Bowman's New World and the Council on Foreign Relations

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5115075
AutoresN T Smith (0000-0002-2142-3841), Neil Smith (0000-0002-2598-9965), Isaiah Bowman
Año1986
Volumen76
Número4
Páginas438
Fecha de publicación1986-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGeographical Review (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0016-7428 • E-ISSN: 1931-0846
EditorialJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/214916
OpenAlexW2314718373
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas12

By early twentieth century, great powers realized that large-scale economic growth could no longer be accomplished by territorial expansion. After Paris peace conference of 1919, Bowman wrote New World, a survey of conditions that American economic expansion would confront in postwar years. Bowman believed that United States should have an activist foreign policy, and he helped found Council on Foreign Relations to achieve that goal. The council was an elitist group, influential in formation of foreign policy in World War II, and devoted to an activist gradualism. T HE transformation of Isaiah Bowman's vision of geography after his involvement in Paris peace conference was both a direct result of identifiable events and a broad product of times. Before 1917 Bowman's principal concern had been physiography with most of his research on interface between geology and physical geography; after 1917 he was primarily a political geographer. Even before his direct involvement in Inquiry and postwar peace conference, Bowman had shed some of his previous tendencies toward environmental determinism.' The political caldron of Paris further eroded them. In a letter to his friend, historian James Truslow Adams, Bowman asserted somewhat emphatically, As for question of determinism, last shreds of that influence, if I may so put it, were completely removed from fabric of my own integral life by experience with personalities at Peace Conference and by watching international events since that time.2 The peace conference made careers of many young geographers, Bowman among them. As a result of contacts made with American delegates as well as numerous other delegates and advisers in Paris and of wide publicity accorded proceedings, Bowman on his return to New York City could participate in private and public circles that had been closed to him two years earlier. The shift of intellectual focus from environmental determinism and his embrace of political geography were therefore fortuitous. by beginning of twentieth century there remained some desolate outposts to be explored and perhaps colonized, expansion of frontier in North America and of European colonialization elsewhere had passed its zenith. The conception of geography appropriate for that expansion had been highly physical and political, because physical environI Isaiah Bowman, The Andes of Southern Peru (New York: American Geographical Society, 1916). 2 Isaiah Bowman to James Truslow Adams, 2 August 1924, Isaiah Bowman Collection, Johns Hopkins University (JHU). * DR. SMITH is an assistant professor of geography at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08903. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.128 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:29:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms BOWMAN S NEW WORLD 439 ments on frontier and their potential usefulness to colonizing nationstates were cues on which nineteenth-century geography set its agenda. The end of colonization marked a profound geographical closure. economies of individual states as well as were to continue to expand, process could no longer be accomplished by geographical augmentation. expansion no longer was a means to economic growth. Bowman acutely sensed world into which he and rest of humanity had been cast. Writing in 1921, he observed that the has now been parceled out nearly to limit of vacant 'political space.' The economic expansion of individual nation-states could no longer be accomplished through control of political space, to use Bowman's term, but through extension of direct influence over economic space. Territorial expansion [is] succeeded by economic expansion.3 Emerging from World War I, massive American industrial economy was best poised to expand its control of vacant and not-so-vacant economic spaces around world. Indeed, there was little choice except to expand into market, if American economic growth was to continue. That change required a new geography, less physical in orientation and focused on relationships among nation-states in an increasingly interdependent, competitive economic and political arena. The vision of a new was no arcane or academic piece of geographical trivia; it was subject of intense political debate and speculation. Cecil Rhodes, an avowed British imperialist, clearly understood economic and especially political ramifications of that geographical closure. After a day in working-class East End of London with its high unemployment rate and rising political sentiments, he allegedly remarked, If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists. On other end of political spectrum, Rosa Luxemburg expected that geographical closure, resulting from effective end of colonization, would lead inexorably to economic closure; death of capitalism was nigh. Lenin argued that geographical closure would force capitalist classes to pursue economic expansion through alternative means, that is, internal monopoly and economic differentiation rather than external territorial growth.4 Bowman understood that conjuncture as simultaneously political and geographical, but he was no revolutionary. He rejected with conservative scorn revolutionary socialism of Lenin and Luxemburg and with liberal indignation haughty imperialism of Rhodes and European powers. With Woodrow Wilson, he believed that United States could be a moderating and moral force against those excesses in affairs. The United States was already thoroughly involved in affairs. or not it 3Isaiah Bowman, The New World (Yonkers-on-Hudson: World Book Company, 1921), 91; Isaiah Bowman, The New World (Yonkers-on-Hudson: World Book Company, 4th ed., 1928), 714. 4M. Beer, Der Modernische Englische Imperialismus, Die Neue Zeit XVI.I (1898), 304; Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (New York: Monthly Review, 1968); V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, The Highest State of Capitalism (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1975); Neil Smith, Uneven Development (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 97-154. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.128 on Wed, 07 Sep 2016 06:29:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 440 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW was a happy turn of events was beside point: American involvement was a reality and brought with it certain responsibilities. After Paris conference, task, for Bowman, was not simply to analyze and interpret as he had previously done, but to manage it. Whether we wish to do so or not, we are obliged to take hold of present situation in one way or another. So declared Bowman in first sentence of first edition of New World.5 Words were quickly followed by deeds, when Bowman helped found Council on Foreign Relations. For a quarter century after its founding in 1921, Bowman was one of three or four most influential leaders of this highly regarded nongovernmental institution for American foreign policy. Through council in 1920s and 1930s Bowman's political-geographical perspective, initially enunciated in New World, was elevated to a refined vision of coming American empire and how to achieve it. Carrying him to pinnacle of his political influence, that vision brought Bowman into Department of State during World War II, where he became a central figure in planning postwar political and economic arrangements, as they were called

Foreign policy · Foreign relations · Political science · Politics · Historical Geography and Geographical Thought · Law