The Fourth Kingdom: The Personality of American Power

Charts the founding of the American Empire. The Fourth Kingdom is the second volume in a series of books, The Personality of American Power, tracing the distinctive continuities in the American way of war and strategy-making. A handful of themes emerge: securing the continuity and legitimacy of the Anglo-American regime; grounding the use of state power in political principles and ideology; calculating security interests in a fully global geopolitical context; seeing the path to great-power status as leading to westward, transatlantic expansion; differing strategic views between the imperial frontier and the metropolis; and an ongoing contest between advocates of a "blue-water," maritime, "off-shore balancing" approach to both colonial and continental affairs and promoters of direct engagement to achieve a favorable great-power balance. Seeing the North American colonies as a developing "Fourth Kingdom" adds a new dimension to the dominant "three-kingdoms" historiography of the tumultuous Stuart and Cromwellian years. Between the founding of the Jamestown colony and the carving-out of "Penn's Woods" seven decades later, English settlers came to control the critical seaports of North America, all but excluding other European powers.

• Publication date: 2 November 2026
• Page count: 376
• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Format: Paperback
• ISBN-13: 9798855806618