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Expansionism

About: Expansionism is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 979 publications have been published within this topic receiving 11169 citations.


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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors revisited the nature of American expansionism in the Progressive Era and argued that prior British experience and political thought were consistently rhetorically privileged by American administrators within the trans-imperial marketplace of ideas surrounding colonial governance.
Abstract: This article revisits the nature of American expansionism in the Progressive Era. It contends that the figure of Evelyn Baring, the first Earl of Cromer, and the British “Veiled Protectorate” over Egypt shaped the internal American retention debate regarding the Philippines in terms directly compatible with the political dichotomy between liberal advocacy of “self-government” and conservative calls for “good government” that lay at the heart of British imperial policy. It further argues that prior British imperial experience and political thought were consistently rhetorically privileged by American administrators within the trans-imperial marketplace of ideas surrounding colonial governance. In doing so, it builds on previous transnational and comparative scholarship on U.S. imperialism of this period, typified by the work of Paul A. Kramer and Frank Schumacher. It rejects renewed exceptionalist attempts to artificially isolate American colonial state-building via Jeremi Suri’s “Nation-Building” paradigm and the “American Umpire” concept recently advanced by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman.

16 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
27 Dec 2004-ELH
TL;DR: For instance, Casarino as discussed by the authors describes the vicissitudes of globalizing industry that were enacted on the “factory floor” of the whaleship, an epochal shift from mercantile to industrial capitalism, an ensuing redefinition of the relationship between labor and capital, and the unpredictable effects of intimate and extended interaction amongst a radically international, multiethnic, multilingual and especially multiracial labor force.
Abstract: I. Moby-Dick emerges at a point of crucial historical transition in several areas of American life. By the mid-nineteenth century, the growth and global expansion of the nation’s economy following the War of 1812, and the pugnacious expansionism exemplified by the Mexican War and the ideology of manifest destiny, were giving way to signs of strain and impending civil discord: 1850 and 1851, the years during which Melville wrote his novel, were the years of the doomed compromise between opponents and proponents of slavery. The oceans provided a space in which these contending currents met and mingled. 1 Echoing contemporary politicians and apologists, Moby-Dick’s narrator rhapsodizes about the contributions made to America’s economy and the dissemination of its influence by the vast whaling fleet which, at the apogee of the industry, spanned the planet. 2 The tensions aboard the Pequod, condensed into the malignant figure of the White Whale, therefore embody contemporary strains and threats produced by industrialization, at both the natural and the cultural levels. Cesare Casarino has enumerated the vicissitudes of globalizing industry that were enacted on the “factory floor” of the whaleship: an epochal shift from mercantile to industrial capitalism, an ensuing redefinition of the relationship between labor and capital, and the unpredictable effects of intimate and extended interaction amongst a radically “international, multiethnic, multilingual and especially multiracial labor force.” 3 Moreover, the catastrophic fate of the Pequod, suggesting the transience and fragility of these economic and social transactions, uncannily anticipated the collapse of the sperm whale fishery as well. For the middle of the century was also a turning point for whaling: during these years “Californian fever” began to take labor away from the centers of the

16 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In the past few years, the study of progressivism has reflected dramatically the consensus trend of American historical interpretation which has been so well described by John Higham as discussed by the authors, which is of a movement to achieve the rationalization of business through government regulation, while the Underwood-Simmons Tariff was successfully defended as a necessary function of government-supported export drives.
Abstract: IN the past few years the study of progressivism has reflected dramatically the consensus trend of American historical interpretation which has been so well described by John Higham.1 Not only does the Bell toll, it positively celebrates the end of ideology. The cumulative portrait of progressivism worked by historians such as Samuel P. Hays, Samuel Haber, George E. Mowry, Robert H. Wiebe, Russel B. Nye, Gabriel Kolko, and Thomas C. Cochran2 is of a movement to achieve the rationalization of business through government regulation. Regulation of semimonopolistic competition in areas such as banking, railroading, natural resources development, and food and drug production was promoted and formulated by big business while the Underwood-Simmons Tariff was successfully defended as a necessary function of government-supported export drives. A big navy and imperialism, endorsed by populist-progressivism, were equally espoused by business once it got over its springtime jitters of 1898.3 Indeed, traditional business-agrarian expansionism simply acquired in the progressive period some new slogans such as the Open Door, Dollar Diplomacy, and the White Man's Burden. In the consensus view of these years, William How-

16 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Paul as mentioned in this paper argues that the expansion of the president's foreign relations power obstructed public accountability, facilitated interventionism, and corrupted the policy-making process, arguing that even in the absence of any external threat, courts willingly suspended critical judgments and embraced expediency discourse.
Abstract: From the Founding through the Second World War well established understandings constrained executive power over foreign relations. Since the Cold War the executive has enlarged its foreign relations power. Courts and commentators justified and defended the growth of executive power in relation to two geopolitical phenomenon. First, the executive was better positioned to command the United States' wider global responsibilities. Second, the threat posed by Soviet expansionism and nuclear missile technology did not afford time for congressional deliberation. While scholars have debated whether the Cold War actually justified the extent of executive power, they have generally accepted as a self-evident proposition that the president's authority should expand in response to geopolitical circumstances. Professor Paul characterizes the proposition that presidential power expands relative to geopolitical exigencies as a "discourse of executive expediency." Paul traces the origin of this discourse to the domestic debates over the Bricker Amendment, McCarthysm and the War in Indochina and shows how courts used this justificatory rhetoric to construct a new method for interpreting the president's constitutional powers. Focusing particularly on the use of executive agreements, Paul argues that even in the absence of any external threat, courts willingly suspended critical judgments and embraced expediency discourse. In Paul's view, the expansion of the president's foreign relations power obstructed public accountability, facilitated interventionism, and corrupted the policy-making process. Paul challenges the continued reliance on Cold War discourse and offers an alternative approach to adjudicating questions on the reach of executive foreign relations power.

16 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: For instance, the authors argues that rather than the unrestrained expansionism so often associated with the early American republic, the print and visual culture that accompanied the Louisiana Purchase expressed profound ambivalences toward the West and toward expansion.
Abstract: In 1803, the Louisiana Purchase transformed the boundaries of the United States. In the process, it forced Americans to rethink how they conceived of expansion, landscape, and nation. This article examines the cultural production that followed, focusing primarily on the ways that Americans represented the West in pamphlets, travel narratives, and maps. This article also seeks to challenge some familiar assumptions about westward expansion while seeking to provide models for interdisciplinary inquiry that connect policymaking to print and visual culture. This article argues that rather than the unrestrained expansionism so often associated with the early American republic, the print and visual culture that accompanied the Louisiana Purchase expressed profound ambivalences toward the West and toward expansion. Equally important, this outlook was never entirely the result of fears about expansion itself. Instead, a combination of factors—political philosophy, publishing technology, and policymaking necessity—combined to shape the ways Americans went about describing the West. Meanwhile, the narrative personae of western explorers who aimed for public careers in the civil and military branches of the federal government further informed the notion that the West presented profound dangers to the union. All of these factors combined to question the tangible benefits of expansion into the Far West beyond the Mississippi, even as those forms of express drew on the celebration of expansion into the Near West during the decades before 1803. This article begins by examining the conventions of western landscape description that preceded the Louisiana Purchase. It then examines the political pamphlets that came in the immediate aftermath of the Purchase, and then the travel narratives and books produced by the first federal expeditions into the Purchase territories. This article concludes by explaining how Americans later reconfigured the images of the Louisiana Purchase to fuel a pro-expansionist outlook in the antebellum era. This change was partly the result of shifts in public sentiment and political culture, but it was also the result of shifts in the American cartographic industry and the rising power of new generic forms, specifically the novel and landscape painting. This article seeks to engage a broad range of writing for scholarly and general audiences alike. For generations, it has been standard practice to situate the Louisiana Purchase as a touchstone in the broader story of Anglo-American expansionism. This article argues instead that American settlers may have eagerly sought additional lands in the West, but American policymakers, pamphleteers, explorers, and cartographers were more circumspect. While hardly opposed to American dominance, they described challenges of a more practical nature in the West that might exceed the capacities of the federal government. This article situates the discussion of the Purchase and its aftermath within a broader context of expansionism, print, and visual culture in the early republic. Indeed, a crucial claim of this article is that historians of federal policymaking and scholars on cultural production—fields that often function in isolation—stand to reap enormous benefits from a close conversation that considers the way cultural production shaped the way policymaking decision appeared to the general public as well as the policymaking priorities that shaped how Americans represented their nation and themselves.

16 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202374
2022172
202126
202038
201928
201835