“America has never been an empire,” pronounced George W. Bush in his first foreign policy address. “We may be the only great power that had the chance, and refused – preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.”1

As presidential sentiments go, this was a cliché. Nearly every president in the twentieth century offered some platitude about how the United States does not covet territory. And yet the United States has had an empire, in the sense of possessing overseas territories, stretching from the Arctic to the South China Sea to the Caribbean. They ranged from the large landmass of Alaska to the small island of Guam, from populous territories (the Philippines) to sparse ones (American Samoa). They have been called many things: protectorates, possessions, territories, outlying areas. But at the turn of the twentieth century, when the bulk of them were acquired, there was little doubt what they were. As the leaders of the country put it plainly, they were colonies.