When one thinks of U.S. global expansion, the Department of the Interior rarely comes to mind. Its very name declares its narrow portfolio. Yet in The Global Interior, Megan Black argues that a government organ best known for managing domestic natural resources and operating public parks has constantly supported and projected American power.
After overseeing settler colonialism in the American West, the department cultivated and exploited its image as an innocuous scientific-research and environmental-management organization in order to drive and satisfy America’s insatiable demand for raw materials: in indigenous lands, formal U.S. territories, foreign nations, oceans, and even outer space. Black’s analysis demonstrates that in a period marked by global commitments to self-determination, Interior helped the United States maintain key benefits of empire.
As other expansionist justifications—manifest destiny, hemispheric pacification, Cold War exigencies—fell by the wayside, Interior ensured that the environment itself would provide a foundational logic of American hegemony.
Awards
2019 | George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in Environmental History
2019 | Stuart L. Bernath Prize for best first book in International Relations History
2019 | W. Turrentine-Jackson Award for best first book in Western History
2019 | British Association for American Studies Prize for best book
Reviews
American Historical Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Journal of American History, Environmental History, Pacific Historical Review, Reviews in American History, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, H-Diplo, Society and Space, Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences, Western Historical Quarterly, International Journal of the History & Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine, Sehepunkte, New Books Network, Fellow Travelers Blog, LSE US Studies Centre