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Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations
Originally published by Cambridge in 1991, this text has become an indispensable volume not only for teachers and students of international history and political science, but also general readers seeking an introduction to American diplomatic history. Along with substantially revised essays from the first edition, it presents entirely new material on postcolonial theory, borderlands history, modernization theory, gender, race, memory, cultural transfer, and critical theory. The book defines the study of American international history by stimulating research in new directions, and encouraging interdisciplinary thinking, especially between diplomatic history and other fields of American history in an increasingly globalized world. First Edition Hb (1991): 0-521-40383-9 First Edition Pb (1991): 0-521-40736-2
- GenresHistory
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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About the author
Michael J. Hogan
18 books7 followersMichael J. Hogan (born 1943) is an American academic who has served in the administrations or on the faculty of many American universities, wrote or edited numerous books, contributed as an adviser to the U. S. Department of State and several documentaries. Currently he is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Illinois at Springfield.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 14, 2018
In the volume of essays entitled Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, scholars in the field of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy respond to growing criticism within the academic community that the discipline has become a "marginalized" subguild of the larger and more cosmopolitan guild of Americanists. Contributors to the volume marshal a wide range of approaches to the task of explaining the history of American foreign relations designed to return the disciple to the "cutting edge" of scholarship. Taken together, these essays present the current "state of the art.1I
The editors introduce this collection with a brief but extremely useful historiographical sketch, which traces the discipline from its birth in the inter-war years, through realism and New Left revisionism, and into the brave new world of post-revisionist synthesis. In the book's first section, Robert J. McMahon and Emily S. Rosenberg defend the discipline against two of the most persistent criticisms recently leveled at it, parochialism and the failure to integrate the "new social history" into its narrative. In concluding this first section, Thomas G. Paterson attempts to define the current parameters of the discipline by providing a comprehensive model for explaining the history of American foreign relations which includes a consideration of international, regional, national, and individual factors. This framework provides a way of integrating current research, as his own textbook bare witness.
The collection of essays which follows in the second section of this book is valuable as a means of testing the flexibility of textbook accounts. It is to be expected that these innovative approaches are of varying degrees of utility for a textbook treatment of 20th century American foreign policy and diplomacy, yet flexibility is a hallmark of the good textbook. The first task of any textbook must be to present the most significant information to an understanding of the subject at hand in a manner that allows for comprehension by the non-specialist. In this respect a textbook is conceptually more limited than a monograph.
The ability to integrate the less intricate of these new approaches into the understanding provided by the textbooks cited above is one measure of their quality. These two textbooks bear witness to the fact that textbook writers are limited by the need to present a certain body of accepted facts. Many of the same quotations from historical actors appear in both accounts, the periodization which they use is roughly analogous, and each concentrates on the same major events in the 20th century in developing their narrative. The presentations of American diplomatic and foreign policy history offered by these two accounts diverge primarily in their underlying assumptions about the process of history.
The editors introduce this collection with a brief but extremely useful historiographical sketch, which traces the discipline from its birth in the inter-war years, through realism and New Left revisionism, and into the brave new world of post-revisionist synthesis. In the book's first section, Robert J. McMahon and Emily S. Rosenberg defend the discipline against two of the most persistent criticisms recently leveled at it, parochialism and the failure to integrate the "new social history" into its narrative. In concluding this first section, Thomas G. Paterson attempts to define the current parameters of the discipline by providing a comprehensive model for explaining the history of American foreign relations which includes a consideration of international, regional, national, and individual factors. This framework provides a way of integrating current research, as his own textbook bare witness.
The collection of essays which follows in the second section of this book is valuable as a means of testing the flexibility of textbook accounts. It is to be expected that these innovative approaches are of varying degrees of utility for a textbook treatment of 20th century American foreign policy and diplomacy, yet flexibility is a hallmark of the good textbook. The first task of any textbook must be to present the most significant information to an understanding of the subject at hand in a manner that allows for comprehension by the non-specialist. In this respect a textbook is conceptually more limited than a monograph.
The ability to integrate the less intricate of these new approaches into the understanding provided by the textbooks cited above is one measure of their quality. These two textbooks bear witness to the fact that textbook writers are limited by the need to present a certain body of accepted facts. Many of the same quotations from historical actors appear in both accounts, the periodization which they use is roughly analogous, and each concentrates on the same major events in the 20th century in developing their narrative. The presentations of American diplomatic and foreign policy history offered by these two accounts diverge primarily in their underlying assumptions about the process of history.
March 21, 2023
Wow. What a phenomenal read. A necessary primer for the field.
October 8, 2020
This is a really excellent collection of essays, but head go ouch.
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September 13, 2013Several interesting essays. Useful guide to the variety of ways that one can approach U.S. diplomatic history.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews