University of New England

Paul Burlin, Ph.D.
Professor of History

New Book:
Imperial Maine and Hawai'i: Interpretative Essays in the History of Nineteenth Century American Expansion 
(2006, Lexington Books, website)

I have been interested in American imperialism ever since I spent two years in the Peace Corps on the island of Yap in Micronesia.  Although a wonderful, two-year  personal experience of living in a very different culture, American policy toward the region, as well as the impact of my involvement there as a teacher of English and exporter of American values, raised troubling questions for me.

Why was the United States involved in Micronesia?  What was the purpose and impact of teaching English to the people there? Was a capitalist political economy I was helping to impose really an “improvement” over traditional Micronesian ways? What was being gained by the people of the islands and what was being lost? What is the nature of the “good life,” after all?

Questions such as these surfaced many times after I had returned from Micronesia and taken up a career in public administration.  Eventually I decided to leave that type of work to return to graduate school to study American foreign policy in order to come to grips with some of the issues I had confronted personally as an agent of what might be called “soft” imperialism.

Both my dissertation and subsequent scholarly work have wrestled with many of the questions that first raised their head during my mid-Pacific sojourn so many years ago.

Imperial Maine and Hawai’i is the latest product of that extended intellectual journey. What I have attempted to do in this book is to use the myriad connections between Maine and Hawai’i in the 19th century to raise and analyze a variety of questions and issues regarding American posture in the world more generally. In a sense, the book is not really about Maine or Hawai’i, but about what they and their connections might suggest about the United States as an imperial power.

More information on Imperial Maine and Hawai'i


Annexation ceremony August 12, 1898