Americans have been avid colonizers. Given the United States’ history as a postcolonial nation, this statement may seem perplexing. But Americans have been deeply embroiled in colonial projects in establishing their place in the global order, whether in dominating Latin America and the Caribbean or annexing Hawai’i and the Philippines. This led to especially ambiguous politics in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the nation endeavored to come to grips with the break up of major empires and the increase of nationalism worldwide, while supporting its own interests of business and consumption.

Even thirteen colonies breaking away from British rule did not abandon the idea of controlling further land and even peoples. A century of expansionism on the American mainland followed, although technical niceties allowed Americans to claim they were never colonizers. The Louisiana Purchase, for example, opening up vast tracts of land to the United States, nonetheless transferred an area and its people from one colonial rule (French) to another (American). That this area was divided into territories later to be incorporated into the American federal system just made this colonialism one more akin to the French model than to the British model. The expansion of plantation slavery into the Southwest, wars against American Indians and Mexico and the purchase of Alaska all had colonial overtones. That these were wrapped up in the mystical language of “manifest destiny,” suggesting that white Americans were destined to govern the whole North American mainland, should not distract from recognizing this colonizing mission.

Americans, as Walt Whitman pointed out as the nation’s second century was opening, were forging their own “passage to India.” That second century would witness an immediate commitment to the expansionist impulse as the US competed with other major industrial nations. Wars with Americans Indians continued opening up new territories to largely European settlers. Then the US expanded to the Pacific, “opening the door” to Japan and acquiring Hawai’i and the Philippines (the latter in the Spanish-American War of 1898). In the Caribbean, meanwhile, the US took Cuba and Puerto Rico (also in the 1898 conflict), and established control over the Panama isthmus, while intervening regularly in other countries under its self-proclaimed rights under the Monroe doctrine.

The complex legacy of direct colonialism would also affect American relations around the world. Woodrow Wilson’s support for self-determination applied only to European peoples, not those over whom they ruled in Africa and Asia (to the ire of W.E.B. Du Bois). Later, anti-communism translated into support for European masters against nationalists, who received moral and military support from the Soviet Union.

The Second World War brought a short-lived change in the American position on colonialism. Alliance with the Soviet Union weakened the negative association between communism and nationalism. Many Americans fighting against Nazism saw connections among fascism, colonialism and segregation at home. As the Japanese dislodged Europeans from much of East Asia, people questioned whether European colonialism had ended in the region; the British were beginning to lose their stranglehold on India, with Gandhi gaining a lot of support among Americans. Meanwhile, Americans appreciated nationalists and communists who, unlike their collaborating colonial masters, seemed willing to join them in the fight against Japan. Further, when the US lost the Philippines to the Japanese, American officials made strong promises about independence that would follow liberation from Japan. Nevertheless, while the US began to loosen its grip over Cuba and the Philippines, it made sure that the position of American businesses was secure, while language, culture and tourism continued to promote American hegemony.

While President Roosevelt had wondered about the advisability of allowing bankrupt European nations to re-establish control over their colonies, Truman decided that not supporting the French in Indo-China against America’s erstwhile nationalist allies would run counter to the intentions of the Marshall Plan. Loss of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, his administration reasoned, would lead to a further French collapse in Algeria and then in France itself. Even when the French realized that the cost of retaining Southeast Asia was too great, they passed on the baton to the Americans who learned their lessons, not from the nationalists’ victory at Dien-bien-phu, but from the bloody and successful British assaults on Malaysian nationalists.

Moreover, by this time, an anti-communist Cold War mentality had become firmly established in the United States. The “loss” of China to the communists had so shaken the American government that officials began to re-associate nationalism and communism. Once this took hold, the reaction to nationalist-inspired uprisings from Vietnam to Iran to Congo to Cuba to Guyana was to send in American forces (either military or CIA counter-insurgency) to oppose them. With the world divided neatly into those aligned with the Soviet Union and those loyal to the US, the latter had become a major neo-colonial power.

Defeat in Vietnam shook American anti-nationalist resolve for a few years, but Reagan’s destabilization of Grenada and continued tolerance of apartheid in South Africa showed that the connections were still largely in place. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of apartheid in South Africa, however, opened up new possibilities.

Anti-communists like Marcos in the Philippines were no longer indispensable, while military bases could no longer be imposed on an independent country.

The language of neo-colonialism and imperialism shifted in the 1990s to a more valuefree language of globalization. Yet, many legacies of colonialism and American support for other colonizers remain. Capital, largely in the form of multinational corporations, can now move more freely between nations, and those who profit from them are not exclusively Americans, but those who do the labor cannot move about so freely Wealthier nations retain barriers to entry, ensuring that large exploitable pools of labor are available outside their borders to be used as migrants within the US when desirable, or as cheap laborers for a plant that has relocated outside the country Profiting from cheap labor remains as important now as it was in the heyday of colonialism. As the “Made in USA” label has become a valuable asset for an article of clothing sold in America, it has become clear, however, that some of the best department stores are selling goods produced by the sweatshop labor of immigrants in the US, or by such laborers in places like Guam, Saipan, or other American territories.

The policies of US drug-enforcement agencies from Colombia to Panama and relations with Castro’s Cuba (for example, the Helms-Burton Act) provide a barometer of the level of American postcolonial policies. Anti-colonialism can still be a useful banner—as in American complaints about Chinese rule in Tibet—yet it represents a strategic interest to be balanced against others, as American silence on East Timorese bloodletting reaffirmed.

Finally, both media and business underpin a cultural hegemony that is read as a neocolonial strategy by many who oppose the new American colossus and its values, even as their nations may acquire or emulate them. The processes and terms of colonialism have changed over time, but their silent and deadly entanglement with the American dream remains problematic and compelling.