Hopkins challenges conventional accounts of the place of the United States in the international order during the last three centuries. From a Western imperial system since the attainment of independence from Britain, through the end of formal colonial control of Pacific and Caribbean territories in the mid-20th century, Hopkins delineates the U.S. arc of empire to aspiring hegemon showing us how power was more circumscribed than is conventionally supposed.

Antony G. Hopkins is known for his extensive work on the history of Africa, empires, and globalization. He has been an editor of both the Journal of African History and the Economic History Review. His principal works include An Economic History of West Africa (1973), and, with Peter Cain, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (1993), which won the Forkosch Prize awarded by the American Historical Association in 1995 and is considered to be one of the most influential interpretations of British imperial expansion advanced in the last half century. His most recent work is a study of the United States written from the perspective of imperial history, entitled American Empire: A Global History (2017).