Journal of Classical Sociology 2014, Vol. 14(2) 178–202 © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1468795X13491647 jcs.sagepub.com 491647JCS 14 2 10.1177/1468795X13491647Journal of Classical SociologyGo 2013 Corresponding author: Julian Go, Department of Sociology, Boston University, Boston, NY, USA. Email: juliango@bu.edu Beyond metrocentrism: From empire to globalism in early US sociology Julian Go Boston University, USA Abstract Existing accounts of American sociology’s founding years during the early twentieth century assume that the discipline was ‘metrocentric.’ They assume that it was only interested in processes occurring within the United States; that American sociologists fell prey to state-centrist thought; and that, therefore, contextualizing America sociology’s emergence necessitates understanding relations, events, and processes within the confines of US territorial boundaries. By contrast, this paper shows the imperial and hence global aspects of early American sociological thought. Early American sociologists were interested in imperialism and, therefore, in cross-societal, transnational, and global processes and relations. Implicitly or explicitly they approached imperialism as a process by which social groups, not least ‘races,’ interacted and conflicted. They also saw it as a route towards new global forms. Early American sociology thus articulated a sociological imagination that looked beyond American society and to the wider world. Keywords Assimilation, classical, globalization, history of sociology, imperialism, race, United States My studies of theoretical sociology long ago led me to believe that the combination of small states into larger political aggregates must continue until all the semi-civilized, barbarian, and savage communities of the world are brought under the protection of larger civilized nations. Franklin H. Giddings, preface to Democracy and Empire (1900: v) Most conventional accounts of the emergence of American disciplinary sociology in the early twentieth century share the view that the theory and research of the founding American sociologists were primarily directed at addressing matters of domestic con- cern: that is, processes and social relations within the United States. According to these accounts, sociologists examined industrialization, urbanization, immigration, or Article