HIS 5320:

Readings in the History of American Foreign Policy
Spring 2004/ Thursdays, 7-9:30pm
Dr. Edmund F. Wehrle


The Instructor:

Dr. Edmund F. Wehrle
2576 Coleman Hall
581-6372
cfefw@eiu.edu
Office hours:  10-11 MWF and by appointment


Seminar Theme: America’s interactions with the world long have been sources of both fascination and controversy for Americans and American historians. This course will introduce students to the historiography of American foreign relations. Students will read and discuss major works by historians concerned with a wide variety of issues that link the United States to the world and that take a number of different mythological approaches to that history. In particular, this course aims to illuminate the current debates between revisionists, neo-revisionists, and a new generation of diplomatic historians often influenced by linguistics and cultural theory. Students will write several papers, culminating in a longer historiographical paper, treating in detail the way in which historians have treated one particular event or subject.

Seminar Meetings:

January 15
Introduction

January 22
Approaching the History of American Foreign Relations

Readings:
Patterson, Chapter 1

Each student will be assigned one of the following articles:

Bemis, “The Blessings of Liberty”
Gilderhus, “Founding Father Samuel Flagg Bemis”
Zeiler, “Globalization”
Buhle, Doneke, Ribuffo on William Appleman Williams
Buzzanco, “The New Left”
Leffler, “New Approaches, Old Interpretations”
Cullather, “Development”
Hogan, “The Next Big Thing”
Lytle, “Environmental Approach”
Hunt, “The Long Crisis in American Diplomatic History”
Kroes, “American Empire and Cultural Imperialism”
Morgenthau, “A Realist Theory of International Relations”
LaFeber, “Technology and US Foreign Policy”
Rotter, “Saidism without Said”
Kunz, “American Economic Diplomacy”

January 29
Early National Diplomacy

Readings:
LaFeber, “Foreign Policy of a New Nation”
Rosenberg et al. “A Call to Revolution”
Lawrence Kaplan, “Jefferson as Idealist-Realist”

Supplement:
Jonathan Dull, A Diplomatic History of the American Revolution

February 5
Race, Violence, and the Quest for Land in the Mexican-American War

Readings:
Horseman, “Anglo-Saxon Racism”
Robert E. May, “Young American Males and Filibustering in the Age of Manifest Destiny”
Amy Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity”
Rathbun, “Champions of Mexico in Ante-Bellum America”
Diaz, “Mexico’s Vision of Manifest Destiny”
Pinheiro, “Extending the Light and Blessing of Our Purer Faith”

Supplemental:
Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History

February 12
Spanish American War and Open Door

Readings:
Hofstadter, “Psychic Crisis of the 1890s”
LaFeber, “Preserving the American System”
Scully, “Taking the Low Road to Sino-American Relations”
Hunt, “The Open Door Constituency”
McCormick, “China Market and American Realism”
Stuart Miller, “Our Mylai of 1900”

Supplemental:
Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood

February 19
Wilson’s World

Readings:
Paterson, Chapter 2
Ross Kennedy, “Wilson, WWI, and American National Security”
William Louis, “US and African Peace Settlement”
Rosenberg “For Democracy, Not Hypocrisy: World War and Race Relations in the US, 1914-1919”

Supplement:
Link, Woodrow Wilson, Revolution, War, and Peace

February 26
Winds of War

Readings:
Donecke, From Isolationism to War
Paterson, Chapter 4
Warren Kimball, “The Incredible Shrinking War: The Second World War, Not (Just) the Origins of the Cold War”

Supplement:
Divine, Reluctant Belligerent

March 4
The Bomb and Enola Gay

Readings:
Walker, “The Decision to use the Bomb: Historiography”
Stimson, “The Decision to use the Bomb”
“Roundtable on Enola Gay Controversy”

Supplement:
Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy or Sherwin, A World Destroyed

March 11
Origins of the Cold War

Readings:
Paterson, Chapter 6
Leffler, “American Conception of National Security the Origins of the Cold War”
Gaddis, “Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origin of the Cold War”
Gaddis, “The Tragedy of the Cold War”
Robert McMahon, “Credibility and World Power: Exploring the Psychological Dimension in Postwar American Diplomacy”
Kennan, “Containment Now and Then”

Supplement:
Paterson, On Every Front

March 25
The Cold War in Asia

Readings:
Paterson, Chapters 7+8
Cohen et al. “Rethinking the Lost Chance in China”
Herring, “Fighting Without Allies”

Supplement:
Michael Lind, The Necessary War
 

April 1
Liberal Developmentalism and the Cold War

Cobbs-Hoffman, All You Need is Love
Ekbladh, “Mr. TVA: Grass Roots Developmnet…”

Readings:
Gilbert, “The Cost of Losing the ‘Other’ War in Vietnam”
 

April 8
The Middle East

Readings:
Paterson, Chapter 13
Little, “Gideon’s Band: America and the Middle East Since 1945”
Hunt, “Confronting Revolution in Iran”
Donald Neff, “Nixon’s Middle Eat Policy: From Balance to Bias”

Supplement:
Yergin, The Prize or
Bill, The Eagle and the Lion
 

April 15
The United States, Africa, and African Americans

Readings:
Dudziak, “Josephine Baker, Racial Protest and the Cold War”
Thomas Noer, “New Frontiers and African Neutralism”
Michael Kreen, “Outstanding Negroes’ in ‘Appropriate Countries’”
Lawson, “Desegregating Diplomacy”
Borstelman, “Hedging our Bets and Buying Time”

Supplement:
Dennis Hickey, Enchanted Darkness: American Images of Africa

April 22
Revolution in Latin America

Readings:
Leogrand, “Reagan and Central America”
Robert Holden, “The Real Diplomacy of Violence, US Military Power and Central America, 1950-1990”
Steinfels, “Death and Lives in El Salvador”
James Scott, “International Rivalry and the Reagan Doctrine in Nicaragua”
LaFeber, “Reagan and Revolution in Latin America”

Supplement:
Mark Gilderhus, The Second Century

April 29
We Now Know What?: The End of the Cold War and New Revelations

Readings:
Gaddis, “Reagan’s Cold War Victory”
Lebow and Stein, “Reagan and the Russians”
Bernard Lewis, “The Revolt of Islam”
“Symposium: Soviet Archives, Recent Revelations and Cold War Historiography”
Richard Lebow, “We Still Don’t Know!”
Thomas Friedman, “The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention”

Supplement:
Gaddis, Now We Know


Assignments: The major aim of the course is to introduce students to the major issues, themes and approaches taken by historians of American foreign relations. As such it is important that students have thoroughly read the assigned material before each seminar meeting. Each week one student will read the supplemental assignment and help lead the seminar discussion on the topic (the student’s historiographical paper will be based on that week’s reading).  He/she will lay out several of the major questions raised by that week’s readings and then open the discussion.

In addition, students will complete four written assignments:

Assignment #1: A short discussion of a particular methodological approach to American foreign policy based on the article assigned at the first class meeting.  The paper should include an explanation of the approach and a discussion of its utility (3-4 pages). Due January 29.

Assignment #2: Choose a document from the Foreign Relations of the US (FRUS) series, explain its significance, and place it in historical context.  Include a bibliography (4-5 pages). Due February 26.

Assignment #3: Research design: Choose a neglected (or somewhat neglected) area of US foreign policy. Propose a project that would fill the gap—describing the historical void, how you would approach the problem, and what records you would use (6-8 pages). Due March 25.

Assignment #4: Historiographical paper. Each student will be assigned to read the supplemental reading for a particular week. He/she will then write an extended historiographical paper describing how historians have approached the particular issue/event over time (8-10 pages). Due April 29. A research paper or similar project designed by the student and approved by the instructor may be substituted.


Grading:

 Assignment #1:  10%
 Assignment #2:  20%
 Assignment #3:  20%
 Assignment #4:  30%
 Participation:      20%