Most overviews of American history depict an isolationist country
finally dragged kicking and screaming onto the world stage by the
attack on Pearl Harbor. David Hendrickson shows that Americans
instead conducted often-raucous debates over international
relations in the long epoch customarily seen as
isolationist-debates that form the ideological origins of today's
foreign policy arguments.
"Union, Nation, or Empire" is a sequel to Hendrickson's
acclaimed "Peace Pact," in which he identified a "unionist
paradigm" that defined America's political understanding in 1787.
His new book examines how that paradigm was transformed under the
impact of the great wars that followed. Through skillfully drawn
portraits of American statesmen, from Hamilton and Jefferson to
Wilson and the two Roosevelts, Hendrickson reveals "union, nation,
and empire" as fundamental categories of political discourse that
have shaped our engagement with the world since 1776.
Hendrickson argues that the ongoing debate over union, nation,
and empire in American history encompasses and illuminates the
great questions of international relations-such as whether
democracies are as prone to war as monarchies, whether trade
promotes peace, or whether empire is compatible with free
institutions. Setting these debates in the context of historical
events, from the birth of our federal government to America's entry
into World War II, he shows the significance of the federal union
in our history and demonstrates that internationalism has deep
roots in America's past. His assessment of the unionist tradition,
in counterpoint to rival ideologies of nationalism and imperialism,
includes new insights into the causes of the Civil War and shows
how after that conflict the building blocks of the original
paradigm were reconstructed to shape the internationalist
persuasion in the twentieth century.
Deftly combining intellectual, constitutional, and diplomatic
history, this gracefully written work revives the compelling
rhetoric of yesterday's statesmen to offer readers a lucid
narrative of American international thought. It challenges accepted
interpretations of our role in the world as it restores the federal
union to its proper place in the understanding of American
statecraft.
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