Book contents
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Building and Resisting US Empire
- Part II Imperial Structures
- 9 The US Fiscal-Military State and the Conquest of a Continent, 1783–1900
- 10 The United States and International Law: From the Transcontinental Treaty to the League of Nations Covenant, 1819–1919
- 11 The United States and Global Capitalism
- 12 Making the First International: Nineteenth-Century Regimes of Surveillance, Accumulation, Resistance, and Abolition
- 13 The Military and US Engagements with the World, 1865–1900
- 14 Technology and US Foreign Relations in the Nineteenth Century
- 15 The Environment, the United States, and the World in the Nineteenth Century
- Part III Americans and the World
- Part IV Americans in the World
- Index
11 - The United States and Global Capitalism
from Part II - Imperial Structures
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2021
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- The Cambridge History of America and the World
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Tables
- Contributors to Volume II
- General Introduction: What is America and the World?
- Introduction to Volume II
- Part I Building and Resisting US Empire
- Part II Imperial Structures
- 9 The US Fiscal-Military State and the Conquest of a Continent, 1783–1900
- 10 The United States and International Law: From the Transcontinental Treaty to the League of Nations Covenant, 1819–1919
- 11 The United States and Global Capitalism
- 12 Making the First International: Nineteenth-Century Regimes of Surveillance, Accumulation, Resistance, and Abolition
- 13 The Military and US Engagements with the World, 1865–1900
- 14 Technology and US Foreign Relations in the Nineteenth Century
- 15 The Environment, the United States, and the World in the Nineteenth Century
- Part III Americans and the World
- Part IV Americans in the World
- Index
Summary
In the revolutionary year of 1848, former China merchant Asa Whitney stood before the Pennsylvania legislature to unveil a “skeleton map.” Standard world maps were marred by an epistemological error, he argued; centering where “Europe, Asia and Africa” met, they pushed North America to “one side of all, as if of no importance.” Whitney’s cartography righted this wrong, showing America as it really was: “in the centre of all.” More than a salve to hemispheric pride, Whitney thought his map demonstrated that the “belt of the globe” – the east-west band running across Europe and Asia that contained “the population and the commerce of all the world” – was missing its buckle, a gap in the zone he proprietarily called “our continent.”
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- Information
- The Cambridge History of America and the World , pp. 267 - 294Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022