Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 1992"

Realism, Imperialism, and Democracy A Response to Gilbert

Abstract: R ALISM IS NO DIFFERENT from other social science theories in its effort to provide both analysis and prescription. Alan Gilbert finds the analytic aspects of realism inadequate and its normative implications unfortunate if not reprehensible. Gilbert argues that realism is self-contradictory and antithetical to a world order based on democracy that could lead to peace and prosperity. He maintains that an internationalist perspective would oppose "aggression, colonialism, and neocolonialism, and sustain democracy abroad" (p. 10). He criticizes realism for endorsing concern with the life and well-being of the citizens of one's own state while ignoring the material and political condition of individuals in other states. Realism, Gilbert asserts, endorses the development of a national security apparatus that can be used to suppress the freedom of ordinary individuals domestically as well as in other countries. These are serious issues, worthy of careful consideration. In my view, Gilbert misunderstands the basic analytic claims of realist theory because he confuses domestic politics arguments, which are not realist, with international systems arguments, which are. He misrepresents the normative implications of realism by suggesting that it is an approach that encourages imperialism and expansionism, while, in fact, both the logic of the theory and its most prominent exponents, such as Hans Morgenthau, Kenneth Waltz, and Robert Gilpin, argue exactly the opposite. Gilbert does, though, raise more serious concerns about the relationship between realism and democracy both domestically and internationally. Given the Machiavellian tradition from which realism springs, these concerns cannot easily be dismissed. Neverthe-

Too Wilde for Comfort: Desire and Ideology in Fin-de-Siecle Spanish America

Abstract: This piece is part of a larger reflection on turn-of-the-century Latin American cultures, most especially on the paranoid construction of gender and sexual norm, and of gender and sexual difference. It will assume that the definition of norm does not precede but is arrived at, and indeed derives from, the gender and sexual differences that purportedly deviate from it in the same way that the definition of "health," in psycholegal studies of the period, follows that of disease, and decadence gives birth retrospectively to notions of maturity and fullness. This assumption measures the paranoia informing those constructions and definitions. By focussing my reflection on Latin America at the turn of the century, that is, at the moment of its complex entrance into modernity, I shall take into account two related issues: first, the ideological implications of these constructions in debates on national identity and national, even continental, health; second, the double pressure of continued cultural dependence vis-A-vis Europe, and of United States political expansionism, that informs these debates on national identity as, indeed, all forms of cultural production of the period. I shall begin with a little gossip. On the evening of January 7, 1882 the Cuban writer Jos6 Marti attended a lecture in New York City. In spite of rival attractions, there was a very large crowd at Chickering Hall, Marti reports in La Naci6n of Buenos Aires, one that struck him both for its size and its elegance. The title of the lecture Marti heard was "The English Renaissance of Art" and the lecturer, of course, was Oscar Wilde. This occasion, which I have chosen to make emblematic for the purpose of my argument, is culturally significant. Marti, arguably the most important Latin American intellectual figure of his time, encounters this other, influential innovator, come to the United States, as prophet of a "new imagination," to reveal to his public that "the secret of life is in art."' Encounter is too generous a word, of course, since the two men never met and since Wilde was totally unaware of Martif's existence. What interests me here, to begin with, is precisely that imbalance which affords Marti a particularly interesting vantage point. Lost in a New York crowd, Marti, the foreign correspondent, gazes upon, better still, spies on Wilde, carefully taking in the man and his words, the better to report his experience

The Fire-Eaters

Abstract: In the early 1850s, northerners and southerners alike used the term fire-eater to describe anyone whose views were clearly outside the political mainstream. Eventually, though, the word came to be most closely identified with those southerners who were staunch and unyielding advocates of secession. In this broadly researched and illuminating study, Eric H. Walther examines the lives of nine of the most prominent fire-eaters: Nathaniel Beverley Tucker, William Lowndes Yancey, John Anthony Quitman, Robert Barnwell Rhett, Laurence M. Keitt, Louis T. Wigfall, James D. B. De Bow, Edmund Ruffin, and William Porcher Miles. Walther paints skillful portraits of his subjects, analyzing their backgrounds, personalities, and contributions to the movement for disunion. Although they shared the common goal of southern independence, Walther shows that in many respects the fire-eaters differed markedly from one another. It was their very diversity, he maintains, that enabled them to appeal to such a wide spectrum of southern opinion and thereby rally support for secession. In his exploration of the role of the fire-eaters in the secession movement, Walther touches upon a number of perennial themes in southern history, including the appeal of proslavery thought and southern expansionism, the place of education and industrialization in antebellum southern society, the significance of oratory in southern culture, and the nature of southern nationalism. He also describes the fire-eaters' activities on behalf of the Confederacy and traces the course of their lives after the war. The Fire-Eaters makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Secession movement and the context in which itdeveloped. There is no other study available that treats these men as a group and that delineates their manifold differences as well as their similarities. Walther shows that secessionism was not a monolithic ideology but rather a movement that emerged from many sources, spoke in many voi

Ethics, American foreign policy, and the Third World

Abstract: PART I MORALITY AND FOREIGN POLICY: CONTENDING VIEWS - A Typology of Moral Positions - The Contemporary Debate - The Marxists - Knowing Motives Reconciling Means and Ends - PART II EARLY HISTORY: 1776-1945 - Territorial Expansionism: 1777-1900 - Dominance (and Democracy) in the Western Hemisphere - PART III ESTABLISHING THE PROGRESSIVE AGENDA: 1946-1980 - Promoting Economic Development to Stop Communism - Fostering Social Justice - Advancing Human Rights - PART IV REAGAN, BUSH, AND THE FUTURE, 1981- - A Shortened Progressive Agenda - The Past, Perestroika, and the Future - Timeline of American Military Intervention in the Third World and Stated U.S. Policy Priorities - Index

Imperialist Beginnings: Richard Hakluyt and the Construction of Africa

Abstract: In 1589, when Richard Hakluyt produced his first edition of the Principal Navigations, England was a long way from securing an em pire or articulating an imperialist policy.1 Despite some forty years of cross-cultural exploration and trade, its efforts paled in comparison to those particularly of the Spanish, French, and Portuguese, who domi nated the trade in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. While the state pat ented such companies as the Muscovy (1552) and Levant (1581), which staked claims to trading rights in specific regions and along certain routes, these enterprises and other, colonialist projects such as Ralegh's Virginia settlement were financed primarily by enterprising merchants and entrepreneurial nobles. Only in Ireland, whose "restless population" was pressing all too closely upon the borders, did Elizabeth support settlement, and then only to a limited degree.2 As Kenneth Andrews has argued, a major impediment to the de velopment of empire was, ironically, what prompted that develop ment in the first place—the pressing need for economic capital. Faced with a serious depression in the 1550s, England began to look to overseas markets for immediate profit. Though later these markets would be pursued as a means of long-term relief (of developing an expanded cloth trade, for example, or providing jobs for emigrants abroad and the unemployed at home), initially they provided a source, literally and figuratively, of gold.3 While money was neces sary for empire-building, the preoccupation with profit took preced ence over and attention from other endeavors critical for that project, such as the enhancement of sea power, foreign settlement and gover nance, and the development of a unified imperialist agenda. Result ingly, as Andrews has suggested, England's expansionism was disun ified and divided. In the West, where other European powers had

From Revivals to Removal: Jeremiah Evarts, the Cherokee Nation, and the Search for the Soul of America

Abstract: Between the end of the Revolutionary War in 1781 and Andrew Jackson's retirement from the presidency in 1837, a generation of Americans acted out a great debate over the nature of the national character and the future political, economic and religious course of the country. Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831) and many others saw the debate as a battle over the soul of America. Alarmed and disturbed by the brashness of Jacksonian democracy, they feared that the still-young ideal of a stable, cohesive, deeply principled republic was under attack by the forces of individualism, liberal capitalism, expansionism, and a zealous blend of virtue and religiousity. A missionary, reformer and activist, Evarts was a central figure of neo-Calvinism in the early American republic. An intellectual and spiritual heir to the founding fathers and a forebear of American Victorianism, Evarts is best remembered today as the stalwart opponent of Andrew Jackson's Indian policies - specifically the removal of Cherokees from the southeast. This study of Evarts is based primarily on readings of Evarts' personal and family papers, religious periodicals, records of missionary and benevolent organizations, and government documents related to Indian affairs. It is also a portrait of the society that shaped - and was shaped by - Evarts' beliefs and principles.

China and Japan: Politics Versus Economics

Abstract: Sino-Japanese relations suffer from the heritage of Chinese bitterness over Japanese expansionism and aggression. This has put a political burden on economic complementarity that places Japan foremost in China's economic modernization in terms of trade, loans, and aid, and second in investment. In addition to the political burden, the economic interdependence is highly asymmetrical, being far more valuable for China than for Japan. Since the Tiananmen massacre, however, economic pragmatism has prevailed in Beijing as a result of Tokyo's muting its criticism of the event and moving to lift sanctions imposed by the Western industrial capitals. Yet Chinese memory and suspicion, heightened by a dispute over islands in the East China Sea, remain.

The Scholar as Diplomat: American Historians at the Paris Peace Conférence of 1919

Abstract: of the diplomacy and foreign relations of the United States have steadily broadened their analysis of how foreign policy is made and, in doing so, have focused more closely on the influence which 'outsiders' have on policy formulation. One of them, the scholar expert, today has a status and role both commonplace and indispensable. This was not always so: the change began with US participation in the First World War, when professional historians from the most respected universities in the country were brought into government service as technical experts and advisers. This essay explores the contribution of professional historians to US foreign policy during the First World War. As interpreters of US policy and fledgling policy-makers, professional historians of the war generation endeavoured to apply academic expertise to complex problems of war, peace, and society. This, in itself, was not new: nineteenth-century historians - gentlemen intellectuals of means and leisure - assumed that history and policy seldom, if ever, stood in isolation from one another and that both private recollection and 'official' interpretation of the past shaped attitudes towards the present and plans for the future.1 Consequently, historians writing during the 'Age of Imperialism', for example, almost universally praised their country's expansionism, endorsed the policies offered to justify it, and expected their views to influence policy or at least to be widely accepted. This intellectual endorsement of the direction of and rationale for US foreign affairs, however, collapsed in an onslaught of revisionism after the First World War; as the horrific

Encontro de duas culturas: América e Europa

Abstract: The article discusses the legitimary of the use of the expression " discovery" for the finding of new land anda populations during the expansionism of the 14th and 15th centuries. The resulting new historical horizon is a landmark in history, marking the beginning of modern times. It is importante to fows on the finding of different cultures, such as happened when Europeans arrived in America. The meeting of these cultures led to aprocen of mutual influencing, Although the Europeans imposed their culture to a greater extent, they also absorbed Idian cultural traits. Initially the New Word was seen more as a matter for Geography than History. Only modern social science is able to understand the problem and to point out a solution.

China and Post-Cambodia Southeast Asia: Coping with Success

Abstract: Throughout the 1980s China's Asia policy aimed to roll back Vietnamese expansionism in Cambodia. Due to the complementarity of Beijing's objective with the interests of the non-Communist Southeast Asian states, it was relatively easy for Beijing to develop cooperative relations with these states. Yet the very success of Chinese diplomacy in the 1980s has undermined Beijing's ability to maintain its regional influence in the 1990s. Now that the strategic aspects of the Cambodia issue have been resolved, the region is concentrating on economic issues, yet China has little economic influence in Southeast Asia and is thus likely to be excluded from the most significant regional negotiations. In this context, China's military capabilities could assume heightened salience, stimulating increased suspicions of Chinese intentions and thus further undermining Beijing's effort to foster a peaceful environment in which to modernize its economy in preparation for the more competitive twenty-first century.

The ends of the earth, 1876-1918

Abstract: This volume charts the movement from the self-confident mid-Victorian attitudes expressed by Trollope in South Africa; through the parallel growths of fear of European expansionism and glory in British imperialism voiced by Kipling, Meredith, and Gissing; to the post Victorian, post-Boer War reaction found in Conrad, Forster, and Wells.

The Short Life of a Local Protest Movement: The Annexation Crisis of 1849-50 in the Eastern Townships

Abstract: This paper examines the annexationist movement on the border region of the Eastern Townships, where the American-descended majority felt that union with the United States would end their economic isolation and stagnation as well as remove them from the growing threat of French-Canadian political domination. Leading proponents of this genuinely bi-partisan movement were careful not to appear disloyal to Britain, however, and they actively discouraged popular protest at the local level. Fearful of American-style democracy, the local elite also expressed revulsion towards American slavery and militaristic expansionism. Consequently, the movement died as quickly in the Eastern Townships as it did in Montreal after Britain expressed its official disapproval and trade with the United States began to increase.

The Chilean Falklands Factor

Abstract: Throughout the Falklands conflict, Chile played the role of a mysterious third participant whose presence was more felt than seen. During the war, the Chilean Falklands factor weighed more heavily in Argentine military strategy than is generally known. Conversely, within the British government, the Chilean connection was considered ‘the most sensitive subject of the war’.1 For these reasons, a good deal of speculation still remains about Chile’s role in the Falklands War. However, the latter was only one expression of Argentina’s territorial expansionism. Argentinian frustration over the failure to seize the Chilean Beagle Channel Islands was an important element in the decision to invade the British Falkland Islands and their Dependencies. Like the Beagle Channel dispute, this aggression was part of a premeditated plan to secure foreign strategic outposts in the South Atlantic and South Pacific areas. Territorial claims were disguised under a game theory of sovereignty whereby any claimed territory would become an imaginary ‘Argentinian sovereign territory’. The Falklands adventure led the Argentine dictatorship to develop a two-front military strategy out of fear of a Chilean military attack — despite Chile’s hasty and unnecessary proclamation of neutrality in the conflict.

British North America and American Expansionism

Abstract: Reginald C. Stuart. United States Expansionism and British North America, 1775-1871. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Pp. xvi + 374. Jane Errington. The Lion, the Eagle, and Upper Canada: A Developing Colonial Ideology. Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987. Pp. x + 272. Martin Crawford. The Anglo-American Crisis of the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Times and America, 1850-1862. Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press. 1987. Pp. x + 178. Each of these three books attempts to revise to some degree the conventional views of Anglo-Canadian-American relations in the century from the 1770s to the 1870s. The first two books deal with broad issues of expansionism and national character, topics that have not been ignored by historians, while the third, more limited in scope, looks closely at that still sensitive topic of British public opinion about the United States in the Civil War era.

The Domestic Dynamic

Abstract: In addition to the hostilities that existed between nations every country also experienced internal tensions. The paradox inherent in Britain’s foreign policy and attitudes — pride in strength and expansionism existing simultaneously with an insecurity bred of fear — was mirrored on the domestic, social front. There has been a cultural tendency to romanticise the period in which Conrad began writing up to the Great War. The historian Anthony Wood has summarised, and commented on, that propensity: To those who looked back on it with nostalgia ... Edwardian England seemed like some splendid sunset, a time of limitless security, peace, and pleasure. Security, however, lay only on the surface. The ultimate crash of this world in 1914 was not a sudden catastrophe.... New social forces and growing discord had already begun to undermine it long before that date.1