Island Empire: The Hidden Political Geography of American Expansion in the Pacific

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dc.contributor.advisorJones, Reece
dc.contributor.authorHarden, Meagan Marie
dc.contributor.departmentGeography
dc.date.accessioned2024-07-02T23:40:59Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.description.degreePh.D.
dc.embargo.liftdate2026-06-24
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/108302
dc.subjectGeography
dc.subjectAmerican imperialism
dc.subjectcompact of free association
dc.subjectislands
dc.subjectPacific Studies
dc.subjectpolitical geography
dc.titleIsland Empire: The Hidden Political Geography of American Expansion in the Pacific
dc.typeThesis
dcterms.abstractFor well over a century, the United States has claimed, occupied, and exploited islands across the world, collectively securing global military dominance while constraining Islanders’ self-determination. Despite post-World War II international norms preventing the formal expansion of the US island empire, government officials created unconventional legal and political affiliations under the rhetoric of strategic importance. Analyzing legislation, court cases, congressional hearings, government reports, and official correspondence, the first half of the dissertation contributes to the disciplines of political and legal geographies by uncovering the contours of a globe-spanning archipelago of American island imperialism. I argue that US island imperialism relies on the practice of spatial abstraction, including the erasure of place-based histories and their reduction to geopolitical strategic importance, which tethers islands to the United States. Channeled into the political and legal statuses of unincorporated territories and compacts of free association, spatial abstraction perpetuates colonial inequality while enabling island militarization.In the second half of the dissertation, I explore how Islanders have leveraged international institutions, national law, and interpersonal encounters to re-map islands, archipelagos, and the oceans that connect them according to Indigenous spatialities. I collect and analyze archived reports, correspondence, speeches, meeting minutes, formal testimonies, petitions, and Palau’s 1979 Constitution to identify assertions of island-specific, ocean-centered political sovereignty. Incorporating interviews and observations from three months of fieldwork in the Republic of Palau, I highlight fissures in military hegemony as Palauans confront the growing US military presence with uncertainty, resentment, and even refusal. By analyzing Islanders’ political agency from intimate to international scales, I show how island spatialities rooted in principles of relationality and planetary interdependence disrupt spatial abstraction and re-map islands, archipelagos, and the oceans that connect them as simultaneously voluminous, dynamic, and interdependent. By rejecting the discourse of strategic importance, this dissertation contributes to the field of Pacific Studies by analyzing how re-mapping space subverts colonial claims and unsettles the very foundations of Westphalian sovereignty.
dcterms.extent254 pages
dcterms.languageen
dcterms.publisherUniversity of Hawai'i at Manoa
dcterms.rightsAll UHM dissertations and theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission from the copyright owner.
dcterms.typeText
local.identifier.alturihttp://dissertations.umi.com/hawii:12148

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Ph.D. - Geography