The Frontier Thesis and American Foreign Policy

Dados Bibliográficos

ID10318841
AutoresWilliam Appleman Williams (autor correspondente)
Ano1955
Volume24
Fascículo4
Páginas379-395
Data de publicação1955-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoPacific Historical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0030-8684 • E-ISSN: 1533-8584
EditoraUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.2307/3635322
OpenAlexW2011790012
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas31
Referências citadas17

ONE OF THE CENTRAL THEMES of American historiography is that there is no American Empire. Most historians will admit, if pressed, that the United States once had an empire. They promptly insist that it was given away. But they also speak persistently of America as a World Power.' Whatever language is used to describe the situation, the record of American diplomacy is clear in one point. The United States has been a consciously and steadily expanding nation since 189o. This essay is an initial exploration of one of the dynamic causes behind that extension of varying degrees of American sovereignty throughout the world. Three continuing and interacting processes produce foreign policy. First, the domestic and overseas activity of the citizenry, and of other countries, which forces a government to take action in the international area. Second, the nature of that official action. And third, the reactions that such policies provoke among its own people and on the part of the foreigners who are affected. The circle is thus closed and rolls on through time. In studying foreign policy it ultimately becomes necessary to break into this continuity and find out, if possible, what the people in question thought they were doing. One way to do this is to reconstruct the reality with which given men were forced to deal, look at it through their eyes, interpret it with their ideas, and then conclude as to the consequences of such a world view. The argument here, based on such a methodology, is that a set of ideas, first promulgated in the 189o's, became the world view of subsequent

Frontier · Political science · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Law