9. Annexing the World: Education in the USA as Nationalist Policy in a Competitive Global Economy, 1877–1907

After the US Civil War, political leaders promoted mass education as a strategy of economic development for the defeated South and as a means of economic and political integration for the nation as a whole. At the same time, national leaders came to see education in global terms, as a system for export to colonial territories. Drawing primarily on the public record, this chapter outlines the dual significance of education as a means of national consolidation at home and as a tool of colonial intervention abroad. In the process, it highlights continuities between domestic and imperial projects, namely historical ties between education funding and resource extraction and the significance of education in mediating between the interests of major finance capital and those of ordinary citizens.