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Foundations of the American Century: The Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations in the Rise of American Power
Inderjeet Parmar reveals the complex interrelations, shared mindsets, and collaborative efforts of influential public and private organizations in the building of American hegemony. Focusing on the involvement of the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations in U.S. foreign affairs, Parmar traces the transformation of America from an "isolationist" nation into the world's only superpower, all in the name of benevolent stewardship.
Parmar begins in the 1920s with the establishment of these foundations and their system of top-down, elitist, scientific giving, which focused more on managing social, political, and economic change than on solving modern society's structural problems. Consulting rare documents and other archival materials, he recounts how the American intellectuals, academics, and policy makers affiliated with these organizations institutionalized such elitism, which then bled into the machinery of U.S. foreign policy and became regarded as the essence of modernity.
America hoped to replace Britain in the role of global hegemon and created the necessary political, ideological, military, and institutional capacity to do so, yet far from being objective, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations often advanced U.S. interests at the expense of other nations. Incorporating case studies of American philanthropy in Nigeria, Chile, and Indonesia, Parmar boldly exposes the knowledge networks underwriting American dominance in the twentieth century.
Parmar begins in the 1920s with the establishment of these foundations and their system of top-down, elitist, scientific giving, which focused more on managing social, political, and economic change than on solving modern society's structural problems. Consulting rare documents and other archival materials, he recounts how the American intellectuals, academics, and policy makers affiliated with these organizations institutionalized such elitism, which then bled into the machinery of U.S. foreign policy and became regarded as the essence of modernity.
America hoped to replace Britain in the role of global hegemon and created the necessary political, ideological, military, and institutional capacity to do so, yet far from being objective, the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations often advanced U.S. interests at the expense of other nations. Incorporating case studies of American philanthropy in Nigeria, Chile, and Indonesia, Parmar boldly exposes the knowledge networks underwriting American dominance in the twentieth century.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 3, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 6, 2016
In so many ways Parmar's study is revelatory. While the story of how the University of Chicago's economics department participated in the take over of Chile in 1973 is well known and documented, it is by no means an isolated case. Parmar's book concretises so much which I had suspected about American academia and its role in America's imperialism. In order to provide solid examples about how American researchers and various academic associations pave the way for American empire, Parmar gives two solid case studies (in addition to Chile): Indonesia and Nigeria. It is the Indonesia case that is the most powerful chapter in the book as well as the most sinister. It's quite appalling to learn how American academics, principally funded by Ford, laid the groundwork by collecting sociological data on Indonesians, village-by-village, and trained amenable Indonesia social scientists at universities like Cornell, to take over the country.
What's most critical about this book, in the end, is to understand the tangible relationship between soft power and hard, military power. Because although Parmar only includes three countries in his case study, as he aptly points out in the conclusion, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
What's most critical about this book, in the end, is to understand the tangible relationship between soft power and hard, military power. Because although Parmar only includes three countries in his case study, as he aptly points out in the conclusion, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
September 14, 2012
Foundations of the American Century offers the first comprehensive monographic assessment of the relationship between US foreign policy and the major American philanthropic Foundations, specifically the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Carnegie Corporation. It covers a broad period from the Foundations’ early efforts to combat US isolationist politics during the interwar years, up to their role in promoting Democratic Peace Theory as the master foreign policy concept of the post-Cold War period. The heart of the book, however, lies in four Cold War-era case studies that treat the role of the Foundations in the funding of a series of Area Studies programs. In a methodologically original approach, these chapters not only discuss the Foundations’ role in funding the creation of American Studies, Asian Studies, African Studies, and Latin America Studies across the United State, but also examine how these networks were extended into and affected local politics in Indonesia, Nigeria, and Chile during political crises that afflicted these countries from the mid-1960s through the mid-1970s. Parmar finds that the Foundations consistently funded centrist, liberal scholarship that was ultimately ill-equipped to confront (if not downright sympathetic toward) the authoritarian turns that each of these countries would take in these years.
Parmar’s broader assessment of the historical function of the Foundations encompasses two interrelated arguments. The first is that despite an avowed purpose of promoting “nonpolitical,” “scientific,” “non-ideological” (5) research geared at “improving the quality of life of the people” (13), the primary and most important function of the Foundations has been to create at first national and then global networks of scholars broadly sympathetic to what Parmar calls “Progressive-era state-building for globalist ends” (257), and connecting them in direct and indirect ways to the American foreign policy establishment (24). The Foundations funded the creation of such networks both within and across American universities, and eventually abroad as well. While inclusive of both mainstream conservatives and liberals, the Foundations generally abjured from funding scholars who advanced Marxist, socialist, or more generally Third Worldist points of view. The impact of this bias was hardly neutral: as a critical source of research funding, the Foundations functioned as soft gatekeepers of opportunities for professional academic advancement, thus continuously filtering for scholars who shared their liberal internationalism. So much for the Foundations’ being nonpolitical, scientific, and non-ideological: to Parmar, the Foundations have served as little more than a vehicles for corporate elites to promote a veiled form of intellectual and cultural imperialism.
The second meta-argument Parmar proposes is that the Foundations were, in essence, the “soft power” (33, 244) arm of the (unitary) American state’s foreign policy apparatus. The notion that the Foundations have even relative autonomy from the state is, according to Parmar, a “fiction” (5, 24); rather, “they have an organic unity with the state and the rest of the Establishment, born of a shared worldview” (260). This shared worldview encompasses not only the idea that the United States is a uniquely benign world historical force, but also that “market democracy” (254) is the specific form in which that force can and should be realized. In making this argument, Parmar uncritically replays charges that various New Leftists and Marxists leveled against the Foundations during early 1970s — charges which themselves are in sore need of historicization. Specifically, Parmar exaggerates the “objective” (221) unity of the Establishment itself, as well as the strategic coherence of American foreign policy, both during and after the Cold War. Any theory that collapses the policy differences between intellectuals as diverse as Tony Judt, Richard Haass, John Mearshimer, William Kristol, and Henry Kissinger (246) is painting with a very broad brush indeed. (To Parmar’s credit, however, he is honest enough with his presentation of his evidence that he often provides clear examples that contradict his larger theoretical frame. For example, he documents the Ford Foundation’s horror at the 1973 CIA-facilitated coup in Chile – a coup sponsored, in other words, by the very Establishment that the Ford Foundation is supposedly “objectively” at one with.) In the end, despite being freighted with this clunky “neo-Gramscian” theoretical framework, Foundations of the American Century remains the most thorough account to date of the historical role and function of US philanthropic Foundations during the twentieth century.
Parmar’s broader assessment of the historical function of the Foundations encompasses two interrelated arguments. The first is that despite an avowed purpose of promoting “nonpolitical,” “scientific,” “non-ideological” (5) research geared at “improving the quality of life of the people” (13), the primary and most important function of the Foundations has been to create at first national and then global networks of scholars broadly sympathetic to what Parmar calls “Progressive-era state-building for globalist ends” (257), and connecting them in direct and indirect ways to the American foreign policy establishment (24). The Foundations funded the creation of such networks both within and across American universities, and eventually abroad as well. While inclusive of both mainstream conservatives and liberals, the Foundations generally abjured from funding scholars who advanced Marxist, socialist, or more generally Third Worldist points of view. The impact of this bias was hardly neutral: as a critical source of research funding, the Foundations functioned as soft gatekeepers of opportunities for professional academic advancement, thus continuously filtering for scholars who shared their liberal internationalism. So much for the Foundations’ being nonpolitical, scientific, and non-ideological: to Parmar, the Foundations have served as little more than a vehicles for corporate elites to promote a veiled form of intellectual and cultural imperialism.
The second meta-argument Parmar proposes is that the Foundations were, in essence, the “soft power” (33, 244) arm of the (unitary) American state’s foreign policy apparatus. The notion that the Foundations have even relative autonomy from the state is, according to Parmar, a “fiction” (5, 24); rather, “they have an organic unity with the state and the rest of the Establishment, born of a shared worldview” (260). This shared worldview encompasses not only the idea that the United States is a uniquely benign world historical force, but also that “market democracy” (254) is the specific form in which that force can and should be realized. In making this argument, Parmar uncritically replays charges that various New Leftists and Marxists leveled against the Foundations during early 1970s — charges which themselves are in sore need of historicization. Specifically, Parmar exaggerates the “objective” (221) unity of the Establishment itself, as well as the strategic coherence of American foreign policy, both during and after the Cold War. Any theory that collapses the policy differences between intellectuals as diverse as Tony Judt, Richard Haass, John Mearshimer, William Kristol, and Henry Kissinger (246) is painting with a very broad brush indeed. (To Parmar’s credit, however, he is honest enough with his presentation of his evidence that he often provides clear examples that contradict his larger theoretical frame. For example, he documents the Ford Foundation’s horror at the 1973 CIA-facilitated coup in Chile – a coup sponsored, in other words, by the very Establishment that the Ford Foundation is supposedly “objectively” at one with.) In the end, despite being freighted with this clunky “neo-Gramscian” theoretical framework, Foundations of the American Century remains the most thorough account to date of the historical role and function of US philanthropic Foundations during the twentieth century.
April 22, 2022
ترجمه فارسی کتاب را به ترجمه محمدمعماریان و انتشارات امیرکبیر خواندم. رویکرد اصلی کتاب بر نقش سه بنیاد فورد، کارنگی و راکفلر متمرکز شده و اینکه قدرت نهادی ایالات متحده و این بنیادها همگرایی حدود یک قرن دارند از این نظر دولت امریکا را به یک مافیا شبیه میکند که در راس آن پدرخواندههای این بنیادها قرار گرفتهاند
October 17, 2017
A solid work of critical historical analysis from a Gramscian perspective, it reveals philanthropic foundations' (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford--with reference to some others) pattern of implicit collaboration in the U.S. foreign policy establishment's hegemonic agenda since the 1920s.
November 13, 2025
Inderjeet Parmar’s Foundations of the American Century (2012) represents one of the most comprehensive and incisive studies of the role played by private philanthropic foundations in shaping twentieth-century American power. Bridging the fields of international relations, intellectual history, and political sociology, Parmar offers a penetrating critique of how ostensibly non-governmental organizations—the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller Foundations—functioned as instruments of U.S. elite influence and ideological hegemony. Through detailed archival research and a theoretically informed framework, the book argues that these philanthropic institutions were not neutral benefactors but key agents in the construction and maintenance of an “American Century,” both domestically and globally.
At the heart of Parmar’s thesis lies a redefinition of philanthropy as an instrument of power. Rather than viewing foundations as altruistic or apolitical entities, Parmar situates them within the broader project of American liberal internationalism and elite governance. He contends that the major foundations have historically operated as “semi-official” arms of the U.S. state, complementing governmental diplomacy, funding knowledge production, and disseminating ideologies aligned with U.S. strategic interests. Through their sponsorship of academic research, policy think tanks, and cultural exchange programs, these institutions helped forge intellectual and institutional infrastructures that underpinned America’s global leadership in the twentieth century.
The book’s structure traces the evolution of the three foundations from their early twentieth-century origins to the post–World War II consolidation of American hegemony. Parmar demonstrates that the Rockefeller Foundation’s early focus on public health and scientific research was closely tied to U.S. commercial expansion and foreign policy ambitions. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, meanwhile, advanced an internationalist agenda that served to rationalize and legitimize U.S. leadership in world affairs. The Ford Foundation, established later, became the paradigmatic Cold War institution—promoting modernization theory, development economics, and the diffusion of liberal democratic values as bulwarks against communism.
Parmar’s methodological approach combines Gramscian theory with elite network analysis. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, he interprets the foundations as vehicles for the diffusion of a liberal-capitalist worldview—a “soft power” apparatus that cultivated consent among intellectuals, policymakers, and foreign elites. His analysis reveals intricate linkages between foundation executives, government officials, corporate leaders, and academic institutions. By financing area studies programs, international relations scholarship, and transnational policy forums, the foundations effectively constructed a global epistemic community committed to the ideals of U.S.-led liberal order. In this sense, Parmar’s work challenges both realist and pluralist paradigms in international relations, offering instead a neo-Gramscian reading of American power as a complex interplay of material, institutional, and ideological forces.
A significant contribution of Foundations of the American Century lies in its empirical richness. Parmar’s extensive archival research—drawing on foundation records, government documents, and personal correspondence—demonstrates how philanthropic funding decisions were shaped by and in turn reinforced U.S. geopolitical objectives. He meticulously reconstructs networks linking foundations to key policymakers such as Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and John J. McCloy, showing how these elite figures moved seamlessly between foundation boards, government service, and corporate leadership. This “revolving door” underscores the permeability of boundaries between private philanthropy and public policy, and the continuity of elite worldviews across institutional contexts.
Parmar’s analysis also engages with the intellectual consequences of foundation activity. He argues that the foundations’ sponsorship of the social sciences and area studies during the Cold War shaped the epistemological contours of American academic thought. By privileging modernization theory, pluralist democracy, and incremental reform, foundation-backed research marginalized alternative paradigms—particularly Marxist, postcolonial, and critical perspectives. Thus, foundations contributed not only to the material expansion of U.S. influence but also to the ideological domestication of global knowledge production. This dimension of Parmar’s argument situates the book within a critical tradition of scholarship on the “knowledge-power nexus,” alongside works by Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Cox.
While Parmar’s critique is forceful and meticulously substantiated, some scholars have questioned whether his portrayal of the foundations allows sufficient space for contingency or internal dissent. At times, the narrative risks overstating coherence within the philanthropic sector, which has historically been marked by tensions between technocratic liberalism and reformist idealism. Yet, even acknowledging this complexity, Parmar persuasively demonstrates that the aggregate effect of philanthropic activity was to reinforce rather than challenge U.S. global dominance. His argument, moreover, extends beyond the historical case studies to illuminate the broader dynamics of liberal hegemony in the contemporary international order.
In intellectual and historiographical terms, Foundations of the American Century represents both a synthesis and a refinement of earlier critical approaches to elite power. It extends C. Wright Mills’s analysis of the “power elite” and William Domhoff’s research on ruling-class cohesion into the transnational realm, while integrating the insights of Gramscian international relations theory. Parmar’s achievement lies in showing that the “American Century” was not merely a geopolitical construct but also a philanthropic and epistemological one—sustained by institutions that blurred the lines between knowledge, ideology, and governance.
Foundations of the American Century is a work of exceptional analytical depth and historical significance. It reorients the study of U.S. hegemony by revealing the hidden architecture of private power that underpinned American global leadership. Parmar’s synthesis of empirical investigation and critical theory offers a compelling model for understanding how ideas, institutions, and elites collaborate in the production of world order. The book stands as a major contribution to the sociology of elites, the history of U.S. foreign policy, and the critical study of transnational governance—an indispensable text for scholars seeking to understand the ideological and institutional foundations of the modern American imperium.
GPT
At the heart of Parmar’s thesis lies a redefinition of philanthropy as an instrument of power. Rather than viewing foundations as altruistic or apolitical entities, Parmar situates them within the broader project of American liberal internationalism and elite governance. He contends that the major foundations have historically operated as “semi-official” arms of the U.S. state, complementing governmental diplomacy, funding knowledge production, and disseminating ideologies aligned with U.S. strategic interests. Through their sponsorship of academic research, policy think tanks, and cultural exchange programs, these institutions helped forge intellectual and institutional infrastructures that underpinned America’s global leadership in the twentieth century.
The book’s structure traces the evolution of the three foundations from their early twentieth-century origins to the post–World War II consolidation of American hegemony. Parmar demonstrates that the Rockefeller Foundation’s early focus on public health and scientific research was closely tied to U.S. commercial expansion and foreign policy ambitions. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, meanwhile, advanced an internationalist agenda that served to rationalize and legitimize U.S. leadership in world affairs. The Ford Foundation, established later, became the paradigmatic Cold War institution—promoting modernization theory, development economics, and the diffusion of liberal democratic values as bulwarks against communism.
Parmar’s methodological approach combines Gramscian theory with elite network analysis. Drawing on Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, he interprets the foundations as vehicles for the diffusion of a liberal-capitalist worldview—a “soft power” apparatus that cultivated consent among intellectuals, policymakers, and foreign elites. His analysis reveals intricate linkages between foundation executives, government officials, corporate leaders, and academic institutions. By financing area studies programs, international relations scholarship, and transnational policy forums, the foundations effectively constructed a global epistemic community committed to the ideals of U.S.-led liberal order. In this sense, Parmar’s work challenges both realist and pluralist paradigms in international relations, offering instead a neo-Gramscian reading of American power as a complex interplay of material, institutional, and ideological forces.
A significant contribution of Foundations of the American Century lies in its empirical richness. Parmar’s extensive archival research—drawing on foundation records, government documents, and personal correspondence—demonstrates how philanthropic funding decisions were shaped by and in turn reinforced U.S. geopolitical objectives. He meticulously reconstructs networks linking foundations to key policymakers such as Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and John J. McCloy, showing how these elite figures moved seamlessly between foundation boards, government service, and corporate leadership. This “revolving door” underscores the permeability of boundaries between private philanthropy and public policy, and the continuity of elite worldviews across institutional contexts.
Parmar’s analysis also engages with the intellectual consequences of foundation activity. He argues that the foundations’ sponsorship of the social sciences and area studies during the Cold War shaped the epistemological contours of American academic thought. By privileging modernization theory, pluralist democracy, and incremental reform, foundation-backed research marginalized alternative paradigms—particularly Marxist, postcolonial, and critical perspectives. Thus, foundations contributed not only to the material expansion of U.S. influence but also to the ideological domestication of global knowledge production. This dimension of Parmar’s argument situates the book within a critical tradition of scholarship on the “knowledge-power nexus,” alongside works by Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, and Robert Cox.
While Parmar’s critique is forceful and meticulously substantiated, some scholars have questioned whether his portrayal of the foundations allows sufficient space for contingency or internal dissent. At times, the narrative risks overstating coherence within the philanthropic sector, which has historically been marked by tensions between technocratic liberalism and reformist idealism. Yet, even acknowledging this complexity, Parmar persuasively demonstrates that the aggregate effect of philanthropic activity was to reinforce rather than challenge U.S. global dominance. His argument, moreover, extends beyond the historical case studies to illuminate the broader dynamics of liberal hegemony in the contemporary international order.
In intellectual and historiographical terms, Foundations of the American Century represents both a synthesis and a refinement of earlier critical approaches to elite power. It extends C. Wright Mills’s analysis of the “power elite” and William Domhoff’s research on ruling-class cohesion into the transnational realm, while integrating the insights of Gramscian international relations theory. Parmar’s achievement lies in showing that the “American Century” was not merely a geopolitical construct but also a philanthropic and epistemological one—sustained by institutions that blurred the lines between knowledge, ideology, and governance.
Foundations of the American Century is a work of exceptional analytical depth and historical significance. It reorients the study of U.S. hegemony by revealing the hidden architecture of private power that underpinned American global leadership. Parmar’s synthesis of empirical investigation and critical theory offers a compelling model for understanding how ideas, institutions, and elites collaborate in the production of world order. The book stands as a major contribution to the sociology of elites, the history of U.S. foreign policy, and the critical study of transnational governance—an indispensable text for scholars seeking to understand the ideological and institutional foundations of the modern American imperium.
GPT
June 17, 2012
Good grief. I half-wish that I hadn't read this well-researched and illuminating study. Proceed if you are ready to go on and have your last illusions about modern America and the projects of liberalism (oldschool, not the current fashionable strawman) reduced one last time to fine, powdery, connected dots.
October 15, 2025
This book bothered me. I agree that scholars and activists funded by these foundations share a certain key set of assumptions about how the world works, Parmar goes too far in alleging a sinister plot that lacks evidence. A lot of this book is stringing together various arguments about how these organizations support "globalism" and "neoliberal philanthrocapitalism." It's true that funding can influence research, and that the "big three" foundations do share a certain affinity for liberal internationalism and you could argue that they have a "civilizing mission," much of this book reads like an anti-globalization screed. There are three case studies in this book; Indonesia, Chile, and Nigeria, where these foundations supported research that was valuable to the CIA and State Department during the Cold War. Then there is a chapter about the foundations' global role in the post-Cold War unipolar moment.
This book is well-researched and could have ended up a lot better if Parmar was more focused on what he could actually prove, and less focused on attempting to prove a conspiratorial narrative. In the conclusion, Parmar tries to make clear that this book is not alleging that think tank or foundation employees take direct orders from the Pentagon: "In their day-to-day lives, foundation trustees and officials do not receive state directives, nor do they issue their own to anyone else. What they have, and what binds them so closely to the state, however, is more powerful and significant than any official directives: they have an organic unity with the state and the rest of the Establishment, born of a shared worldview underpinning the conviction that the United States is a society with superior ideas, culture, and economic system, one that is destined and duty bound to lead the world." (Page 260) Essentially, these hegemonic ideas cause these foundations to promote American foreign policy agendas without being explicitly told. The weakness of this book in my opinion is that a lot of Parmar's arguments are plausibly deniable. This doesn't mean that these organizations don't promote American culture and hegemony, and a shared idea of America's role in the world.
Many social scientists share a particular worldview, but Parmar inflates their power and ability to control global events. If a crisis like 9/11 happens, it is basically inevitable that social scientists will subsequently be funded to research terror. This is not so much evidence of a 'deep state' conspiracy as evidence of demand for a body of social science research that is politically useful. So yes, these foundations are indeed closely linked to the Pentagon and do play an active role in shaping foreign policy in the post-WWII world order, but I'm not sure that this is their sole or even their primary purpose. This book does not focus much on domestic policy, an area where these three foundations may have significantly more ideological diversity. I think that it's good to question the stated goals of philanthropy, and the ways that it legitimizes US global power and global and domestic wealth inequality, and to critique its technocracy and unsavory aspects, however Parmar starts from such a polemical perspective that this book is difficult to get through unless you wholeheartedly accept his worldview. There is some interesting information in this book, but it its approach lacks balance.
This book is well-researched and could have ended up a lot better if Parmar was more focused on what he could actually prove, and less focused on attempting to prove a conspiratorial narrative. In the conclusion, Parmar tries to make clear that this book is not alleging that think tank or foundation employees take direct orders from the Pentagon: "In their day-to-day lives, foundation trustees and officials do not receive state directives, nor do they issue their own to anyone else. What they have, and what binds them so closely to the state, however, is more powerful and significant than any official directives: they have an organic unity with the state and the rest of the Establishment, born of a shared worldview underpinning the conviction that the United States is a society with superior ideas, culture, and economic system, one that is destined and duty bound to lead the world." (Page 260) Essentially, these hegemonic ideas cause these foundations to promote American foreign policy agendas without being explicitly told. The weakness of this book in my opinion is that a lot of Parmar's arguments are plausibly deniable. This doesn't mean that these organizations don't promote American culture and hegemony, and a shared idea of America's role in the world.
Many social scientists share a particular worldview, but Parmar inflates their power and ability to control global events. If a crisis like 9/11 happens, it is basically inevitable that social scientists will subsequently be funded to research terror. This is not so much evidence of a 'deep state' conspiracy as evidence of demand for a body of social science research that is politically useful. So yes, these foundations are indeed closely linked to the Pentagon and do play an active role in shaping foreign policy in the post-WWII world order, but I'm not sure that this is their sole or even their primary purpose. This book does not focus much on domestic policy, an area where these three foundations may have significantly more ideological diversity. I think that it's good to question the stated goals of philanthropy, and the ways that it legitimizes US global power and global and domestic wealth inequality, and to critique its technocracy and unsavory aspects, however Parmar starts from such a polemical perspective that this book is difficult to get through unless you wholeheartedly accept his worldview. There is some interesting information in this book, but it its approach lacks balance.
May 8, 2023
Can be read together with John Perkins' "Economic Hitman" books. Great book.
April 3, 2024
A fairly good look at how American Foundations seem to be a Trojan Horse of US Hegemony rather than the charitable organizations they claim to be.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews