AMERICAN POLITICS & DIPLOMACY TO 1898

AMERICAN POLITICS & DIPLOMACY TO 1898

This course considers the rise of the United States from its origins as a string of dependent settlements along the Atlantic coast to a continent-spanning global power. It examines this rise by combining an examination of the emergence of a distinctively American political system with a consideration of the foreign relations of the American colonies and, after 1776, the United States.


This course assumes a basic knowledge of American history to 1898. If you would like to bolster that knowledge, you should obtain a survey of American history, preferably American foreign relations, for this period. Some good titles would be Thomas Paterson, et al., American Foreign Relations (volume one), Walter LaFeber, The American Age (preferably volume one), or Howard Jones, Crucible of Power (volume one). These books are not required and therefore not available at campus bookstores. They can be obtained online or elsewhere.


Course Schedule and Assignment

UNIT ONE: THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN POLITICS AND DIPLOMACY

Lecture themes:
North America as the first colonists found it. Origins of American colonial politics; the reassertion of royal authority after the Indian crises of 1676; the rise of an American ideology based on British “Commonwealth” thought and its implications for American perceptions of non-Americans; politics and diplomacy of the American Revolution
DISCUSSION: Eric Hinderaker, At the Edge of Empire

UNIT TWO: FROM THE REVOLUTION TO THE MONROE DOCTRINE

Lecture themes:
Beginnings of national-level politics leading to origins of U.S. Constitution; impact of the French Revolution on American politics & diplomacy; the twin crises of 1800 and Jefferson’s solutions; the tangled political origins of the War of 1812; the demise of the Federalists, John Quincy Adams’ political resurrection, and his role in the origins of the Monroe Doctrine
DISCUSSION: Frank Reuter, Trials and Triumphs

UNIT THREE: FIRST FLUSH OF EXPANSION

Lecture themes:
The Jacksonian order and its breakdown; the enigma of the Whigs; the strange career of Manifest Destiny in the Mexican War; filibustering in Central America as an expression of sectional and racial politics; was the Perry expedition to Japan the same?
DISCUSSION: Frederick Merk, Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History; MIDTERM EXAM thereafter


UNIT FOUR: RACE, POLITICS, WAR AND DIPLOMACY

Lecture themes:
The slavery/abolition issues in the Atlantic arena; coming of the Civil War; wartime politics and diplomacy; impact of Reconstruction on American politics; how Reconstruction stunted American expansionist impulses into the Caribbean; the Republican Party’s struggle to find new issues and emergence of prohibitionism, parochialism, and expansionism in consequence; renewed frictions with nonwhite peoples in American West, Caribbean, and Hawaii
DISCUSSION: Heather Cox Richardson, Wounded Knee



UNIT FIVE: CONNECTICUT YANKEES IN THE CHINESE EMPEROR’S COURT

Lecture themes:
The troubled ethnic politics of the Gilded Age and near-destruction of the Republican Party that ensued; McKinley’s political solution to the party’s crisis; McKinley’s diplomatic solution to the party’s crisis; the Cuban crisis and ensuing war with Spain ushers in years of Republican dominance

DISCUSSION: David Healy, US Expansionism