ESCAPING THE INTELLECTUAL TRAP OF EMPIRE

According to Maurer, the United States eventually escaped the trap only when European governments innovated better mechanisms for resolving disputes with the Third World. The bulk of Maurer's book focuses on the early twentieth century, when the United States repeatedly intervened in Caribbean nations to stabilize their economic and political systems, mostly without success. Perhaps it's the opposite: a story of how, after empires were oblit- erated, nations learned to manage the volatile financial relations created by the Industrial Revolution, gradually opting for arbitration to resolve disputes.