Rebecca J. Scott

Frederick Cooper

Aims McGuinness

Thomas C. Holt

One of the massive transformations that took place in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was the movement of millions of people from the status of slaves to that of legally free men, women, and children. Societies after Slavery provides thousands of entries and rich scholarly annotations, making it the definitive resource for scholars and students engaged in research on postemancipation societies in the Americas and Africa.

A Select Annotated Bibliography of Printed Sources on Cuba, Brazil, British Colonial Africa, South Africa, and the British West Indies

Societies After Slavery

Sukanya Banerjee

Steven Charles McKay

Considers how to rethink diasporas and the geographies of difference

New Routes for Diaspora Studies

Most people in the United States have forgotten that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens migrated westward to California by way of Panama during the California Gold Rush. Decades before the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, this slender spit of land abruptly became the linchpin of the fastest route between New York City and San Francisco—a route that combined travel by ship to the east coast of Panama, an overland crossing to Panama City, and a final voyage by ship to California. In Path of Empire, Aims McGuinness presents a novel understanding of the intertwined histories of the California Gold Rush, the course of U.S. empire, and anti-imperialist politics in Latin America. Between 1848 and 1856, Panama saw the building, by a U.S. company, of the first transcontinental railroad in world history, the final abolition of slavery, the establishment of universal manhood suffrage, the foundation of an autonomous Panamanian state, and the first of what would become a long list of military interventions by the United States. Using documents found in Panamanian, Colombian, and U.S. archives, McGuinness reveals how U.S. imperial projects in Panama were integral to developments in California and the larger process of U.S. continental expansion. Path of Empire offers a model for the new transnational history by unbinding the gold rush from the confines of U.S. history as traditionally told and narrating that event as the history of Panama, a small place of global importance in the mid-1800s. For more information about the United States in the World series, click here.

Aims McGuinness

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