ABSTRACT
Empire is a mode of governing where one state or society has political sovereignty over another. Empire can be achieved through blunt instruments such as brute military force, or more subtle means, such as legal procedures, “benevolent” social colonizing missions, or economic threat or pressure. The contact zone was a sexualized one, established and confirmed over centuries. This long history is crucial to understanding how modern conceptualizations of empire draw from this brutal archive. The legacies of the United States’ formal and informal experiments in empire shaped the kinds of encounters it would have as it further consolidated its position as a superpower in the middle of the 1900s. The Vietnam War and the so-called War Against Terror stand out as particularly crucial moments in the modern history of sexual violence and US empire. As a war the nation would rather forget, Vietnam is a metaphor for a history of how sexual brutality and US empire are inextricable partners.
