Guano imperialism marked the first major commodity rush into the Pacific. Between 1850 and 1900, the United States claimed over a hundred islands across the world through the Guano Act of 1856. Why did the United States develop a guano empire? Most scholarly attention focuses on state-led explanations for guano imperialism, like the influence of American farmers and naval lobbies on Congress. By contrast, this chapter presents evidence that entrepreneurs led the way into the Pacific. A sudden rise in guano prices led US entrepreneurs to search for guano and threats to their interests from foreign competitors led them to search for government protection.

This chapter focuses on the specific role of social movements and NGOs in energy policy-making in the CEE region. This is structured through a series of case studies that highlight contemporary energy policy issues, specifically with relation to energy pricing, issues of equity and energy poverty, nuclear energy, shale gas and renewable energy. The chapter examines how these issues are framed, justified and legitimised, and the extent of broader societal participation and support. To provide context this chapter considers the developing role of civil society in the region, including legacies of socialism, the historical and contemporary role for societal input into general policy-making, changes in state-civil society relations and the development of NGOs and interest groups and their influence on climate and energy policy. It studies these issues in four sub-sections: energy poverty, the shale gas debate and the role of opposition on environmental grounds, nuclear energy and public participation, and local and community energy initiatives.

This chapter focuses on a general overview of the development of energy and climate policy within EU and CEE and thus provides basis for further discussion on the trade-off between these two policies within the book. It outlines the energy and climate objectives of the region and the EU, and policies developed to achieve these, as well as trends and statistics demonstrating progress towards these. As both policies are crucial for the transition towards a decarbonised economy, this empirical chapter paves the way for further analysis in the book and provides a general overview of the situation within the EU and the CEE region whilst embedding them in the context of global energy transitions.

This chapter presents the conceptual framework of the book that builds upon several strands of literature: socio-technical systems, institutional and political change, and securitisation. Drawn from existing literature the authors argue that several key factors account for national climate and energy policies, and explain the extent of the region’s climate and energy policy homogeneity and heterogeneity. Such an approach enables the book to identify the differences between individual CEE countries – for instance, the role of ideas can be used to describe the different understandings of what constitutes energy security issues, and the solutions to these. Some but certainly not all countries in the region securitise this issue (e.g., Lithuania and Poland) and frame energy security as a national security challenge, highlighting the foreign policy implications of climate and energy policy and influencing both domestic and EU policy choices.

This chapter provides an entrepreneur-led theory of American early Pacific imperialism. The central argument is that changes in commodity prices provided incentives for American imperialism. It outlines how price changes encourage imperialism through a sequence of three mechanisms: price, threat, and lobbying. The price mechanism posits that commodity rushes led American entrepreneurs to relocate overseas. The threat mechanism describes the turn from entrepreneurs into lobbyists. The lobbying mechanism describes how entrepreneurs built support for their imperial schemes. In making these arguments, the chapter highlights the structural differences between American and European empires in the mid-nineteenth century by drawing comparisons to economic theories developed to explain European empires.

Why did the United States establish an early American Empire in the Pacific (1856-1898)? This chapter first discusses the conventional wisdom that focuses on the role of naval power, trade with China, and missionaries. It shows that these explanations are unable to explain patterns of American imperialism in the Pacific. It then introduces a theory of entrepreneurs and highlights the contributions that an entrepreneurial theory makes to International Relations scholarship, including to theories of empire, territorial expansion, and contemporary struggles for recognition for indigenous peoples in the Asia-Pacific.