Not Like US? Americans as Occupiers and Nation Builders | Harvard University

The United States has launched numerous projects of military occupation and nation-building in foreign lands since the late nineteenth century. These have been contradictory enterprises, in which Americans often sought to make other peoples more like them, while at the same time insisting on their difference. This course assesses the meanings and legacies of these projects by examining the ideas, strategies, policies, and outcomes of occupations ranging from the Philippines and Haiti early on to Japan, Germany, and Korea in mid-century to, most recently, Afghanistan and Iraq. The course focuses on American activities and ideas but also examines the responses of the occupied.