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Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 1865-1900. By Eric T. Love. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, c. 2004. Pp. xxii, 245. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 0-8078-5565-0; cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2900-5.)
Eric T. Love's Race over Empire: Racism and U.S. Imperialism, 18651900 is that rare book that will fundamentally change how U.S. historians approach an important topic-in this case, American imperialism in the late nineteenth century. Challenging existing scholarship, Love argues that the racist rhetoric of Social Darwinism-of "moral uplift" and the "white man's burden"-was never part of the imperialist case for annexing new territory. Just the opposite, for imperialists avoided race, correctly perceiving that placing nonwhites at the center (or anywhere near) their pro-annexation discourse would doom their cause. It was the anti-imperialists who most efficiently played the race card, torpedoing initiatives to annex Santo Domingo and early efforts to...