America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941

by Michael J. Hogan (Editor)

This volume includes state-of-the-art essays and historiographical surveys of American foreign relations since 1941 by some of the country's leading diplomatic historians. The essays in part one offer sweeping overviews of the major trends in the field of diplomatic history. Part two features essays that survey the literature on US relations with particular regions of the world or on the foreign policies of presidential administrations. The result is the most comprehensive assessment of the literature on US foreign policy to be published in nearly twenty years.

Genres: History

640 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 1996

About the author

Michael J. Hogan (born 1943) is an American academic who has served in the administrations or on the faculty of many American universities, wrote or edited numerous books, contributed as an adviser to the U. S. Department of State and several documentaries. Currently he is a distinguished professor of history at the University of Illinois at Springfield.

Reviews

[Scott Johns · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic overview of the historiography of American foreign relations. It's filled with essays written by big names in American history, like Bruce Cumings, Mel Leffler, Stephen Rabe, Robert Schulzinger, Mark Gilderhus, Douglas Little, and Robert McMahon. Not only that, but it's edited by Michael Hogan! Each author tackles the historiography of a major problem in American foreign relations (to reference another work edited by Hogan), including the decision to drop the bomb on Japan, the origins and progress of the Korean War, the Eisenhower and JFK years, and the Cold War in Asia.

While each chapter is valuable in its own right (the final one on American intelligence during the Cold War being a welcome surprise), my favourite part of the book is the first section, which features essays by Cumings, Leffler, and Michael Hunt. These essays delve into the historiography of and practice of history. Their value lies in their not being focused on a specific topic, like the Vietnam War, but in dealing with the approaches used by historians to discuss those topics. Cumings, for example, considers the so-called orthodox, revisionist, and postrevisionist interpretations of the origins of the Cold War and criticizes historians for their narrow focus. Leffler recognized the value of postrevisionist approaches like looking at gender, but also argued they should be integrated into more traditional approaches used in diplomatic history. Part One also features commentaries by the three authors as they respond to each other's criticisms. Cumings' essays are by far my favourite. Not only does he present an important way of looking at history in his world systems approach, but his writing style is just so sassy. He actually made me laugh out loud a few times.

I do have a few qualms with the book. As it was published in 1995, it is obviously not completely up-to-date. It was published a few years after the opening of Soviet archives at the end of the Cold War, and most of the literature in this period was unable to take full advantage of it. This had the effect of forcing many authors to conclude that the area of research they are discussing will progress by looking to the opening archives. This almost seemed like a cop-out to me, but it's understandable. Because of the book's age, conclusions and arguments must be taken with a grain of salt.

Another problem I have is the book's limited treatment of Latin America. There is a chapter devoted to general US-Latin American relations during the Cold War and there are references to specific events in other chapters, like the CIA's intervention in Guatemala in the Eisenhower chapter or the Cuban Missile Crisis in the JFK chapter. There is no dedicated chapter to specific events or countries, though. The historiography of American interventions in Latin America, for example, could have covered lots of ground by looking at Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, and Grenada, as well as the Bay of Pigs.

Despite these problems, this book is an excellent primer for any student of American foreign relations. It is an enjoyable and informative read and I highly recommend it.