The World Colonization Made: The Racial Geography of Early American Empire

The U.S. government withheld official recognition of Liberia until 1862 (the same year that Washington recognized Haiti) because southern congressmen had opposed acknowledging that African Americans were capable of self-government. Mills's adoption of a broad perspective on colonializationism, as opposed to a parochial fixation on the ACS, pays dividends when it comes to understanding changing conceptions of race, nationhood, and empire in the antebellum United States. LAWRENCE B. A. HATTER is an associate professor in the Department of History at Washington State University.