United States from Eighteenth Century to Early Twenty-First Century

This book provides a new perspective on the history of the United States from the eighteenth to the middle of the twenty-first century. It brings together fifteen chapters that engage with the changing contour of the United States, its changing political culture, its internal and international politics, and provides a critique of its democracy. It focuses on the marginalized social groups – indigenous tribes, indentured labor, slaves and immigrants – to understand their role and contributions in the making of the United States. The book examines gender roles, class, race, ethnicity and movement for rights that heralded the beginning of a new political agenda, viz. mobilization of African-Americans, the Civil Rights Movement, the Feminist Movement and New Environmentalism. It also adds to the discussion on major phases of Black history – enslavement, bondage and emancipation, sharecropping and tenancy and the initiation of Black Movement, led and influenced by the political ideology of its leaders and institutions like Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and NAACP.

Providing an in-depth study and critique of American capitalism and imperialism and its impact on global environment, the book will be of interest to academics, will equips university teachers and students with new methodologies of teaching-learning and pedagogical strategies, as well as readers keen to delve into the history of the United States.

Meena Bhargava taught History at Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, India. She is a historian of medieval and early modern South Asia. Her areas of research include Mughal history, agrarian history, and land rights in eighteenth-and nineteenth century India, environmental history and history of narcotics and drugs. Her most recent publications include the co-edited volume The Early Modern in South Asia: Querying Modernity, Periodization, and History (2022).