Why am I passionate about this?

I am a historian based in England, raised in Texas. While undertaking a summertime spoken Latin course at the Vatican in 2001 I found myself in the midst of Italian protests against that year’s G8 summit in Genoa. The strength of the anti-globalization movement, and the violent response from the Carabinieri, sparked an early interest in the historical controversies surrounding globalization and US foreign policy. Ten years later, I had a PhD in History from the University of Texas at Austin and the first draft of what would become my book, The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade


I wrote

The 'Conspiracy' of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846-1896

By Marc-William Palen,

Book cover of The 'Conspiracy' of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846-1896

What is my book about?

Following the Second World War, the United States would become the lead proponent of international trade liberalization. Yet for nearly…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Consumers' Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865-1920

Marc-William Palen Why did I love this book?

Where to begin. Hoganson’s first book had already transformed our understanding about why the US acquired a colonial empire in 1898 through the politics of gender.

In Consumers’ Imperium she once again flips the script by investigating the domestic side of the Gilded Age capitalist empire. In doing so, wealthy white women are recast as power brokers of American globalization and imperialism through their purchasing habits, exhibitions, and armchair travel clubs.

By Kristin L. Hoganson,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Consumers' Imperium as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Histories of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era tend to characterize the United States as an expansionist nation bent on Americanizing the world without being transformed itself. In ""Consumers' Imperium"", Kristin Hoganson reveals the other half of the story, demonstrating that the years between the Civil War and World War I were marked by heightened consumption of imports and strenuous efforts to appear cosmopolitan. Hoganson finds evidence of international connections in quintessentially domestic places - American households. She shows that well-to-do white women in this era expressed intense interest in other cultures through imported household objects, fashion, cooking, entertaining, armchair…


Book cover of American Empire: A Global History

Marc-William Palen Why did I love this book?

American Empire is a magisterial book from one of the founders of the field of global history—and the person most responsible for starting me on my career path as a historian.

This doorstopper of a book by one of the preeminent historians of our age will take you on a globe-trotting journey of the American Empire. The growth of Gilded Age capitalism plays an important part within it, as do the rival European powers.

By A. G. Hopkins,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked American Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A new history of the United States that turns American exceptionalism on its head American Empire is a panoramic work of scholarship that presents a bold new global perspective on the history of the United States. Drawing on his expertise in economic history and the imperial histories of Britain and Europe, A. G. Hopkins takes readers from the colonial era to today to show how, far from diverging, the United States and Western Europe followed similar trajectories throughout this long period, and how America's dependency on Britain and Europe extended much later into the nineteenth century than previously understood. In…


Book cover of Bankers and Empire: How Wall Street Colonized the Caribbean

Marc-William Palen Why did I love this book?

Recovering histories nearly erased from the archival record is no easy task.

Hudson takes this daunting challenge on here as he traces the hidden ties binding the Gilded Age’s exploitative racial capitalist system with Wall Street’s subsequent imperial practices in the Caribbean. It’s a sordid tale that still resonates today; some of these same financial colonizers of the Caribbean still exist in the guise of Citigroup and Chase. 

By Peter James Hudson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Bankers and Empire as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From the end of the nineteenth century until the onset of the Great Depression, Wall Street embarked on a stunning, unprecedented, and often bloody period of international expansion in the Caribbean. A host of financial entities sought to control banking, trade, and finance in the region. In the process, they not only trampled local sovereignty, grappled with domestic banking regulation, and backed US imperialism-but they also set the model for bad behavior by banks, visible still today. In Bankers and Empire, Peter James Hudson tells the provocative story of this period, taking a close look at both the institutions and…


Book cover of Sugar and Civilization: American Empire and the Cultural Politics of Sweetness

Marc-William Palen Why did I love this book?

This easily digestible book is a must read for understanding the ways that the late-19th-century Sugar Trust and candy stores influenced early-20th-century imperial debates surrounding immigration and tariffs.

Merleaux’s enterprising study gets to the heart of how the American sweet tooth carved out many of the nation’s imperial cavities in the Caribbean and Asia-Pacific. 

By April Merleaux,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Sugar and Civilization as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In the weeks and months after the end of the Spanish-American War, Americans celebrated their nation's triumph by eating sugar. Each of the nation's new imperial possessions, from Puerto Rico to the Philippines, had the potential for vastly expanding sugar production. As victory parties and commemorations prominently featured candy and other sweets, Americans saw sugar as the reward for their global ambitions.

April Merleaux demonstrates that trade policies and consumer cultures are as crucial to understanding U.S. empire as military or diplomatic interventions. As the nation's sweet tooth grew, people debated tariffs, immigration, and empire, all of which hastened the…


Book cover of Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South

Marc-William Palen Why did I love this book?

Zimmerman’s groundbreaking book combines histories of labor, agriculture, and industry with histories of the German and American empires in Africa.

Black Americans like Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois are key players within this remarkable tale of how the Jim Crow South’s cotton industry and racial politics became a global export.

By Angela Elisabeth Zimmerman,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Alabama in Africa as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1901, the Tuskegee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington, sent an expedition to the German colony of Togo in West Africa, with the purpose of transforming the region into a cotton economy similar to that of the post-Reconstruction American South. Alabama in Africa explores the politics of labor, sexuality, and race behind this endeavor, and the economic, political, and intellectual links connecting Germany, Africa, and the southern United States. The cross-fertilization of histories and practices led to the emergence of a global South, reproduced social inequities on both sides of the Atlantic, and pushed the American South and the…


Explore my book 😀

The 'Conspiracy' of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846-1896

By Marc-William Palen,

Book cover of The 'Conspiracy' of Free Trade: The Anglo-American Struggle over Empire and Economic Globalisation, 1846-1896

What is my book about?

Following the Second World War, the United States would become the lead proponent of international trade liberalization. Yet for nearly a century before, American foreign trade policy was dominated by extreme economic nationalism. What brought about this pronounced ideological, political, and economic about-face? What were the repercussions for the global imperial order? 

The “Conspiracy” of Free Trade comes at these questions by exploring the controversial Anglo-American struggle over empire and economic globalization in the mid-to late-nineteenth century. Beginning in the 1840s, this conspiratorial struggle over political economy would rip apart the Republican Party, reshape the Democratic Party, and redirect Anglo-American imperial expansion for decades to come. As fate would have it, its findings now hold timely historical lessons for today’s increasingly economic nationalist order.

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Book cover of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

Kalvin Thane Author Of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

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Why am I passionate about this?

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What is my book about?

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Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?

Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.

Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

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What is this book about?

Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.

The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.

The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.

In the midst of the surging tides of war, a…


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