Years of peril and ambition : U.S. foreign relations, 1776-1921

779 Pages·2017·8.06 MB·English

by  Herring

The American Century and Beyond
The Oxford History of the United States
David M. Kennedy, General Editor
Robert Middlekauff
THE GLORIOUS CAUSE
The American Revolution, 1763–1789
Gordon S. wood
EMPIRE OF LIBERTY
A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815
Daniel walker Howe
wHAT HATH GOD wROUGHT
The Transformation of America, 1815–1848
James M. McPherson
BATTLE CRY OF FREEDOM
The Civil War Era
David M. Kennedy
FREEDOM FROM FEAR
The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945
James T. Patterson
GRAND EXPECTATIONS
The United States, 1945–1974
James T. Patterson
RESTLESS GIANT
The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore
George C. Herring
FROM COLONY TO SUPERPOwER
U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776
The AmericAn
cenTury And
Beyond
U.S. Foreign Relations,
1893–2015
GEORGE C. HERRING
1
1
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First published as an Oxford University Press paperback in 2011
Two-volume second edition published in 2017
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Names: Herring, George C., 1936- author.
Title: From colony to superpower / George C. Herring.
Description: Second edition. | New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. |
Revision of paperback edition published in 2011. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016025664| ISBN 9780190212469 (vol. 1 : pbk.) | ISBN
9780190212476 (vol. 2 : pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: United States—Foreign relations.
Classification: LCC E183.7 .H44 2017 | DDC 327.73—dc23 LC record available at
https://lccn.loc.gov/2016025664
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Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
Acknowledgments
My thanks, once again, to Susan Ferber of Oxford University Press for
guiding the parent volume, From Colony to Superpower, to completion.
Susan also developed the idea for this split edition and got the project
under way. Tim Bent took it over last year, offered insightful comments
on the new material, and helped get these volumes ready for publication.
Alyssa O’Connell managed with admirable efficiency the acquisition of
permissions for the images and took care of numerous other tasks that go
with the production of a book. I enjoyed working with her, and greatly
appreciate her help. Thomas Finnegan skillfully copyedited the new ma-
terial, and Amy whitmer patiently and with good humor guided this
Luddite through the process of electronic editing. Steve wrinn, former
director of the University Press of Kentucky, read the last chapter of The
American Century—and Beyond with his usual keen editorial eye and of-
fered numerous suggestions on style and substance. Alan Lowe, at the
time director of the George w. Bush Library, and his colleague Eric
McGrory, acquired for me with remarkable dispatch one of my favorite
photographs.
As General Editor of the Oxford History of the United States series,
David M. Kennedy rescued me several times during the production of
From Colony to Superpower and these two volumes. He helped establish
the framework for this split edition and pushed me on several very impor-
tant features until I got them right. David has no peer as an editor.
My wife, Dottie Leathers, has continued to support my research and
writing long after she might have asked whether I couldn’t find something
else to do. These volumes, like From Colony to Superpower, are dedicated
to her with my love.

contents
Preface, ix
1. The war of 1898, the New Empire, and the Dawn of the
American Century, 1893–1901, 1
2. “Bursting with Good Intentions”: The United States in world
Affairs, 1901–1913, 38
3. “A New Age”: wilson, the Great war, and the Quest for a
New world Order, 1913–1921, 79
4. Involvement without Commitment, 1921–1931, 137
5. The Great Transformation: Depression, Isolationism, and war,
1931–1941, 185
6. “Five Continents and Seven Seas”: world war II and the
Rise of American Globalism, 1941–1945, 239
7. “A Novel Burden Far from Our Shores”: Truman, the Cold war,
and the Revolution in U.S. Foreign Policy, 1945–1953, 295
8. Coexistence and Crises, 1953–1961, 352
9. Gulliver’s Troubles: Kennedy, Johnson, and the Limits of Power,
1961–1968, 403
10. Nixon, Kissinger, and the End of the Postwar Era, 1969–1974, 461
11. Foreign Policy in an Age of Dissonance, 1974–1981, 511
12. “A Unique and Extraordinary Moment”: Gorbachev, Reagan,
Bush, and the End of the Cold war, 1981–1991, 562
13. “The Strength of a Giant”: America as Hyperpower, 1992–2007, 618
14. 9/11 and the Post-American world, 2001–2014, 640
Bibliographical Essay, 695
Index, 719

Preface
In the February 17, 1941, issue of Life magazine, publisher Henry Luce
passionately appealed to his readers to create the “first great American
Century.” with the world at war, he insisted, the United States must take
up “an internationalism of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
It must become “the Good Samaritan of the entire world” by fulfilling its
“manifest duty” to feed the “hungry and destitute” and the “powerhouse”
from which its ideals would “spread across the world.” The United States
itself might not endure, the journalist seemed ominously to warn, unless
its ideals of freedom, equality of opportunity, and free enterprise took root
everywhere.1 Luce’s words drew upon the Founders’ vision of a new world
order based on American principles. They echoed woodrow wilson’s
challenge to Americans to assume the burdens of world leadership. In the
years that followed, the United States heeded Luce’s call. Although U.S.
leaders acted more often as defenders of their nation’s interests than Good
Samaritans and other peoples only selectively if at all embraced American
ways, the term “American Century” stuck and came to be applied to the
entire twentieth century.
This volume recounts the rise of the United States as a global power
from the turbulent 1890s, the dawn of the American Century, to a com-
manding position in world politics and economics at the turn of the
twenty-first century. The story begins in an age of rampant nationalism,
chauvinism, and imperialism when America burst on the world scene as
an economic giant, pummeled Spain in a short war, and acquired an
overseas empire. It covers the initiatives taken by Theodore Roosevelt and
1. Henry R, Luce, “The American Century,” reprinted in Diplomatic History 23 (Spring
1999), 159–171.