The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Volume 2: The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913

The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913 analyzes the period between the American Civil War and World War I (1865-1913) as the formative basis for twentieth-century American world power--"The American Century" as it has become known--and examines the "Imperial Presidency" that these roots produced. The extent of U.S. power was so great that it not only transformed American society, but reshaped other societies around the globe as well, by helping fuel--and in some cases directly causing--the great revolutions of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in Mexico, Russia, China, Cuba, Hawaii, the Philippines, Panama, and Central America. The book, therefore, not only examines American history, but the history of many other areas that were dramatically affected by U.S. power as they entered the twentieth century. Between the American Civil War and the outbreak of world War I, global history was transformed by two events: the United States's rise to the status of a great world power (indeed, the world's greatest economic power) and the eruption of nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico, China, Russia, Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. The American Search for Opportunity traces the U.S. foreign policy between 1865 and 1913, linking these two historic trends by noting how the United States - usually thought of as antirevolutionary and embarked on a 'search for order' during this era - actually was a determinative force in helping to trigger these revolutions. Walter LaFeber argues that industrialization fuelled centralisation: Post-Civil War America remained a vast, unwieldy country of isolated, parochial communities, but the federal government and a new corporate capitalism now had the power to invade these areas and integrate them into an industrialization, railway-linked nation-state. The furious pace of economic growth in America attracted refugees from all parts of the world. Professor LaFeber describes and influx of immigration so enormous that it led to America's first exclusionary immigration act. In 1882, the United States passed legislation preventing all Chinese immigrant labour, skilled and unskilled, from entering the country for the next 10 years This is an elegant and concise history of American foreign relations during the Cold War era, based on the most recent American, Chinese, and Soviet literature, written from a post-Cold War perspective. All of the major foreign policy issues, including the origins of the Soviet-American conflict; the extension of the confrontation to Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere on the periphery; wars in Korea and Vietnam; crises involving the Taiwan Straits, Berlin, and Cuba; the rise and fall of detente; imperial overreach; and the critical roles of Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980s are carefully analyzed and clearly explained This volume surveys the history of United States foreign relations from 1913 to 1945, covering the presidencies of Woodrow Wilson, Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Professor Iriye first provides an overview of the international system as it evolved through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries and came to be dominated by the European nation-states. v. 1. The creation of a republican empire, 1776-1865 / Bradford Perkins v. 2. The American search for opportunity, 1865-1913 / Walter LaFeber v. 3. The globalizing of America, 1913-1945 / Akira Iriye v. 4. America in the age of Soviet power, 1945-1991 / Warren I. Cohen. Vol. 3 describes the history of the foreign relations of the United States during 1913-1945, the period of two world wars as well as of momentous changes that brought to an end the period of European domination Vol. 1 traces American foreign relations from the colonial era to the end of the Civil War, paying particular attention to the origins and development of American thought regarding international relations Vo. 2 traces the U.S. foreign policy between 1865 and 1913, linking these two historic trends by noting how the United States actually was a determinative force in helping to trigger these revolutions Vol. 4 focuses on American foreign relations during the Cold War era, based on the most recent American, Chinese, and Soviet literature, written from a post-Cold War perspective The Civil War created the beginnings of a new world for United States foreign policy, but it was another generation before that future could be realized.