
Promise and Peril
America at the Dawn of a Global Age
Christopher McKnight Nichols(Author)
Harvard University Press
Published on 29. April 2011
Book
Hardback
464 pages
978-0-674-04984-0 (ISBN)
Description
Spreading democracy abroad or taking care of business at home is a tension as current as the war in Afghanistan and as old as America itself. Tracing the history of isolationist and internationalist ideas from the 1890s through the 1930s, Nichols reveals unexpected connections among individuals and groups from across the political spectrum who developed new visions for America's place in the world. From Henry Cabot Lodge and William James to W. E. B. Du Bois and Jane Addams to Randolph Bourne, William Borah, and Emily Balch, Nichols shows how reformers, thinkers, and politicians confronted the challenges of modern society--and then grappled with urgent pressures to balance domestic priorities and foreign commitments. Each articulated a distinct strain of thought, and each was part of a sprawling national debate over America's global role. Through these individuals, Nichols conducts us into the larger community as it strove to reconcile America's founding ideals and ideas about isolation with the realities of the nation's burgeoning affluence, rising global commerce, and new opportunities for worldwide cultural exchange.
The resulting interrelated set of isolationist and internationalist principles provided the basis not just for many foreign policy arguments of the era but also for the vibrant as well as negative connotations that isolationism still possesses. Nichols offers a bold way of understanding the isolationist and internationalist impulses that shaped the heated debates of the early twentieth century and that continue to influence thinking about America in the world today.
The resulting interrelated set of isolationist and internationalist principles provided the basis not just for many foreign policy arguments of the era but also for the vibrant as well as negative connotations that isolationism still possesses. Nichols offers a bold way of understanding the isolationist and internationalist impulses that shaped the heated debates of the early twentieth century and that continue to influence thinking about America in the world today.
Reviews / Votes
In this important new book, Christopher McKnight Nichols invites a broad reconsideration of [isolationism] by tracing its origins back to the debates over U.S. imperialism at the end of the 19th century and its surprising continuities--and surprising bedfellows--over the next-half century...Nichols has done us a valuable service in providing us with tools to see history anew--and to wield it responsibly. -- Jim Cullen History News Network 20110419 [A] highly perceptive work...Promise and Peril is a provocative study, demolishing many stereotypes and offering new patterns concerning liberal anti-interventionism. It deserves a wide readership. -- Justus Doenecke H-Net 20110701 Americans are always on the lookout for isolationism in the U.S.--and it never arrives. In a most clearly explicated expose, Nichols<'author> explains why. Using the bio-historical approach, he brings forth salient figures from the Gilded Age to serve as examples to elucidate the nuances of the U.S.'s complex ideology. The author refutes prior simplistic assessments of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson's "no entangling alliances" descriptor of U.S. foreign policy, shifting the focus from isolationism to "meaningful international involvement (where) nothing less than the meaning of America was at stake." Through the voices often articulators of isolationist thinking, Nichols convincingly concludes "American policy in the interwar era was not nearly as isolationist as many have characterized it." Rather, these individuals proposed a "salvific prescription to reconstitute a better society" in the midst of turbulent times. Clarifying the strains of isolationism serves as a useful tool for understanding the nuanced argument of Gilded Age thought prescient at the dawn of a new global age. Beneath the study of isolationist thought, Nichols reawakens a discourse of what it means to be an American. -- G. Donato Choice 20120101More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
US School Grade: College Graduate Student
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With printed dust jacket
Illustrations
16 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-674-04984-0 (9780674049840)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2011
1st Edition
Harvard University Press
€71.99
Available for download
Person
Christopher McKnight Nichols is the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in U.S. History at the University of Pennsylvania.