This dissertation examines U.S. views of Mexico from the end of the U.S.-Mexico War in 1848, to the end of the first phase of the Mexican Revolution in May 1911. During this period numerous Americans saw Mexico as a laboratory to test their ability to transform a country seemingly in need of guidance. Americans, however, struggled to define the role of the United States: whether it was solely to be a model for other nations to follow, or whether Americans should be actively involved in this process. In the years after the U.S. Civil War, a diverse group of Americans, especially missionaries, investors, and working-class activists, saw Mexico as a nation in need of change and sought to affect its transformation through the means of informal imperialism. Yet they vigorously disagreed whether this transformation should occur in religious, political, economic or social terms. Despite these differences, they all believed that Mexico could be reshaped in the image of the United States. Their views thus provided a powerful counternarrative to persistent U.S. images of the Mexican people as irredeemable because of allegedly inherent inferiorities based on race, religion or culture. The dissertation also examines the role of Mexican actors in attracting, resisting and altering U.S. informal imperialism. These Mexican actors included government officials who petitioned for U.S. assistance during the French Intervention (1862-67) and the Porfiriato (1876-1911); dissident Catholic priests who requested aid for the fledgling Protestant movement in Mexico; and Mexican liberal exiles from the repressive Diaz regime, who sought U.S. support in bringing a democratic government to Mexico.

http://ir.uiowa.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3321&context=etd

A country in need of American instruction : The U.S. mission to shape and transform Mexico, 1848-1911

Proponents of new technologies argue that new media forms could have a dramatic impact on the way in which citizens gain political information, including important information regarding international affairs. This article argues that foreign policy is constrained by public opinion, which is in turn affected by media portrayals of other nations. Moreover, the impact of a particular media form is mediated by the `logics' of the format. The article proposes a conceptual scheme and criterion for determining the impact of media format in presenting international issues; it also proposes that the logic of new media, in contrast to the logic of traditional media, brings greater information, but less knowledge and critical awareness of foreign affairs.

The Logic of New Media in International Affairs

This chapter looks at the external context of twentieth-century Chinese history, beginning naturally with the collapse of the old order. Certain patterns of Ch'ing response to encroachment may be seen all around the periphery of the empire. Instead of recognizing Outer Mongolia as a sovereign state open to international relations, Russia continued to recognize Chinese suzerainty. For Japan, the First World War provided the opportunity to stabilize its imperialist interests. The chapter lists the Japan's Twenty-One Demands. In less than half a year, the whole of Manchuria had fallen to the Japanese army and been severed from China. Japan had become the primary concern of Chinese foreign policy. Within less than a generation, a mere two decades, the East Asian regional order of the Ch'ing dynasty, the international legal order envisaged by the Washington Conference treaty powers, and the world revolutionary order dreamed of in Moscow, had all proved unavailing as an international matrix for the Chinese Republic.

China's international relations 1911–1931

OF DISSERTATION PIONEERS IN EXILE: THE CHINA INLAND MISSION AND MISSIONARY MOBILITY IN CHINA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA, 1943-1989 My	 dissertation	 explores	 how	 the	 movement	 of	 missionaries	 across	 Asia responded	 to	 the	 currents	 of	 nationalism,	 decolonization,	 and	 the	 Cold	 War producing	 ideas	 about	 sovereignty,	 race,	 and	 religious	 rights.	 More	 specifically,	 it looks	 at	 how	 U.S.	 evangelicals	 in	 the	 China	 Inland	 Mission,	 an	 international	 and interdenominational	 mission	 society,	 collaborated	 with	 Christians	 in	 the	 Atlantic and	 Pacific	 worlds.	 While	 doing	 so	 it	 also	 details	 the	 oft-­‐neglected	 study	 of	 the	 post-­‐ China	 careers	 of	 former	 China	 missionaries	 by	 extensive	 use	 of	 oral	 histories.	 Forced to	 abandon	 its	 only	 field	 by	 the	 Chinese	 Communist	 Party,	 the	 mission	 redeployed	 as the	 Overseas	 Missionary	 Fellowship	 sending	 agents	 to	 new	 nations	 such	 as	 Japan, Indonesia,	 and	 Thailand	 and	 amongst	 the	 overseas	 Chinese	 populations	 scattered across	 Southeast	 Asia.	 The	 last	 chapter	 looks	 at	 the	 OMF’s	 return	 to	 the	 People’s Republic	 of	 China	 as	 tourists	 and	 expatriates	 as	 the	 means	 by	 which “rapprochement”	 took	 on	 religious	 meanings.	 Ultimately,	 I	 argue	 missionary mobility	 produced	 ideas	 about	 religious	 freedom	 as	 a	 human	 right	 across	 the international	 community	 rooted	 in	 ambivalent,	 racialized	 attitudes	 toward	 Asians.

/pdf/pioneers-in-exile-the-china-inland-mission-and-missionary-38gc5uriwv.pdf

Pioneers in exile: the china inland mission and missionary mobility in china and southeast asia, 1943-1989

This article examines the American-mediated myth of ‘new China’ spanning from the Chinese Revolution in 1911 to the American recognition of the Chinese Republic in 1913, in an effort to understand the complicated relations between news discourse, cultural issues and foreign relations in this particular historical context. The Chinese Revolution, overthrowing a deep-rooted feudalism and establishing an Americanized republican government, appealed to American sentiments of religious sympathy and ethnocentrism during the Progressive Era. The media myth of ‘new China’ was not only a significant part of discourses which enhanced American identity and nationalism, but also acted as the cognitive context and a determinant reason in the political discourse towards recognizing China.

‘New China’ or ‘New America’?: The American media myth of ‘new China’, 1911–1913

At a telling moment in the development of American East Asia policy, the dream of a Christian China, made vivid by the utterances of returned missionaries, fired the imagination of the general public, influenced opinion leaders and policymakers, and furthered the Open Door doctrine Missionary-inspired enthusiasm for China ran parallel to the different attitude of the American business community, which viewed Japan as the more appropriate focus of American interest in East Asia During the five years here examined, the religious mentality proved stronger than the commercial mentality in influencing American policy toward the Chinese Republican Revolution and the Twenty-one Demands of 1915 Reed's treatment of the struggle between William Jennings Bryan and Robert Lansing over the Japanese demands in China is detailed and penetrating This book builds on the work of Akira Iriye, Michael Hunt, Ernest May, and others in its analysis of cultural attitudes, business affairs, and the mindset of the foreign policy elites Its thesis--that the Protestant missionary movement profoundly shaped the course of our historical relations with East Asia--will interest both specialists and general readers

James Reed

Papers

The Missionary Mind and American East Asia Policy, 1911–1915