Union, Nation, or Empire: The American Debate over International Relations, 1789-1941 (American Political Thought (University Press of Kansas))

Most overviews of American history depict an isolationist country finally dragged kicking and screaming onto the world stage by the attack on Pearl Harbor. David Hendrickson shows that Americans instead conducted often-raucous debates over international relations in the long epoch customarily seen as isolationist-debates that form the ideological origins of today's foreign policy arguments. Union, Nation, or Empire is a sequel to Hendrickson's acclaimed Peace Pact , in which he identified a "unionist paradigm" that defined America's political understanding in 1787. His new book examines how that paradigm was transformed under the impact of the great wars that followed. Through skillfully drawn portraits of American statesmen, from Hamilton and Jefferson to Wilson and the two Roosevelts, Hendrickson reveals "union, nation, and empire" as fundamental categories of political discourse that have shaped our engagement with the world since 1776. Hendrickson argues that the ongoing debate over union, nation, and empire in American history encompasses and illuminates the great questions of international relations—such as whether democracies are as prone to war as monarchies, whether trade promotes peace, or whether empire is compatible with free institutions. Setting these debates in the context of historical events, from the birth of our federal government to America's entry into World War II, he shows the significance of the federal union in our history and demonstrates that internationalism has deep roots in America's past. His assessment of the unionist tradition, in counterpoint to rival ideologies of nationalism and imperialism, includes new insights into the causes of the Civil War and shows how after that conflict the building blocks of the original paradigm were reconstructed to shape the internationalist persuasion in the twentieth century. Deftly combining intellectual, constitutional, and diplomatic history, this gracefully written work revives the compelling rhetoric of yesterday's statesmen to offer readers a lucid narrative of American international thought. It challenges accepted interpretations of our role in the world as it restores the federal union to its proper place in the understanding of American statecraft. Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Part One. Introduction 1. The Problem and Its Modes 2. American Internationalism 3. Imperialism and Nationalism Part Two. The Age of Revolution and War 4. The Rival Systems of Hamilton and Jefferson 5. The Causes of War 6. Louisiana! 7. Balances of Power 16. The Hope of the World Part Four. The Travails of the Union 12. Great and Fearfully Growing 13. The Title Page 14. Constitutional Disorder 15. Decentralizing Tendencies Part Three. A Rage for Federative Systems 8. The Confederation of Europe 9. New World and Old World 10. To the Panama Congress 11. Into the Deep Freeze Part Five. Empire and Its Discontents 17. Reds and Whites 18. The Removal of the Cherokee 19. Annexation of Texas and War with Mexico 20. The Great Debate of 1848 21. Intervention for Nonintervention: The Kossuth Tour Part Six. Into the Maelstrom 22. Invitation to a Beheading 23.Causes of the War, Causes of the Peace 24. D.I.V.O.R.C.E. 25. The Tragedy of Civil War Part Seven. "At Last We Are a Nation" 26. The New Nation 27. A New Birth of Freedom? 28. “Free Security ” and “Imperial Understretch" 29. A World of Its Own 30. The Unionist Paradigm Revisited Part Eight. A Commission from God 31. The New Nationalism and the Spanish War 32. Imperialism and the Conquest of the Philippines 33. Informal Empire and the Protection of Nationals 34. Seward and the New Imperialism Part Nine. The New Internationalism Comes and Goes 35. Before the Deluge 36. “Great Utterance" and Madisonian Moment 37. Safe for Democracy 38. The Liberal Peace Program Goes to Paris 39. The Great Debate of 1919 Part Ten. The Crisis of the Old Order 40. Nationalism, Internationalism, and Imperialism in the 1920s 41. The Great Depression and Economic Nationalism 42. Isolation and Neutrality 43. The Final Reckoning Short Titles and Selected Bibliography Notes Index Пустая страница This well-researched and stimulating book makes an important addition to the growing literature that interprets U.S. foreign policy from a historical perspective. Although his account ends with the United States' entry into World War II, Hendrickson seeks to demonstrate the relevance of what came before the war to what came next -- in the Cold War and beyond. He argues, convincingly, that the ideas Americans used to understand the twentieth-century world had a long history in domestic political debate. Hendrickson's greatest contribution is to use the recurring debates over the nature of the union to examine American ideas about the broader international system. It was the depth and sophistication of Americans' understanding of relations between the American states, Hendrickson argues, that prepared the United States for its global role post-1945. There are problems with the argument, and not everyone will agree that the facts fit his framework as tightly as he maintains; overall, however, Hendrickson has written a book that no serious student of the United States' political tradition can afford to ignore