The allure of empire

by Chris Suh

ISBN: 9780197631621

Published: 2023

"Empires were never the agents of progress as their apologists claimed. Yet during the Progressive Era, various people across the Pacific turned to empires as a source of empowerment. While the United States and Japan strove to emerge as the world's great powers, numerous Asians and African Americans embraced Japan to challenge the long-standing human inequality based on the color line. Japan's allure, however, was hardly limited to nonwhite peoples. American policymakers perceived Japan as a "progressive" empire akin to their own, and the two powers cultivated an amicable relationship across the color line, even as they competed for influence in Asia and conflicted over Japanese immigration to the American West. The Allure Empire traces how American ideas about Asians were made and remade on the imperial stage, and how these ideas shaped US foreign and immigration policies. Based on research conducted in South Korea and the United States, it uncovers how Americans justified...