The United States and China have pursued strikingly similar imperial strategies across centuries - seizing territory, deploying legal frameworks to justify expansion, and using economic leverage to control foreign resources. A new analysis by a Princeton historian has exposed the uncomfortable parallels that both powers prefer to ignore.

Linda Colley, professor of history at Princeton University, has drawn the comparison in a sweeping review for the Financial Times, "Hvylya" reports. American imperialism "has taken multiple forms, and we should not focus only on its territorial conquests," Colley observed. But neither should those conquests be ignored - from the systematic seizure of Native American lands to the annexation of Mexican territory and overseas possessions like Hawaii.

Today, Washington's imperial impulse has not disappeared. Current US leadership has been eyeing Greenland and contemplating Cuba - a pattern that stretches back to the republic's founding. China's trajectory runs in parallel: its present-day borders are the product of centuries of conquest and coercion, and Taiwan remains a potential next target.

The parallels extend beyond territory. China's energetic pursuit of "informal" empire - not seizing other countries' land outright but gaining control over their infrastructure and resources, particularly in Africa - is hardly a novelty. At the height of British imperial power, London operated the same model across South America. The toolkit of empire, Colley noted, remains remarkably consistent across centuries and civilizations regardless of which power wields it.

Both states benefit from the same optical illusion. Maritime empires built by Western European powers appear openly unnatural - distant colonies connected by warships and trade routes. Overland empires, however, look like the organic result of natural growth and manifest destiny. This is precisely why most Americans and an even greater share of Chinese citizens reject the idea that they live in an empire. A 2023 survey found only 24 full democracies among the world's 190-plus sovereign states, with just six outside the West.

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