American History

The American History research group at the Centre for Historical Research brings together researchers whose work explores a wide variety of themes in U.S. history.

Research Group Members

Research Areas

Key strengths include:

  • Diplomatic and imperial history (especially Hawaii, Cuba, and the Philippines)
  • Naval and military history (especially the American Civil War era)
  • Economic and political history (especially late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century)
  • The history of “race” and ethnicity (especially late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century)

Selected Publications

Across the last decade the group has published in a variety of fields, including histories beyond that of the United States. Here are some of their publications relating to American History since 2010.

Adam Burns, William Howard Taft and the Philippines: A Blueprint for Empire. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press (forthcoming 2020).

Adam Burns, “Courting White Southerners: Theodore Roosevelt’s Quest for the Heart of the South,” American Nineteenth Century History, 20:1 (February 2019): 1–18.

Adam Burns, “Economic Imperialism in Cuba, 1898-2017: Hegemony and Embargo,” in: C. Grocott and J. Grady, eds., The Continuing Imperialism of Free Trade: Developments, Trends and the Role of Supranational Agents. London: Routledge, 2018.

Adam Burns, American Imperialism: The Territorial Expansion of the United States, 1783–2013. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017.

Adam Burns, “Adapting to Empire: William H. Taft, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Philippines, 1900-1908,” Comparative American Studies, 11:4 (December 2013): 418-433. 

Adam Burns, “Retentionist in Chief: William Howard Taft and the Question of Philippine Independence, 1912-1916,” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 61:2 (June 2013): 163-192.

Adam Burns, “A New Pacific Border: William H. Taft, the Philippines, and Chinese Immigration, 1898-1903,” Comparative American Studies, 9:4 (December 2011): 309-324.

Adam Burns, “Winning ‘Hearts and Minds’: American Imperial Designs of the Early Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries,” History & Policy (October 2011).

Adam Burns, “Half a Southerner: President Theodore Roosevelt, African Americans and the South,” in: S. Ricard, ed., A Companion to Theodore Roosevelt. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011.

Adam Burns, “Without Due Process: Albert E. Pillsbury and the Hoar Anti-Lynching Bill,” American Nineteenth Century History, 11:2 (June 2010): 233-252.

Howard Fuller, Review-Essay: Anna Gibson Holloway and Jonathan W. White, “Our Little Monitor”: The Greatest Invention of the Civil War (Kent: The Kent State University Press, 2018), Journal of Military History, Vol. 83:3 (July 2019): 861–68.

Howard Fuller, “The Littoral World,” Fletcher Security Review, 2:2 (August 2015): 1–6.

Howard Fuller, “From Hampton Roads to Spithead,” Naval History Magazine, 29:3 (June 2015).

Howard Fuller, Review-Essay: “Stopping at the Water’s Edge?”: James M. McPherson, War on the Waters: The Union and Confederate Navies, 1861-1865 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), Reviews in American History, 42: 3 (September 2014): 433–37.

Howard Fuller, “Iron Lion or Paper Tiger?  The Myth of British Naval Intervention in the American Civil War”, in: P. N. Stearns, ed., The American Civil War in a Global Context Richmond: Virginia Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War Commission: 2014.

Howard Fuller, “The Warrior’s Influence Abroad: The American Civil War,” International Journal of Naval History, 10:1 (October 2013).

Howard Fuller, Empire, Technology and Seapower: Royal Navy Crisis in the Age of Palmerston. London: Routledge-Frank Cass, 2013.

Howard Fuller, “Clad in Iron: Gaming Counterfactuals in the American Civil War by Sea,” Wargames Illustrated, Issue 290 (December 2011).

Howard Fuller, “‘Chilean Standoff’: Ironclad-Monitor U.S.S. Monadnock, Naval Power-Politics & the Spanish Bombardment of Valparaiso, 1866,” Naval History Magazine, 25:3 (May 2011).

Howard Fuller, “‘The absence of decisive results’: British Assessments of Union Combined Operations,” in Craig Symonds, ed., Union Combined Operations in the Civil War. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010.

Howard Fuller, Clad in Iron: The American Civil War and the Challenge of British Naval Power (Westport: Praeger/Greenwood Press, 2007; reprinted in 2010 by U.S. Naval Institute Press).