From Colony to Superpower U S Foreign Relations Since 1776 Oxford History of the United States
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From Colony to Superpower U S Foreign Relations Since 1776 Oxford History of the United States
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation in print. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize-winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of prestigious Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. From Colony to Superpower is the only thematic volume commissioned for the series. Here George C. Herring uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America’s dramatic rise from thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world’s greatest superpower.
A sweeping account of United States’ foreign relations and diplomacy, this magisterial volume documents America’s interaction with other peoples and nations of the world. Herring tells a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an “American way” of life. And Herring does all this in a story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and Dean Acheson played key roles in America’s rise to world power. But America’s expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation’s interests in foreign lands.
From the American Revolution to the fifty-year struggle with communism and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, From Colony to Superpower tells the dramatic story of America’s emergence as superpower–its birth in revolution, its troubled present, and its uncertain future.
User Ratings and Reviews
4 Stars A good chronicle of America’s interaction with the world
Americans have long preferred to ignore events beyond the borders of their country. Yet to adopt such an attitude, as George Herring contends in this book, is to ignore a key element of the national experience. In this book, a survey of American foreign policy from the late 18th century to the present day, Herring seeks to demonstrate the role international relations have played in shaping our nation’s history. It is one, he argues, that has been long influenced by Americans’ self-perception of themselves as a chosen people living in a nation with a unique and special place in the world. This belief often is often tempered by pragmatism, however, as Americans frequently subordinated their ideals to the realities of the situation and their own economic self interest.
These elements were present at the nation’s birth. Claiming its independence in a document filled with assertions of rights, the revolutionary government soon found itself in an alliance with France, only recently a hated foe of the colonists and an embodiment of much the revolutionaries opposed. Yet such a partnership was necessary given the United States’s weakness in the early decades of the nation’s existence, which was hardly assured. Once it was, however, the justifications of idealism and pragmatism united as U.S. foreign policy turned towards the goal of extending the nation’s borders. Americans cited their sense of national mission and destiny to explain their acquisition of new lands to themselves and others. Even the bloody internecine conflict of the Civil War slowed the country’s growth only temporarily, and by the late 19th century the focus widened from the Western Hemisphere to establishing a global presence.
The increasing economic predominance of the U.S. in the world, however, was not mirrored at first by a concomitant involvement in international politics. Though Woodrow Wilson brought to the presidency a desire to spread American ideals abroad, his effort to involve the country in the League of Nations was rejected by the public after the First World War. It was not until the Second World War that foreign policy again became a dominant concern for the American people, one perpetuated by the postwar insecurity of the Cold War. Here Herring loses the proverbial forest for the trees, as his thesis recedes amidst the details of the multifaceted struggle with the Soviet Union. Yet even the United States’s ultimate victory and its status as the world’s “hyperpower” did not offer a guarantee of safety from global threats, as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 demonstrated. After examining the policies that followed the attacks, Herring concludes by arguing for an abandonment of long-held hubristic ideals and the embracing of the pragmatic tradition as the best means of addressing the U.S.’s concerns in today’s rapidly changing world.
Herring’s books is a sweeping and comprehensive account of America’s interaction with the world. Though his focus is on United States foreign policy, he addresses as well the broader relationship between its citizens and the world, a dynamic that both drives national policy and is influenced by it. His coverage is impressive, as he succeeds in addressing the major foreign policy concerns while not letting them overshadow America’s simultaneous relations with other nations. With two-thirds of his text covering American foreign policy in the 20th century, some might quibble with his emphasis on the past hundred years, yet such a focus is understandable given Herring’s background as a historian of post-Second World War policy and his narrative never bogs down in detail as a consequence. Overall, this book provides an incomparable examination of nearly two and a half centuries of American foreign policy, one that will enlighten readers familiar with the topic as well as those seeking an introduction to the subject.
4 Stars Excellent History of the Diplomacy of the USA
There are so many things that you miss if you do a general history, this book gets to some of those details because it covers US history since 1776 but from the perspective of diplomacy. The US got involved in world politics and vying for assistance and a bit of chicanery along the way since the beginnings of the revolution. Names you have heard of, Franklin and even John Jay are mentioned in the book. I never Jay’s role and why he was so important a person. You hear his name mentioned in place names and of course a college in NY.
I have this book along with Old World/New World, so I will be getting an interesting multifaceted view of US history as opposed to Europe especially.
One challenge to me is the perspective or somewhat biased commentary of the Author/Editor. He uses statements such as America’s disdain for Amer-Indians and Mexicans. Really, just what we need our young people to be educated in, that we hate people. Is that not what disdain is. He does mention that the Indians were caught up in a battle of wits between European powers, getting caught in the middle of this when the White people, who did in fact think of themselves as superior, were fighting over the land. Simply put, the Indians were used as fodder for all sides. Prior to the Revolution, you will find that the Missionaries were trying to convert them, some believing them to be very important peoples. The disdain for Mexicans comment was really too much for me. Really, the battle for Texas was raging between the Tejanos, American Texans and Spain. When Spain was ousted from Mexico, just a couple of years prior to the Texas Independence movement, aka Alamo days, many of the Tejanos (those of Mexican/Spanish blood, did not want Mexican rule.) Additionally, in California, the ranchers in San Diego county did not want it either. Even the first governor of CA was Pio Pico, a Spanish American. So, I do not agree with his statement that we disdained others.
In fact he uses the term American so often forgetting the fact that Canadians and Latin Americans are Americans too. Yes, race did play a big part in our history and did taint our approach to the move Westward and contributed to the Spanish American war. But even Pancho Villa was helped with his fight against the oppressors of his day by General Sherman and G Patton around WWI. He quotes Toqueville, but does not use his quote that America is great because America is good.
It is okay to have your perspective and even inject it into a history book. But, please, say I feel they had disdain for, here is why, some may feel different because of this. I guess it is fashionable today to rag on the USA.
If not for the above, I would definately have given this a 5 rating. This is really an excellent offering overall.
5 Stars Well-organized & well-written; a superb history
I would recommend this book simply for the bibliographical essay alone. Fortunately, there is plenty more to be found in this very readable & well-organized study of U.S. foreign relations.
A book of this scope easily could have collapsed under its own weight, but Herring breaks his book down into 20 relatively manageable chapters not exceeding 60 pages in length. He also happens to have an engaging writing style, so much so that any period becomes approachable (even a period like the Gilded Age).
Herring also wields his pen even-handedly. Administrations (such as Harding’s) which normally are written off as failures are given a fair assessment. Sometimes a president is the focus of Herring’s analysis, but just as often the various Secretaries of State step to the forefront. Through it all, Herring charts the evolution of what motivated the United States to do what it did, from trying to defend itself from none-too-friendly 18th century European powers to imposing its will on regions half a world away, and he does it without grinding an ideological axe.
There aren’t that many Vine offerings which I would happily return to for multiple re-readings, but this definitely is one of them. Excellent!
3 Stars A History Of U.S. Foreign Relations
George C. Herring’s “From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776″ is the latest volume of the Oxford History of the United States, but there is a key difference between this book and the rest in the series. This is the one book in the series which is intended to cover a single aspect, i.e. Foreign Relations, while the other works all cover a period of time during the history of the United States. My opinion of this work changed dramatically while reading it. I had read a couple of books from this series before and found one to be outstanding and the other to be only slightly above average, but with the nature of this work being different, I was intrigued into seeing how effective this book would be at covering the subject.
I’ll start with the easiest and also probably the least important aspect of the work and that is the organization. Though less important than completeness and accuracy, a poorly organized book can be very trying on the reader. This work attempts to cover Foreign Relations in a chronological fashion in 20 chapters. Each chapter provides a year range for what it covers, so one would expect that it would be fairly straight forward, but that isn’t the case. As an example, the first chapter indicates that it covers from 1776 to 1778, but in fact it covers the entire period prior to 1789. Within each chapter it is tricky as well, as the author jumps around within the periods quite a lot, and the reader does have difficulty in following the examples at times. Herring also doesn’t stay within the time periods indicated in the chapter headings. Overall though, these issues are minor and by themselves would not lower my rating.
The second issue for a work like this is completeness. I don’t think that it is too surprising that trying to cover the entire history of U.S. Foreign Relations in a book, even one which is close to 1,000 pages, would be problematic. There clearly have to be things which would be left out. That being said, my feeling after the first two chapters was that the author was doing a very good job of covering the topic, but this perception began to change at the end of the third chapter and the start of the fourth. There is a decent discussion of the War of 1812, but absolutely no discussion at all of the second war with the Barbary States. This appears to get worse throughout the 4th chapter, though this is not a period that I have studied recently, but I have spent a great deal on the period covered in chapter five (1837-1861) and the gaps are very problematic. This problem gets worse as continues as the interactions with other countries become more detailed and complex and it simply isn’t possible to cover them in the detail needed.
The last issue, accuracy, is by far the most important, as the lack of specifics and the so-so organization could still allow this to be a decent overview of the subject. I became worried when the author discussed Manifest Destiny, which he then referred to as a “sectional rather than national phenomenon, its support strongest in the Northeast and Northwest and weakest in the South, which supported only the annexation of Texas.” While I strongly disagree with the statement that Manifest Destiny had its strongest support in the Northeast and Northwest, I do have to allow that such a statement is largely subjective opinion and that the author may well have reasons for believing that (though he doesn’t make any attempt to support it). On the other hand, the statement that the South only supported the annexation of Texas is not just wrong, but it shows a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the history of the United States prior to the Civil War.
Fortunately, the author proceeds to cover the historical events which refute his own statement, and so the statement is puzzling and unsupported, but not a complete indication of failure on the author’s part to provide a reliable history. He does discuss the South’s efforts to turn the territories into slave states, the use of the annexation of Texas to get a war with Mexico which allowed the U.S. to take those territories. He also discusses the South’s plots and attempts to annex Cuba, additional parts of Mexico, Central America, and even part of South America in an attempt to gain more slave territory. All of these things and more are evidence that his statement was fundamentally wrong, but one cannot judge an entire book on a single sentence.
In the 10th chapter, “‘A New Age’: Wilson, the Great War, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1913-1921″ Herring makes a mistake of omission, stating “…in the face of Germany’s U-boat attacks he (Wilson) eventually–and reluctantly–concluded that intervention was necessary to defend his nation’s rights…” Once again, this is rather sloppy history. Herring seems to ignore the Zimmermann Telegram intercepted by the British which showed the Germans attempting to foment war between Mexico and the United States as a key event in Wilson’s decision to go to war. Germany renewed its unrestricted U-boat war at the start of February, and the British presented the intercept showing that the Germans were attempting to get the Mexicans to declare war on the U.S. should the U.S. declare war on Germany as a result of the U-boat strategy. However, as with the statement about the South only wanting to annex Texas, when Herring gets down to the details of the situation he gets it correct, but one again questions the reason for the initial statement.
There are additional events which are either barely mentioned or completely left out which one has to wonder about as well. The situation with Somoza in Nicaragua gets only a very small mention. There is no discussion at all of Marcos in the Philippines in 1986. One would have thought that nothing went on between Iraq and the U.S. between the first Gulf War and the pre-emptive invasion in 2003, and George W. Bush’s focus on China prior to the tragedy of September 11th is also not mentioned.
On the positive side, Herring treats no President as perfect. Though he seems to have a very positive view of what Wilson was trying to do, he has more than a few bad things to say about him. The same is true for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Those who idolize any of the Presidents will probably think that they are not receiving proper credit. For myself, I prefer to have the bad with the good, and so I appreciated his efforts at being even-handed.
To finish, I question why this book was needed for the series. Certainly foreign relations were covered in the other books in this series that I have read, so this volume duplicates that effort to a certain degree. The fact is that one can’t discuss foreign policies without also discussing the domestic conditions under which they were formed. For me, this book’s value is limited to being a one volume history of the U.S. foreign relations, but that serious historical studies require much more detail, and you get much more of that detail in the other volumes of the series. Ultimately this is a difficult book to rate, some of it is extremely well done, but there are also significant weaknesses.
3 Stars A very dry presentation
After having read some truly excellent works of historical presentation such as Schirrer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, I was quite a bit disappointed in the dry delivery in this book. While the subject has the potential to be exciting, especially for those times leading up to various wars, I was simply bored to tears at the unexciting prose. While the compilation of information seems pretty exhaustive, the actual writing is what has turned me off from this. As a reference work, I think the book serves fine. But as a book to grab and hold interest, this one falls short.
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