Summary

This section encompasses the sixteenth through eighteenth chapters of Part II: The Pointillist Empire. In Chapter 16, “Synthetica,” Immerwahr argues that the U.S. was able to sacrifice its colonize and promote decolonization in part because of its increasing investment in synthetic materials. In addition to the challenges that increasing resistance from colonized peoples created, the U.S. had less overall need for raw materials, making it more advantageous to release its colonies. The technologies contributing to this decline in empire included skywave radio to screw threads, helping to produce the modern order in which “powerful countries project their influence through globalization rather than colonization” (264). Oil remained the one exception to this new world order, a raw material that could not be synthetically reproduced and that “most reliably tempted politicians back into the old logic of empire” (276).

In Chapter 17, “This is What God Hath...