Standardizing Empire

""Standardizing Empire tells us an extraordinary history of neoliberalism forged in the crucible of US imperial warfare at its seemingly most mundane: the shipping container, the expense report, and the paved highway. Patrick Chung has written an essential and compelling story of how contractors, laborers, and engineers mobilized and contested new modes of capitalism in the shadow of the battlefield in Korea and Vietnam. With relentless attention to archival detail, Standardizing Empire reveals--in stunning fashion--how the violence of the permanent wars of the US empire are constantly reanimated in our everyday today.""-- ""Monica Kim, author of The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History"" ""In this stunningly innovative, breakthrough work, Patrick Chung reveals the ways that US military empire in South Korea propelled capitalist globalization. Drawing on deep, meticulous research in a vast array of US and Korean sources, Standardizing Empire brilliantly explores how the United States military's infrastructures and technical standards in Cold War South Korea--projected outward by its formidable purchasing power--came to format world-spanning networks of production and trade. This book is essential reading for historians of U.S. military empire, modern Korea, US-East Asian relations, and world-capitalist integration.""-- ""Paul Kramer, author of The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines"" ""Patrick Chung's revelatory book illuminates the dark side of South Korea's economic miracle by tracing its origins to America's postwar basing empire. While the network of bases primarily served to project military power during the Cold War, Chung shows how it also generated supply chains, spurred infrastructure development, and codified production standards that not only propelled South Korea's rapid growth but also transformed the global economy--often at considerable cost to the working-class in South Korea and elsewhere. Standardizing Empire offers a compelling account of the entangled histories of US empire, modernization, and globalization.""-- ""Kornel Chang, author of A Fractured Liberation: Korea Under US Occupation""