Interesting. I'm afraid my knowledge of US history is somewhat surface level. I haven't studied it in-depth the way I have ancient history or Canadian history.
So, was Spain the "Evil Empire" in the yellow press then? Actually, if you know of any good books covering the wars against Spain, especially in the Pacific theatres, I would appreciate the references.
I'm not so sure about the "dream state" - I would suspect that it holds better for regimes such as France and Belgium than for, say, England. Then again, England's empire was built by merchant corporations, and used as a dumping ground for second sons, religious minorities, and criminals. It only gradually came under the purview of the government. Certainly by the time "national will" was involved, say around 1860 or so, it was melding in with both unilinear evolutionary theory and a "civilizing" imperative. As a pure side note, I always joked that Britain built the empire to find edible food - note, if you will, that we stopped expanding once we had India fully under control.
Marc
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