|
Showing 1 - 6 of
6 matches in All Departments
This incisive interpretation of American foreign policy ranks as a
classic in American thought. First published in 1959, the book
offered an analysis of the wellsprings of American foreign policy
that shed light on the tensions of the Cold War and the deeper
impulses leading to the American intervention in Vietnam. William
Appleman Williams brilliantly explores the ways in which ideology
and political economy intertwined over time to propel American
expansion and empire in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
powerful relevance of Williams s interpretation to world politics
has only been strengthened by recent events in Central Asia and the
Persian Gulf. Williams allows us to see that the interests and
beliefs that once sent American troops into Texas and California,
or Latin America and East Asia, also propelled American forces into
Iraq."
William Appleman Williams was one of America's greatest critics of
US imperialism. The Contours of American History, first published
in 1961, reached back to seventeenth-century British history to
argue that the relationship between liberalism and empire was in
effect a grand compromise, with expansion abroad containing class
and race tensions at home. Williams was not the first historian to
identify the United States as an imperial power, yet he was unique
in linking domestic disquiet to the long history of American
expansion, which he traced back to England's Glorious Revolution.
Reaching deep into thirteenth century British history to identify
the motor contradictions of what eventually would become known as
liberalism, Williams presents a wholly original interpretation of
US history; one where the story of the United States is the story
of capitalism. Coming as it did before the political explosions of
the 1960s, Williams's message was a deeply heretical one, and yet
the Modern Library ultimately chose Contours as one of the best 100
nonfiction books of the 20th Century. This fiftieth anniversary
edition will introduce this magisterial work to a new readership,
with a new introduction by Greg Grandin, one of today's leading
historians of US foreign policy.
Detailing the imperial actions and beliefs of such revered figures
as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, the author creates an
in-depth historical study of the American obsession with empire - a
study essential to the understanding of the origins of current
domestic and foreign undertakings.
William Appleman Williams was one of America s greatest critics of
US imperialism. The Contours of American History, first published
in 1961, reached back to seventeenth-century British history to
argue that the relationship between liberalism and empire was in
effect a grand compromise, with expansion abroad containing class
and race tensions at home. Coming as it did before the political
explosions of the 1960s, Williams s message was a deeply heretical
one, and yet the Modern Library ultimately chose Contours as one of
the best 100 nonfiction books of the 20th Century."
|
You may like...
Catan
(16)
R889
Discovery Miles 8 890
|