Territorial expansion has been an American hallmark ever since the first settlers went ashore at Jamestown. Through occupation and purchase the United States expanded from sea to sea and burst the continental boundaries to stake out a formal empire as an aftermath of the war with Spain in 1898. It “fell” to the United States to administer Puerto Rico and the Philippines as colonial possessions. In the decades that followed, the United States added an informal empire of leased bases and U.S.-controlled “zones,” the most important of which was the Panama Canal Zone. With the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, however, the U.S. government sought to refashion its image from Yankee “Colossus of the North” to a hemispheric “trustee” or caretaker of the “Pax Americana”.

In September 1940, with war raging in Europe and Asia, and Great Britain fighting for its very survival against Hitler’s Germany, the United States agreed to exchange fifty aged destroyers for leased base locations in eight British colonies in the Americas. Bermuda, Newfoundland and Trinidad would host major army and navy bases; while British Guiana, St. Lucia, Antigua, Jamaica and the Bahamas would see more modest establishments. Instantly the “destroyers-for-bases” deal was headline news around the world. In a speech to Congress, Franklin Roosevelt declared the agreement to be an “epochal and far-reaching act of preparation for continental defence in the face of grave danger.” He even claimed it to be the “most important action in the reinforcement of our national defence that has been taken since the Louisiana Purchase.”

The book that is taking shape focuses on the effects of this “epochal and far-reaching” deal on the inhabitants of these eight stepping stones to empire. How did the influx of thousands of white American servicemen and construction workers effect the economic situation and wage rates? How did the United States go about removing indigenous peoples from the leased areas? Were they adequately compensated? How did the race issue play out? Did the Americans impose Jim Crow segregation as it had in the Panama Canal Zone? If not, how was race matters negotiated? Were American soldiers and sailors charged with criminal acts outside the leased areas tried in civilian courts (before non-white judges and juries in the Caribbean)? Or, were they tried by service courts? Did the American bases act as “models of modernity” as some reported or as hated symbols of colonialism as others argued? In effect, what were the varied economic, social, cultural and political effects of the “friendly invasion” of these outposts of the British Empire?