The Historiography of
American Foreign Policy
William B. Pickett
he history of American foreign
relations reflects an evolving nation and often competing conceptions of
history. The milestones have been the
European discovery of the American continent five hundred years ago, the colonial
decision to seek independence from Britain together with the French decision after
the battle of Saratoga to recognize the
American Revolution, and by the tum of
the nineteenth century, the movement of
the United States to world power.
From the outset, historians have debated these events from different perspectives. The first American historians,
trained in German universities,
tended to look at American history in
its smallest detail, as befitted their
training. Then the events of 1898
moved them to consider justifying
the Spanish-American War and President McKinley's decision to annex
the Philippines. In subsequent years
the ideas ofthe Progressive era turned
their attention to economics. Economic interpretation persuaded them
to look closely at the reasons for American
intervention in World War I (and later
World War II). In the 1960s, debates
generated by the cold war and the war in
Vietnam brought the so-called cold war
revisionist interpretation. This view announced that instead of citizens supporting
presidential and parliamentary government
and free enterprise, American corporations controlled foreign policy. Even during times of relative calm, as between the
world wars, American businessmen spread
economic influence and political hege-
mony to all parts of the world, an endeavor
termed open door imperialism (after the
American open door policy toward China
in 1899-1900). Similarly, the huge power
that accrued to the United States as arsenal
to the allies and arbiter ofthe peace following the defeat of Germany and Japan in
1945 did not, according to this view, bring
the pursuit of human rights and liberty
redeemed, but rather an arrogant nation
imposing its will on others. The revisionists said this unfortunate tendency resulted
in the involvement and, by 1973, defeat in
Vietnam. This view lent perhaps an unduly
makers and limits placed on them by geography, population, economy, bureaucracy,
and culture. They seek information and
historical cause in such places as the archives of the department of commerce;
trade, labor, and public information organizations; pacifist groups; multi-national
corporations; the United Nations Organization; oral history interviews; medical
records; and the archives of foreign countries as well as the National Archives and
America's presidential libraries. Historians also have sought the assistance of other
humanities and social sciences disciplines.
Books on the history of American foreign relations are far too numerous to mention in detail here. For
a sense of the debate between conventional and revisionist historians
about the meaning of American foreign relations in the twentieth century, the reader should consult Robert
H. Ferrell's American Diplomacy:
The Twentieth Century (1988)* for
the conventional school and William
A. Williams' The Tragedy ofAmerican Diplomacy (rev. ed., 1972)* for the
revisionist position. The following list of
books, organized by events-usually wars
or attempts to avoid them--eontains seventeen titles that combine scholarship with
good reading. Where possible it lists paperbacks, marked as above by asterisks.
In outline, the defining events of
American diplomacy include first a newly
discovered region of the world as seen by
the European navigators-the Western
Hemisphere-and secondly a nation beholden to others but struggling to separate
Recently the term "post-revisionist" has come into vogue
as a way of describing newer
interpretations.
Fall 1992
economic aspect to the history of American foreign relations. It nonetheless stimulated willingness to ask questions and draw
lessons.
The debate continues but in recent
years has become less acrimonious. The
term "post-revisionist" has come into
vogue as a way of describing newer interpretations. Pointing out American mistakes while acknowledging the failings of
other nations and ideologies, students of
American foreign relations are now writing about motives and methods of policy
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interests in the Western Hemisphere. Dexter Perkins's The Monroe Doctrine (1955) is
excellent. The United States under President Polk gained people and land in the
1840s~ David M. Pletcher's The Diplomacy
of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the
Mexican War (1973) is the authoritative
account of these events. The supreme test
of the nation's values and institutions was,
of course, the Civil War, set out in James
McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom: The
Civil War Era (1988)*. Finally, the nation's
appearance in the world was in fair part the
accomplishment of Theodore Roosevelt,
whose personal growth appears in Edmund
Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt
(1979)*.
Intervention in World War I should
have made American power and accompanying responsibilities evident to all, but the
American people seemed blinded by denial
until their reluctant participation in World
War II. Two books evaluate American
foreign relations in the [list three decades of
the twentieth century, a time of intervention
in Europe: Robert H. Ferrell's Woodrow
Wilson and WorldWarl: 1917-1921 (1985)*
and his Peace in Their Time: The Origins of
the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1952)*. The
coming of World War II appears most
satisfactorily in Wayne S. Cole's Roosevelt
and the Isolationists: 1932-1945 (1983) and
Donald Watt's How War Came (1990)*.
Perhaps the best account of strategy and
diplomacy of the war (also the shortest and
easiest to read) is Morison's Strategy and
Compromise (1958).
The outcome of World War n, unlike
that of the previous World War, was responsibility and commitment to prevent
the return of aggression. Perhaps deception caused by postwar prosperity, a monopoly of nuclear weapons, and ignorance
of the importance of battles on Germany's
President Franklin D. Roosevelt looks on as a military officer discusses the strategy of Allied troops in the Pacific theater during World War II.
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itself from them in association with Great
Britain, the principal empire of the time.
Gradually, with population growth, territorial expansion, and industrialization,
came stature as a nation, and by 1898 a
place on the world stage; see Christopher
Columbus: Mariner (1955)* by the late
Samuel Eliot Morison, one of America's
most admired historians. A more recent
book on the Revolutionary War and the
treaty ending it (and accompanying recognition of the new nation) is Jonathan R.
Dull's A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution (1985). The individual who
has written most extensively on the War of
1812 is Reginald Horsman, whose The War
of 1812 (1969) is best on its subject.
Many observers consider the Monroe
Doctrine to be the first and-in the nineteenth century-the most important American diplomatic principle. Through the
Doctrine the United States first asserted
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The Chicago Daily Tribune reports on military maneuvers in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor and editorializes on the importance of preserving American freedom.
eastern front caused America to discount
the Soviet contribution to victory in Europe and notto see the extent of the Russian
sacrifice. This lack ofunderstanding, combined with suspicion of Stalin and the
latter's suspicions of the West, resulted in
the cold war. One of the key persons in
creating postwar foreign policy was General George C. Marshall, organizer of the
U.S. war against the Axis and later secretary of state and secretary of defense. For
outbreak of the cold war and American
participation see Mark A. Stoler, George
C. Marshall: Soldier-Statesman of the
American Century (1989)*. John Lewis
Gaddis, Strategies ofContainment (1982),*
explores the purposes and methods of the
United States in the postwar world. Finally, the nation's fall from grace, as it
Fall 1992
were, appears in what has become the
standard account of the nation's greatest
failure of diplomatic and military policy,
George Herring's America's Longest War:
The United States and Vietnam, 1950-1975
(2nd ed., 1986)*.
Demise of the Soviet Union (bankruptcy of Marxism-Leninism in the country of its origin) restored confidence in U.S.
principles. But the decline in American
strength appeared in its economic and social problems at home and was, in a sense,
heightened by the vitality of the European
and Asian economies in the 1980s. The
United States, while leading the temporary
coalition against Saddam Hussein's aggression in the Middle East, found itself once
again dependent on cooperation of others.
Indeed, the nation seemed to be casting
around for what to do in a world that was less
fearful of nuclear holocaust but at the same
time much less predictable. Retrospective
evaluations of the position. of the United
States in the contemporary world appear in
Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall ofGreat
Powers (1987)* and Gaddis's recent collection of essays, The United States and the
End of the Cold War (1992)*. 0
William B. Pickett is the author of a recent
biography of the Indiana senator, Homer
Capehart, and afortlu:oming biography ofthe
nation's thirtyfourth president, Dwight D.
Eisenhower. He has published many articles
and essays on American foriegn relations and
teaches at Rose-Hu/man Institute ofTechnology in Terre Haute, Indiana.
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