Synopses & Reviews
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.
Synopsis
Shatters the conventional belief that American foreign policy was borne out of a reaction to Pearl Harbor, revealing instead a rich history of debates over the direction of American international relations, many of which persist to this day.
Table of 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
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 Four. The Travails of Union
12. Great and Fearfully Growing
13. The Title Page
14. Constitutional Disorder
15. Decentralizing Tendencies
16. The Hope of the World
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 War, Causes of 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