Showing papers on "Expansionism published in 1993"

A Borderless World? From Colonialism to Transnationalism and the Decline of the Nation-State

Abstract: Discourse and practice are interdependent. Practice follows discourse, while discourse is generated by practice. As for the discourse on colonialism, there is a long lineage of engagements with the history of colonialism. One recalls papers by practitioners such as John Locke, Edmund Burke, James Mill, and Thomas Macaulay early on, and critiques of the practice by Hobson, Lenin, Luxemburg, and Schumpeter among many others since the height of imperialism. Numerous metropolitan fiction writers are obsessed by the presence of remote colonies from Melville and Flaubert to Conrad and Gide. Actually, hardly any Western writer from Jane Austen to Thomas Mann, from Balzac to D. H. Lawrence could manage to escape from the spell of modern expansionism. The modern West depends on its colonies for self-definition, as Edward Said's newest book, Culture and Imperialism, argues.' In the area of literary theory and criticism, however, the discourse on colonialism has a surprisingly brief history. One needs to remember that writers of the Negritude Movement and other Third World writers such

The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal

Abstract: The American frontier was officially closed, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1890. Yet more homesteads were settled in the first few decades of the twentieth century than in the entire nineteenth century. "Frontier anxiety," then, really was caused not by the closing of the frontier, but by the perception that the frontier was closing, argues David Wrobel. As early as the 1870s and through the 1930s, many Americans believed an important era had ended and worried about how this closure would affect society and democracy. The perceived expiration of a uniquely American way of life had an impact not only on the literature of the day but on public policy as well. While Frederick Jackson Turner and other intellectuals lamented nostalgically about the end of an era dominated by the rugged individualist and westward expansion, Zane Grey and other novelists brought to life cowboys and pioneers from bygone days who were more myth than reality. Presidents from Teddy Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt focused on the vanishing western frontier and its influence on the frontiers of the future. In "The End of American Exceptionalism," Wrobel illustrates more than just how the perceived demise of the frontier brought about a longing for wilderness and the pioneer spirit. He emphasizes how it influenced debate on public land and immigration policy, expansionism, and the merits of individualistic and cooperative political systems. In addition, he relates how it affected and was affected by such diverse social and political issues as racism, industrialization, irrigation, tenant farming, class struggle, government intervention, and the naturalist movement. Wrobel doesn't focus rigidly on Turner or question the originality of Turner's thesis that the frontier molded the nation's character as historians have done in the past. Instead he suggests that the writings of Turner and other intellectuals were symptomatic of a frontier anxiety that began to take hold in the 1870s. Concentrating on the notions of these intellectuals over several decades, Wrobel shows how their reactions to the perceived ending of American exceptionalism created by a unique frontier experience helped shape the nation's cultural and political future. "

The cambridge history of american foreign relations

Abstract: The Creation of a Republican Empire traces American foreign relations from the colonial era to the end of the Civil War, paying particular attention not only to the diplomatic controversies of the era but also to the origins and development of American thought regarding international relations. The primary purpose of the book is to describe and explain, in the diplomatic context, the process by which the United States was born, transformed into a republican nation, and extended into a continental empire. Central to the story are the events surrounding the American Revolution, the Constitutional Convention, the impact on the United States of the European wars touched off by the French Revolution, the Monroe Doctrine, the expansionism of the 1840s, and the ordeal of the Civil War.

U.S. Intervention in the Horn of Africa Amidst the End of the Cold War

Abstract: The end of the Cold War initially was hailed by academics and policy analysts as providing opportunities for a reexamination of U.S. foreign policy toward Africa.' Much to the chagrin of those seeking significant changes in U.S. Africa policies, however, the end of the Cold War seemingly reinforced the historical tendency of Washington to ignore African issues in favor of other regions of greater concern, such as Western and Eastern Europe and, more recently, the Middle East.2 As succinctly noted by Michael Clough, former Senior Fellow for Africa at the Council on Foreign Relations, the White House's response to the end of the Cold War was the adoption of a "wavering, hypocritical policy" in Africa best characterized as "cynical disengagement."3 Specifically, in the absence of the rallying points of Soviet expansionism and anti-communism, the myriad of seemingly insuperable socio-economic and politico-military problems besetting the continent have reinforced the historical tendency within the U.S. policymaking establishment to relegate Africa to "other" countries that presumably know Africa better, and therefore are better equipped to respond more effectively. The purpose of this article is to clarify the impact of the end of the Cold War on U.S. Africa policies by focusing on the evolution of U.S. foreign policy toward the Horn

Grasping for the Significance of the Turner Legacy: An Afterword

Abstract: pretation. Fugitive slaves-Free Frank, John Brown, Martin Delaney, and John Mercer Langston-are only a few who realized the importance of a frontier, of movement and expansionism in addressing black self-determination. For African American history, Turner's thesis is significant not only because he provided a challenge to his generation of black historians, but also because his historical blind spot encouraged future scholars of the black experience to employ Turner's own guidelines to reveal the flaws in his perspectives and go beyond his narrow parameters in defining the meaning of the frontier.

Lessons from estimating military production of the former Soviet Union

Abstract: economic history. But some issues of the past are of more than historical interest. Soviet military power is a good example. I wrote the first draft of this article when there had already been a reduction in the Soviet military threat, but it was important to assess its real capacity. Considering the highly unstable situation in that part of the world, I still feel this, despite and even because of the demise of the Soviet Union. Several factors were responsible for my initial interest. To begin with, the Soviet government's confession that it had lied in the past spurred curiosity in the literature over whether the truth had finally been revealed. Furthermore, the new phenomenon of Soviet writers' exercising independent judgement resulted in numerous challenges to the government's account of military spending. As to the Westerners, their attitudes also changed. A sign of good taste in comparative economic systems was to obtain estimates of Soviet economic indicators, including military spending, that would not contradict the official ones too much. Since glasnost' effectively destroyed the division of Sovietology along the lines of 'progressive' and 'reactionary' attitudes, being too critical of the Soviet Union no longer damaged one's reputation in academia. On the contrary, with ideological constraints removed, a greater deviation from the standards acceptable in the past became even a sign of originality. Using an analogy from physics, in the past Soviet official estimates attracted those obtained independently, while recently the two have tended to repel each other. For future consideration, it may be too early to dismiss the potential of the Soviet military industrial complex. The fact that it was for so long the king of Soviet industries will cast its shadow over the economies of the new Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) for years to come. As to the new leaders' attitudes towards military production, several points are worth noting. First, arms sales may be rediscovered as a good source of hard currency. Second, smaller republics will keep an eye on Russia; for them, Russian history is the history of expansionism at the expense of its neighbours. Third, all republics have potentially destabilising forces in the enclaves of ethnic minorities. Therefore, assuming the CIS economies are able to recuperate and provide necessities for the population, there could be a resurgent interest in military production. Not surprisingly, for example, the Ukraine's move to independence began with the formation of a new national army. Ukraine will thus

Theodore Roosevelt: Conservative as Revolutionary

Abstract: The prominence of U.S military forces in the region after the 1880s placed the emphasis on obtaining economic opportunity and strategic footholds from which the United States could move to obtain further opportunities. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, the British relationship with Canada made Great Britain one of the two major obstacles to U.S. expansionism. The opportunities for expansion seemed plentiful, but two problems, race and revolution, brought to a stop the plans of Grant to annex areas in the Caribbean region. Railroad builders had tried to lay track in the 1860s to link up with their own transcontinental system, but the plan fell to Mexico's anti-Americanism. The Good Neighbor approach in the 1889-90 conference produced an arbitration convention to help settle disputes, a recommendation to build a railroad uniting North and South America, and the establishment of the Commercial Bureau of American Republics.