The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations
Volume 2. The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913
Part of The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations
- Author: Walter LaFeber, Cornell University, New York
- Date Published: April 2013
- availability: Available
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521767521
Hardback
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Since their first publication, the four volumes of the Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations have served as the definitive source for the topic, from the colonial period to the Cold War. This revised second volume describes the causes and dynamics of United States foreign policy from 1865 to 1913, the era when the United States became one of the four great world powers and the world's greatest economic power. The dramatic expansion of global power during this period was set in motion by the strike-ridden, bloody, economic depression from 1873 to 1897 when American farms and factories began seeking overseas markets for their surplus goods, as well as by a series of foreign policy triumphs, as America extended its authority to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Panama Canal Zone, Central America, the Philippines, and China. Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt set foreign policy precedents by creating historic policies in which they used the post-1890 battleship fleet, a navy that quickly became one of the world's most powerful fleets. Ironically, as Americans searched for opportunity and stability abroad, they instead helped create revolutions in Central America, Panama, the Philippines, Mexico, China, and Russia. These outbreaks introduced the twentieth century as a century of revolutions with which the United States would have to deal as a top world power.
Read more- Tells the story of the era when the United States first became a global power and why
- Shows the important role Americans played in helping to trigger several of the most significant twentieth-century events
- Describes the relationship between events at home, including the Depression, and the appearance of U.S. military power in the Caribbean, Central America and for the first time, on the Chinese mainland
Reviews & endorsements
“The American Search for Opportunity is vintage LaFeber: provocatively conceived, forcefully argued, and beautifully written. In this revised edition, LaFeber has retained and strengthened his arresting thesis that U.S. policy makers, prompted by a search for markets and flawed racial views, aggressively pursued opportunity and informal empire abroad at the expense of international order and stability.” – Joseph A. Fry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
See more reviews“This is a masterful account of the United States’ rise to global power by one of the most eminent scholars of U.S. foreign relations. Drawing on the latest scholarship and original research, Walter LaFeber eloquently demonstrates how U.S. economic expansion wreaked havoc around the world. He also shows that the disorder created by U.S. political and industrial leaders abroad gave rise to an imperial presidency at home. This thought-provoking book is essential reading for anyone interested in U.S. hegemony in a globalizing world – and the effects of globalization on the United States.” – Michel Gobat, University of Iowa
“No one has done more to revolutionize our thinking about U.S. foreign policy in the era following the Civil War than Walter LaFeber. His path-breaking The New Empire demonstrated how those years set the stage for America’s twentieth-century career as a world power. The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 not only takes that story beyond 1898, it highlights what a powerfully destabilizing and unsettling experience for other lands American expansion into the world often has been. Professor LaFeber addresses compellingly an issue that students of the past, and citizens of the present, would do well to give much greater attention.” – Robert E. Hannigan, Suffolk University
“The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 is much more than a survey of U.S. foreign policy from the Civil War to World War One. It is an elegant interpretive essay. LaFeber argues boldly and persuasively that the relentlessness of the U.S. search for global economic opportunities jostled societies as disparate as Russia and Haiti, inspiring revolution and turmoil around the world.” – Nancy Mitchell, North Carolina State University
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×Product details
- Date Published: April 2013
- format: Hardback
- isbn: 9780521767521
- length: 266 pages
- dimensions: 236 x 158 x 20 mm
- weight: 0.51kg
- availability: Available
Table of Contents
1. Springboards and strategies
2. The second industrial revolution at home and abroad
3. Race for empire
4. 'America will take this continent in hand alone'
5. Crossing the oceans
6. 1893–6: chaos and crises
7. The Empire of 1898 - and beyond
8. Pacific empire - and upheaval
9. Theodore Roosevelt: conservative as revolutionary
10. William Howard Taft and the age of revolution
Conclusion:
11. The 1865–1913 era restated.
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