The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

Twenty-Five Years after

Bibliographic Data

ID11610225
AuthorsBradford Perkins (corresponding author)
Year1984
Volume12
Issue1
Pages1-1
Publication date1984-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReviews in American History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0048-7511 • E-ISSN: 1080-6628
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2702548
OpenAlexW2319327783
LanguageEN
Citations received11
References cited8

influence of William Appleman Williams's Tragedy of American Diplomacy, published a quarter century ago, is beyond challenge. An iconoclastic attack upon conventional wisdom, it is equally important because it framed arguments about its subject. In both ways it is very much like the study of the Constitution by Charles A. Beard, a scholar whom Williams reveres. And when historians finally escaped the conceptual fetters imposed by Beard and Williams they found that they could not - indeed, did not want to - ignore much that these figures suggested. In 1959, Tragedy made a rather modest splash. New York Times did review it, and the Christian Science Monitor denounced it as a Stalinist tract. But the American Historical Review, which then used smaller type and fewer words for reviews of minor publications, placed Williams's book in that category. Most reviewers praised the author's originality, then savaged his emphasis on economic factors. A political scientist, who suggested that the book was a mistake unlikely to be committed in his profession, believed it would be ignored: The approach taken by Williams is no longer in the mainstream of international relations study.1 But within only a few years Tragedy was definitely in the mainstream. Reviewers concentrated on Williams's most persistent theme, that almost

Ancient history · Art · Diplomacy · Literature · Political science · Politics · Tragedy (event · American Constitutional Law and Politics · History · Law