Syllabus HIST 5900 US Foreign Policy 1898 to 1945 Instructor: Dr. Graham Cox Office: Wooten Hall 255 Office Hours: TBA Office Telephone: 940.565.4526 Email: Graham.Cox@unt.edu When Emailing: Please put HIST 5990 in the Subject Line of all emails, and you MUST use your UNT email. I will NOT reply to non-unt email addresses. Emails will receive a reply within twenty-four (24) hours. For an Appointment: You MUST schedule in advance to guarantee I will be available to meet with you (even during office hours). COURSE DESCRIPTION This is a readings course in U.S. foreign policy and international history, with an integrated emphasis on foreign and domestic sources and consequences of global behavior and conflict from 1898 to 1945. LEARNING OBJECTIVES Students will identify and describe the major themes and central issues relating to U.S. foreign relations from 1898 to 1945. Students will identify and describe historiographical approaches used in the study of U.S. foreign relations. Students will identify and describe what history is (i.e., the activity by which we analyze the human past critically) through the study of U.S. foreign relations so that their knowledge of how historians cover, describe, and explain the behaviors and interactions among individuals, groups, institutions, events, and ideas will better equip them to understand themselves and the roles they may play as historians in addressing the issues facing humanity today. Students will develop and improve reading, critical thinking, and writing skills in relation to historical knowledge, issues, and the analysis of primary and secondary sources (i.e., improve your own intellectual self-reliance). COURSE STRUCTURE This course is based on in-class lecture, readings and bi-weekly discussion. Students will read seven (7) books from the topics listed below (we will make assignments during our first meeting). Students will attend regular meetings of the undergraduate course.
ASSESSMENTS AND GRADING Each student will be responsible for reading seven (7) different books during the semester and writing a four to five-page overview of five (5). These reviews will discuss the main arguments of the book and should include an assessment of the book s strengths and weaknesses and what might be expected of future works in the particular area (submission instructions will be provided later). Each book review will count 10% toward your semester grade. At the end of the semester, each student will prepare an impressionistic and synthetic 10-page essay based on his/her readings. Alternatively, students may choose to take all scheduled exams of the undergraduate course. This paper (or exam option) will count 30% toward your semester grade. Participation in discussion will count 20% toward your semester grade. SYLLABUS CHANGES While every attempt has been made to prepare this syllabus and the Course Schedule in final form, it will be the instructor s prerogative to make any changes as may be deemed necessary in order to meet the learning outcomes of the course. Any changes will be announced in a timely manner in class. Course Schedule Topic 1: Course Introduction & Book Assignments Topic 2: General Readings Costigliola, Frank, and Michael J. Hogan. Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations. Third edition. ed. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Drinnon, Richard. Facing West : The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997. Hobsbawm, E. J. The Age of Extremes : A History of the World, 1914-1991. 1st American ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994. Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. Kennedy, Paul M. The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers : Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Kolko, Gabriel. Century of War : Politics, Conflicts, and Society since 1914. New York: New Press : Distributed by W.W. Norton, 1994. Smith, Tony. America's Mission : The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy. Princeton Studies in International History and Politics. Expanded ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012. Williams, William Appleman. The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. A Delta Book. 2d rev. and enl. ed. New York,: Dell Pub. Co., 1972. 2
Topic 3: Post-Civil War LaFeber, Walter. The New Empire : An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860-1898. Cornell Paperbacks. 35th anniversary ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998. Campbell, Charles Soutter. The Transformation of American Foreign Relations, 1865-1900. The New American Nation Series. 1st ed. New York: Harper & Row, 1976. Hunt, Michael H. Frontier Defense and the Open Door : Manchuria in Chinese-American Relations, 1895-1911. Yale Historical Publications/Miscellany 95. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1973. LaFeber, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865-1913 (vol 2) in: Perkins, Bradford, Walter LaFeber, Akira Iriye, and Warren I. Cohen. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. 4 vols. Cambridge England ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Langley, Lester D., and Thomas David Schoonover. The Banana Men : American Mercenaries and Entrepreneurs in Central America, 1880-1930. Lexington, Ky.: University Press of Kentucky, 1995. McCormick, Thomas J. China Market : America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893-1901. 1st elephant pbk. ed. Chicago: I.R. Dee, 1990. Nearing, Scott, and Joseph Freeman. Dollar Diplomacy; a Study in American Imperialism. American Imperialism. New York,: Arno Press, 1970. Pe rez, Louis A. The War of 1898 : The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998. Pletcher, David M. The Diplomacy of Trade and Investment : American Economic Expansion in the Hemisphere, 1865-1900. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1998. Wiebe, Robert H. The Search for Order, 1877-1920. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980. Williams, William Appleman. The Roots of the Modern American Empire; a Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society. New York,: Random House, 1969. Topic 4: World War I Era Gardner, Lloyd C. Safe for Democracy : The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913-1923. New York: Oxford University Press, 1984. Hannigan, Robert E. The Great War and American Foreign Policy, 1914-24. Haney Foundation Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars : Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995. Levin, Norman Gordon. Woodrow Wilson and World Politics; America's Response to War and Revolution. A Galaxy Book, 309. London, New York,: Oxford University Press, 1970. 3
MacMillan, Margaret. Paris 1919 : Six Months That Changed the World. 1st U.S. ed. New York: Random House, 2002. Mayer, Arno J. Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918-1919. London,: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1968. Parrini, Carl P. Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916-1923. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburg Press, 1969. Sklar, Martin J. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916 : The Market, the Law, and Politics. Cambridge Cambridgeshire ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Tansill, Charles Callan. America Goes to War. Gloucester, Mass.,: P. Smith, 1963. Vaughn, Stephen. Holding Fast the Inner Lines : Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information. Supplementary Volumes to the Papers of Woodrow Wilson. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Topic 5: Between the Wars Cohen, Warren I. Empire without Tears : America's Foreign Relations, 1921-1933. 1st ed. New York: Knopf, 1987. Costigliola, Frank. Awkward Dominion : American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Gardner, Lloyd C. Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy. Beacon Paperback, 402. Boston,: Beacon Press, 1971. Hoff, Joan. Ideology and Economics; U.S. Relations with the Soviet Union, 1918-1933. Columbia,: University of Missouri Press, 1974. Hogan, Michael J. Informal Entente : The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo- American Economic Diplomacy, 1918-1928. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1977. Iriye, Akira. After Imperialism : The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921-1931. Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1990. Iriye, The Globalizing of America, 1913-1945 (vol 3) in: Perkins, Bradford, Walter LaFeber, Akira Iriye, and Warren I. Cohen. The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations. 4 vols. Cambridge England ; New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Leffler, Melvyn P. The Elusive Quest : America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Rosenberg, Emily S., and Eric Foner. Spreading the American Dream : American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945. American Century Series. 1st ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. Topic 6: World War II Era Dower, John W. War without Mercy : Race and Power in the Pacific War. 1st ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. 4
Hasegawa, Tsuyoshi. Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005. Hogan, Michael J. A Cross of Iron : Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Holloway, David. Stalin and the Bomb : The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994. Kimball, Warren F. Forged in War : Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War. 1st ed. New York: W. Morrow, 1997. Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War; the World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943-1945. New York,: Random House, 1968. Louis, William Roger. Imperialism at Bay : The United States and the Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Thorne, Christopher G. Allies of a Kind : The United States, Britain, and the War against Japan, 1941-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Walker, J. Samuel. Prompt and Utter Destruction : Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan. Rev. ed. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 5