History Revealed: Prairie Imperialists

Prairie Imperialists: The Indian Country Origins of American Empire
with Katherine Bjork
History Revealed Series
Program Date: Thursday, October 19, 2023
Video on YouTube

In partnership with the East Side Freedom Library & Roseville Library
The Spanish-American War marked the emergence of the United States as an imperial power. It was when the United States first landed troops overseas and established governments of occupation in the Philippines, Cuba, and other formerly Spanish colonies. But such actions to extend U.S. sovereignty abroad, argues Katharine Bjork, had a precedent in earlier relations with Native nations at home. In Prairie Imperialists, Bjork traces the arc of American expansion by showing how the Army’s conquests of what its soldiers called “Indian Country” generated a repertoire of actions and understandings that structured encounters with the racial others of America’s new island territories following the War of 1898.

Katharine Bjork is Professor of History at Hamline University and author of In the Circle of Dance: Notes of an Outsider in Nepal.

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