statecraft of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1990), is a foundational text on Jeffersonian expansionist ideology. Peter Onuf, Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, 2000), is useful on the construction of American nationalism; J. C. A. Stagg, Mr Madison’s War: Politics, Diplomacy, and Warfare in the Early American Republic, 1783–1830 (Princeton, 1983), is the first of several valuable studies by the author on James Madison; J. C. A. Stagg, Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776–1821 (New Haven, 2009), examines in detail the border politics of the Gulf Coast in making a defense of Madison’s diplomacy.

Michael Golay, The Tide of Empire: America’s March to the Pacific (Hoboken, 2003), and Walter T. K. Nugent, Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion (New York, 2008), are lively and detailed overviews of antebellum expansionism.

Gregory E. Dowd, A Spirited Resistance: The North American Indian Struggle for Unity, 1745–1815 (Baltimore, 1992), chronicles Native American efforts to resist U.S. expansion. Frederick C. Leiner, The End of Barbary Terror: America’s 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa (New York, 2006), is a well-researched and well-argued account of the last of the “Barbary Wars.” Ashli White, Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic (Baltimore, 2010), emphasizes the role of the Haitian Revolution as both specter and example to Americans.

The War of 1812 has gone through a number of historiographical evolutions. Julius Pratt, Expansionists of 1812 (Baltimore, 1925), first advanced the thesis of expansionism as the primary cause of the war; Roger H. Brown, The Republic in Peril: 1812 (New York, 1964), frames internal divisions over the war in partisan rather than sectional terms; and Donald A. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Baltimore, 1989), provides a comprehensive and insightful treatment of the war that was perhaps the first step in the direction of a resurgence of scholarly interest in the War of 1812. In Alan Taylor, The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, and the Indians (New York, 2010), one of the most accomplished historians of early America recasts the War of 1812 as a multifaceted internal struggle.

On war as a spur to nationalist sentiments, see Steven Watts, The Republic Reborn: War and the Making of Liberal America, 1790–1820 (Baltimore, 1987). Watts is especially insightful on the role of the War of 1812 in shaping a generational shift in the direction of liberal capitalism. David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism (Chapel Hill, 1997), and Len Travers, Celebrating the 4th: Independence Day and the Rites of American Nationalism in the Early Republic (Amherst, Mass., 1999), take a cultural approach to American nationalism.

The Transcontinental Treaty is examined in Samuel Flagg Bemis, John Quincy Adams and American Foreign Policy (New York, 1949), and William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington, Ky., 1992), examines Adams’s life and work through the prism of the Transcontinental Treaty of 1819. Angel Del Rio, La Mision de Don Luis de Onis in los Estados Unidos, 1809–1819 (New York, 1981), tells the tale of an able diplomat valiantly defending a fading empire.

The abundant body of work on the Monroe Doctrine includes George Dangerfield, The Era of Good Feelings (New York, 1952), which remains a classic work valuable both for its style and for its substance. Ernest May, The Making of the Monroe Doctrine (Cambridge, 1975), argues that politics, not policy, drove the creation of Monroe’s principles. James E. Lewis, Jr., The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783–1829 (Chapel Hill, 1998), minimizes the significance of Monroe’s words. Gretchen Murphy, Hemispheric Imaginings: The Monroe Doctrine and Narratives of U.S. Empire (Durham, N.C., 2005), traces the cultural and racial implications of Monroe’s ideas; Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America (New York, 2011), is a perceptive analysis of the doctrine’s origins and political evolution as a foundational principle of American foreign relations.

Daniel Walker Howe, “What Hath God Wrought?” The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York, 2009), is the best one-volume treatment of a critical moment in U.S. history, dealing extensively with the expansionist dimension. Richard Slotkin, The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800–1890 (New York, 1985), is extensively researched and bold in its conclusions.

The central importance of the slavery controversy is highlighted in Michael Morrison, Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1997). Don Fehrenbacher, The Slaveholder Republic (New York, 2001) also emphasizes the central importance of slavery. Matthew Mason, Slavery and Politics in the Early American Republic (Chapel Hill, 2006), details how the controversy over slavery eroded the expansionist consensus. Brian Schoen, The Fragile Fabric of Union: Cotton, Federal Politics, and the Global Origins of the Civil War (Philadelphia, 2009), documents the key role of cotton in the emerging global economic system of the first half of the nineteenth century. Robert Pierce Forbes, The Missouri Compromise and Its Aftermath: Slavery and the Meaning of America (Chapel Hill, 2007), is the new standard work on a critical, if somewhat neglected, aspect of antebellum history. Elizabeth Varon, Disunion! The Coming of the Civil War, 1789–1859 (Chapel Hill, 2008), traces the central role of slavery on the long road to the Civil War.

The idea of Manifest Destiny is explored in John Carl Parish, The Emergence of the Idea of Manifest Destiny (Los Angeles, 1932), which details how the idea of Manifest Destiny existed long before the term was initially used. Albert Weinberg, Manifest Destiny: A Study of Nationalist Expansionism in American History (Baltimore, 1935), is still perhaps the single best book on the topic. Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land: The American West as Myth and Symbol (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), is a classic and still-useful analysis of the expansionist idea. Frederick C. Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), remains valuable in spite of the author’s dubious distinction between mission and Manifest Destiny. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge, Mass., 1981), is a seminal work on Manifest Destiny. Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York, 1995), constructs Manifest Destiny as an ideology extending back to the Puritans and forward to the 1990s. Amy S. Greenberg, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire (New York, 2005), is an innovative if not wholly persuasive attempt to use gender theory to explain antebellum expansionism. Mark Rifkin, Manifesting America: The Imperial Construction of U.S. National Space (New York, 2009), argues that “impossibility” and “acquiescence” combined to make destiny manifest in the antebellum Empire.

Books on the U.S. penetration of the Asia-Pacific region include Warren Cohen, America’s Response to China: An Interpretative History of Sino-American Relations (New York, 1971), a foundational text by an eminent East Asian scholar. Peter Booth Wiley, Yankees in the Lands of the Gods: Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan (New York, 1990), is a detailed narrative based on both English and Japanese sources. Jacques M. Downs, The Golden Ghetto: The American Commercial Community at Canton and the Shaping of American China Policy, 1784–1844 (Bethlehem, Pa., 1997), is a meticulously researched and engaged narrative of U.S. commercial influence in China prior to the Treaty of Wanghia. Sally Engle Merry, Colonizing Hawai’i: The Cultural Power of Law (Princeton, 2000), persuasively demonstrates how a legal system can function as a means of imperial control. Jean Heffer, The United States and the Pacific: A History of a Frontier, translated by W. Donald Wilson (Notre Dame, English language edition, 2002), offers a pointed overview by a foreign scholar. Nathaniel Philbrick, Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery, The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838–1842 (New York, 2003), is the authoritative work on the Wilkes Expedition by a premier maritime historian. Bruce Cumings, Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power (New Haven, 2009), emphasizes the trans-Pacific motives behind continental expansionism.

On the economic and technological revolutions essential to the creation of the American Empire, see Douglass C. North, The Economic Growth of the United States, 1790–1860 (New York, 1966; first published, 1961), a still reliable source on this topic. George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815–1860 (New York, 1968; first published, 1951), an authoritative, detailed, and concise account of an often-overlooked “revolution.” Menahem Blondheim, Over the Wires: The Telegraph and the Flow of Public Information in America, 1844–1897 (Cambridge, 1994), details the information networks that solidified the Union and tied it to the world.

On the politics of expansion, see Frederick C. Merk, with Lois B. Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas (New York, 1972); Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, 1985); and William H. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay, 1776–1854 (New York, 1990). Freehling argues for the central importance of the slave issue in antebellum politics. Michael F. Holt, The Fate of Their Country: Politicians, Slavery Expansion, and the Coming of the Civil War (New York, 2004), presents the argument over slavery and the territories as the primary cause of the Civil War. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005), is a voluminous treatment of the topic. John Belohlavek, Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Splintering of the Union (Kent, Ohio, 2005), validates Cushing’s importance as an antebellum figure. Edward Crapol, John Tyler: The Accidental President (Chapel Hill, 2006), is the best biography yet written of a neglected expansionist president. Joel Silbey, Storm Over Texas: The Annexation Controversy and the Road to Civil War (New York, 2006), is a brief yet valuable work on the Texas question.

On the presidency of Andrew Jackson, see John Belohlavek, “Let the Eagle Soar”: The Foreign Policy of Andrew Jackson (Lincoln, 1985). Amy Derogatis, Moral Geography: Maps, Missionaries, and the American Frontier (New York, 2003), perceptively reveals the sometimes subtle mechanisms of imperial conquest.

On California, see Norman Graebner, Empire on the Pacific: A Study in American Continental Expansion (New York, 1955); Neal Harlow, California Conquered: The Annexation of a Mexican Province, 1846–1850 (Berkeley, 1989); George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Intruders in Central California, 1769–1849 (Norman, Okla., 1993); and Dale L. Walker, Bear Flag Rising: The Conquest of California, 1846 (New York, 1999).

On whaling, see Margaret Creighton, Rites and Passage: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830–1870 (New York, 1995); Lance Edwin Davis, Robert E. Gallman, and Karen Gleiter, In Pursuit of Leviathan: Technology, Institutions, Productivity, and Profits in American Whaling, 1816–1906 (Chicago, 1997); and Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: A History of Whaling in North America (New York, 2007). Nathaniel Philbrick, Why Read Moby Dick? (Kindle, 2011), affirms the continued relevance of Melville and his work.

Linda S. Hudson, Mistress of Manifest Destiny: A Biography of Jane McManus Storm Cazneau, 1807–1878 (College Station, Tex., 2001), and Tom Chaffin, The Pathfinder: John Charles Fremont and the Course of American Empire (New York, 2002), are engagingly told stories of two prominent advocates of Manifest Destiny.

Samuel L. Haynes and Christopher Morris, eds., Manifest Destiny and Empire: American Antebellum Expansion (College Station, Tex., 1997), offers a range of insights on various aspects of the expansionist process. Cornelis A. Van Minnen and Sylvia L. Hilton, eds., Frontiers and Boundaries in U.S. History (Amsterdam, 2004), presents theoretical approaches to the study of borders by a distinguished group of contributors.

Donald A. Rakestraw, For Honor or Destiny: The Anglo-American Crisis over the Oregon Territory (New York, 1995), gives a detailed, closely argued analysis of Anglo-American diplomacy in the 1840s. Sam W. Haynes, Unfinished Revolution: The Early American Republic in a British World (Charlottesville, 2010), argues that Anglo-American relations remained predominantly hostile until at least the 1850s.

Gary C. Anderson, The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820–1875 (Norman, Okla., 2005), and Pekka Hamalainen, The Comanche Empire (New Haven, 2008), are groundbreaking books that illustrate the crucial role of the Comanches in the geopolitics of the Plains.

Allan Nevins, ed., Polk: The Diary of a President (London, 1929), remains a key source for understanding American diplomacy in the 1840s. Charles G. Sellers, James Knox Polk, Continentalist, 1843–1846 (Princeton, 1966), remains the best biography of an important expansionist figure.

David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (Columbia, Mo., 1973), remains a classic. Robert W. Johanssen, To The Halls of the Montezumas: The Mexican War in the American Imagination (New York, 1985), is a detailed review of the cultural impact of the war on the United States. John S. D. Eisenhower, So Far From God: The U.S. War with Mexico, 1846–1848 (New York, 1989), is readable and frank in its assessments. Other aspects of the Mexican-American War are covered in Wallace Ohrt, Defiant Peacemaker: Nicholas Trist in the Mexican War (College Station, Tex., 1997), and Paul Foos, A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War (Chapel Hill, 2002).

Shelley Streeby, American Sensations: Class, Empire, and the Production of Popular Culture (Berkeley, 2002), assesses popular representations of the war to the American public.

Frederick C. Merk, The Monroe Doctrine and American Expansionism, 1843–1849 (New York, 1966), and Samuel Eliot Morison, Frederick C. Merk, Frank Friedel, Dissent in Three American Wars (Cambridge, 1970): Merk’s primary sources on opposition to the Mexican War make it still useful.

See also Patricia Nelson Limerick, The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (New York, 1987), and Samuel Truett, Fugitive Landscapes: The Forgotten History of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (New Haven, 2006). Amis MacGuinness, Path of Empire: Panama and the California Gold Rush (Cornell, 2008), offers an interpretation of U.S. isthmian affairs from a Panamanian perspective. T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (New York, 2010), deals in part with Vanderbilt’s Central American endeavors.

On the gold rush as an event in international history, see J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York, 1981); Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley, 1997); and Kenneth Owens, ed., Riches for All: The California Gold Rush and the World (Lincoln, 2002).

Key works on the period from the end of the Mexican-American War to the beginning of the Civil War include the following.

On the political crisis of the 1850s, see Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York, 1948); Glyndon Van Deusen, Horace Greeley: Nineteenth Century Crusader (Philadelphia, 1953); Martin Duberman, Charles Francis Adams, 1807–1886 (Boston, 1961); Eric Foner, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (London, 1971); David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis, 1848–1861 (New York, 1976); Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (London, 1990); Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay, Statesman for the Union (New York, 1991); James Dunkerly, Americana: The Americas in the World, Around 1850 (London, 2000); Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York, 2005); Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, 1999); and William H. Freehling, The Road to Disunion: Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York, 2007).

Robert E. May, The Southern Dream of a Caribbean Empire, 1854–1861 (Athens, Ga., 1989), is a detailed, closely argued, authoritative treatment of a sometimes overlooked aspect of U.S. expansionism.

Yonatan Eyal, The Young America Movement and the Transformation of the Democratic Party, 1828–1861 (Cambridge, 2008), is the best recent work on a key faction in antebellum politics.

On the filibusters, see Harris Gaylord Warren, The Sword Was Their Passport: A History of American Filibustering in the Mexican Revolution (Baton Rouge, 1943); Charles H. Brown, Agents of Manifest Destiny (Chapel Hill, 1980); and Robert E. May, Manifest Destiny’s Underworld: Filibustering in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, 2002). On Cuba, see Tom Chaffin, Fatal Glory: Narciso Lopez and the First Clandestine U.S. War against Cuba (Charlottesville, 1996), and Louis Perez, Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy (Athens, Ga., 1997).

Key books on the foreign relations dimension of the Civil War include the following.

James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York, 1988), remains a foundational work; by the same author, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution (New York, 1990), offers a brief and yet engaging perspective on Lincoln’s significance. See also David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York, 1995); Howard Jones, Abraham Lincoln and a New Birth of Freedom (Lincoln, 2003); Edward C. White, Jr., The Eloquent President: A Portrait of Lincoln Through His Own Words (New York, 2005); and Edward C. White, Jr., A. Lincoln: A Biography (New York, 2009). White argues that Lincoln was more sincere in his religious views than is sometimes thought. Eric Foner, ed., Our Lincoln: New Perspectives on Lincoln and His World (New York, 2008); Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York, 2010), argues that the contingencies of war pushed Lincoln in the direction of abolition; Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore, 2008), is a comprehensive biography of Lincoln; Gary Gallagher, The Union War (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), contends that a desire to preserve the Union was the primary impetus for the Northern war effort.

Glyndon Van Deusen, William Henry Seward (New York, 1967), is a monumental work that is still the definitive biography of one of the most important nineteenth-century architects of American Empire; Lawrence M. Denton, William Henry Seward and the Secession Crisis: The Effort to Prevent Civil War (Jefferson, N.C., 2009), argues that Seward’s efforts to avert a war deserve more credit than they have traditionally received.

The international dimension of the Civil War is probed in Howard Jones, Union in Peril: The Crisis Over British Intervention in the Civil War (Chapel Hill, 1992), and Robert E. May, ed., The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim (West Lafayette, Ind., 1995). R. J. M. Blackett, Divided Hearts: Britain and the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2001), emphasizes that pro-Union sentiment in Great Britain was greater than traditionally thought. Both Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War (Baton Rouge, 2008), and Amanda Foreman, A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War (New York, 2011), situate the Civil War in an international context.

Edmund Wilson, Patriotic Gore: Studies in the Literature of the American Civil War (New York, 1962), is a classic analysis of the war from a literary perspective; Garry Wills, Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York, 1992), casts Lincoln’s rhetorical strategies in a political context. Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York, 2012), contains valuable chapters on Manifest Destiny and the Civil War.

On the devastation of the war and the need to justify it, see Charles Royster, The Destructive War: William Tecumseh Sherman, Stonewall Jackson, and the American People (New York, 1991). Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War (New York, 2006), details how the increasing violence of the war was justified. George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill, 2011), assesses the role of faith in the justification for the war. Drew G. Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York, 2008), recounts how Americans dealt with the sudden upsurge in mortality caused by the war. Nina Silber, Gender and the Sectional Conflict (Chapel Hill, 2008), suggests that the sectional divide had a strong gender component. Victoria C. Bynum, The Long Shadow of the Civil War: Southern Dissent and Its Legacies (Chapel Hill, 2010), is another chapter in the author’s ongoing exploration of the divisions within the presumed “solid South.”