The United States as a Double Empire
Second, there was the British commercial empire. This comprised all the races and territories Britain subordinated for the sake of extracting something. The British Raj in modern India and Pakistan is the quintessential example. A thin veneer of British elites ruled over masses of subject peoples. India was originally conquered and ruled by the East India Trading Company. British settlers and missionaries weren't allowed to colonize India because it might antagonize the natives and cut into profits. The Company eventually lost control, and the British government took over India's management in 1858.
The United States was born out of the conflict between these two British empires. American settlers weren't interested in the profit margins of Britain's second empire, and they declared independence and broke away when overseas commercial interests began threatening their prosperity.
America's first empire was the settler empire created as Americans moved west to fulfill their manifest destiny. It was built by the people, and the government often struggled to keep up with the frontier's rapid expansion. At roughly the same time, Russia was expanding eastward and building another vast settler empire across Eurasia. Up until World War II, America was an insular isolationist country concerned with its own frontiers and prosperity.
After World War II, Britain was financially and militarily exhausted. Their empire had become an expensive burden the United Kingdom could no longer bare. However, there were still numerous commercial interests that relied on the Empire's navy to maintain the open global economic order. The communist bloc was threatening to draw the world into its orbit, so Britain's commercial empire was inherited by the United States. America became the world's police force in order to guarantee the continuation of global trade.
Like Britain before it, contemporary America finds itself trying to balance the interests of these two empires. Both claim Washington as their capital, both claim ownership of the same governing apparatus and financial resources. Much of American history after World War II can be read as a conflict between America's competing empires. Globalization is still opposed in America's heartland, which is inhabited by the descendants of those Anglo-American settlers who conquered the continent. They see in globalization the same threat they saw in the British commercial empire encroaching on their interests.
From the grand perspective of world history, America will probably be remembered as the second half of a broader Anglo Empire that built and defined our contemporary world. Both Britain and America have ruled the same two empires, and they've both come to embody the contradictions implied in that rule.