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William Appleman Williams and the ‘American Empire’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

J. A. Thompson
J. A. Thompson
Affiliation:
St Catharine's College, Cambridge
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Extract

During the last decade William Appleman Williams has become one of the most influential of contemporary American historians. In particular, the comprehensive interpretation of United States foreign policy which he originally expounded in The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland and New York, 1959; revised edition, New York, 1962) has attracted many adherents in these years of the Vietnam war and the rise of the ‘New Left’. A school has developed and in a number of monographs and articles Williams's interpretative framework has been applied to various episodes and aspects of American foreign policy. Now Williams has edited a volume of essays, largely by members of this school, which ‘can be used as the basic guide for a course in American foreign relations’. Its appearance, following the recent publication in this country of Williams's own substantial work on the background to the Spanish-American War and America's acquisition of the Philippines, provides an appropriate occasion for a general review of the interpretation.

Type
Review Articles
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , April 1973 , pp. 91 - 104
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1973

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References

1 See, particularly, LaFeber, Walter, The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion 1860–1898 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1963)Google Scholar; Gardner, Lloyd C., Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison, Wisconsin, 1964)Google Scholar; McCormick, Thomas J., China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire 1893–1901 (Chicago, 1967)Google Scholar; and the essays by Gardner and Smith, Robert F. in Bernstein, Barton J. (editor), Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York, 1968)Google Scholar.

Other works which show Williams's influence include Alperovitz, Gar, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam (New York, 1965)Google Scholar; LaFeber, Walter, America, Russia and the Cold War, 1945–1966 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar; Levin, N. Gordon Jr, Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America’s Response to War and Revolution (New York, 1968)Google Scholar; Gardner, Lloyd C., (Architects of Illusion: Men and Ideas in American Foreign Policy 1941–1949) (Chicago, 1970).Google Scholar

2 From Colony to Empire: Essays in the History of American Foreign Relations (New York, 1972), p. 2Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as FCtE.

3 The Roots of the Modern American Empire: a Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society (London, 1970)Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as RMAE.

4 In the past few years the Williams thesis has also been sympathetically presented to a wider audience on both sides of the Atlantic. See Lasch, Christopher, ‘The Cold War, Revisited and Re-Visioned’, New York Times Magazine, 14 01 1968Google Scholar; Horowitz, David, Imperialism and Revolution (Pelican Books, 1971), especially Chapter 4. ‘Open Door Empire’Google Scholar; and Jones, Gareth Stedman, ‘The History of U.S. Imperialism’ in Blackburn, Robin (editor), Ideology in Social Science (Fontana, 1972).Google Scholar

5 The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (revised edition, 1962), p. 53Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as TAD.

6 TAD, pp. 80–2, 106–8, 123–7, 183–4, 186–7, 190, 206, 229–33, 258, 275–6.Google Scholar

7 FCtE, p. 476Google Scholar. Williams has provided his own outline summary of the thesis in The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic into the Dialogue about America's Future (Chicago, 1968), Chapter 2Google Scholar. In this work, though not elsewhere, he makes it clear that his interpretation is based on a Marxist analysis, but, since both the application to the history of American foreign policy and several of the theoretical formulations are original, it is not easy to relate it to other Marxist theories of imperialism.

8 ‘Foreign Policies of a New Nation: Franklin, Madison, and the “Dream of a New Land to Fulfill with People in Self-Control”, 1750–1804’, FCtE, pp. 9–37.Google Scholar

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10 RMAE, p. 95.Google Scholar

11 RMAE, p. 69.Google Scholar

12 TAD, p. 20Google Scholar; RMAE, pp. 8, 50–1Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 22–37.Google Scholar

13 Since ‘a majority when united by a common interest or passion cannot be restrained from oppressing the minority, what remedy can be found in a republican Government, where the majority must ultimately decide, but that of giving such an extent to its sphere, that no common interest or passion will be likely to unite a majority of the whole number in an unjust pursuit’. Madison, James to Jefferson, Thomas, 24 October 1787, Boyd, Julian P. (editor). Papers of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 12 (Princeton, 1955), p. 278.Google Scholar

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15 RMAE, p. 51.Google Scholar

16 Madison, to Jefferson, , 24 October 1787, Papers of Thomas Jefferson, p. 278.Google Scholar

17 RMAE, pp. 50, 51Google Scholar. In his essay in FCtE LaFeber mentions both Madison's view that republics could be too large and his proposal for an export tax (‘a true measure of Madison's nationalism, particularly given the dependence of his home state and section on the exporting of cotton and tobacco ’), but nonetheless goes on to attribute to him’ in 1787, a theory of how dangerous factions within an empire could be controlled by making it even more extensive on land and sea’. FCtE, pp. 28, 26, 37.Google Scholar

18 Van Alstyne, Richard W., The Rising American Empire (New York, 1960), p. 7.Google Scholar

19 TAD, p. 21Google Scholar; LaFeber, , The New Empire, pp. vii, 6–9.Google Scholar

20 Always concerned with ‘the relevance of history’, Williams draws a sombre lesson from the prime responsibility of ‘the agricultural majority’ for American imperialism. ‘There was thus no elite or other scapegoat to blame and replace. There are only ourselves to confront and change’. RMAE, pp. 45–6.Google Scholar

21 RMAE, p. 445Google Scholar; cf. pp. 23–4, 202, 375.

22 TAD, pp. 11, 34Google Scholar. Cf. RMAE, pp. 379, 417Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 176–7.Google Scholar

23 FCtE, pp. 222, 258Google Scholar; LaFeber, , The New Empire, pp. 8, 327Google Scholar. See also Gardner's, Lloyd essay, ‘American Foreign Policy 1900–1921: A Second Look at the Realist Critique of American Diplomacy’, in Bernstein, Towards a New Past, pp. 202–31Google Scholar. The classic ‘realist’ critiqueis, of course, Kennan, George F.'s American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago, 1951).Google Scholar

24 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, D.C., 1960), p. 542.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 550, 544.

26 RMAE, pp. 246–50.Google Scholar

27 TAD, pp. 45, 47.Google Scholar

28 E.g. in Samoa, , 1872Google Scholar, and Brazil, , 1893–1894Google Scholar. RMAE, pp. 150, 365–6Google Scholar. See also TAD, pp. 28–9, 33–4, 46–7, 165Google Scholar; RMAE, p. 314Google Scholar; FCtE, p. 194.Google Scholar

29 E.g. the attitude of the Theodore Roosevelt administration to E. H. Harriman's projects in Manchuria in 1908. FCtE, pp. 212–13Google Scholar. See also TAD, pp 29–30, 173.Google Scholar

30 For example, in his analysis of the causes of the Spanish-American War, he makes it clear that his purpose ‘is not to argue or suggest that McKinley went to war because important economic leaders told him to do so’. TAD, p. 37.Google Scholar

31 TAD, pp. 186–7Google Scholar. See also pp. II, 166–7, 206, 218, 232, 238–9, 267–8, 274; RMAE, pp. 298–9Google Scholar; The Great Evasion, p. 37.Google Scholar

32 ‘The Decline of Diplomatic History’ in Billias, George Athan and Grob, Gerald N. (editors), American History: Retrospect and Prospect (New York, 1971), pp. 417–21.Google Scholar

33 TAD, pp. 35, 46–7Google Scholar; RMAE, pp. 87–8Google Scholar; FCtE, p. 193Google Scholar. On the influence on American thought of other mirage markets, see RMAE, pp. 95, 261–2.Google Scholar

34 TAD, p. 21Google Scholar. Cf. RMAE, p. xivGoogle Scholar. Williams goes so far as to claim that ‘the consideration most directly pertinent in comprehending Wilson's handling of foreign policy is his commitment to the frontier thesis of Frederick Jackson Turner’. TAD, p. 65.Google Scholar

35 TAD, pp. 71n–72nGoogle Scholar. See also pp. 29–30, 37, 79, 173.

36 RMAE, p. 433Google Scholar. Such factors are more often seen as influencing the attitude of groups of Americans to specific issues. Thus, the hostility of many Southern congressmen to intervention in Mexico in the 1920s is linked to their anti-Catholicism, while, conversely, the indifference of the AFL to the fate of the Spanish Republic is attributed to the influence of Roman Catholic trade unionists. FCtE, pp. 277, 324.Google Scholar

37 RMAE, pp. 25, 37–8, 140, 160, 198–200, 300, 314, 324–5, 330–1, 364–5, 373Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 138, 267.Google Scholar

38 LaFeber, , The New Empire, p. 411Google Scholar. Cf. RMAE, Chapter 9; FCtE, p. 280.Google Scholar

39 TAD, p. 124.Google Scholar

40 RMAE, pp. xxiii, 15, 60–4, 259, 271Google Scholar. These themes are more fully developed in Williams, 's general work, The Contours of American History (Cleveland, 1961).Google Scholar

41 TAD, p. 57.Google Scholar

42 TAD, pp. 58–60.Google Scholar

43 E.g. TAD, pp. 50, 56, 58–60, 74, 92–3, 163, 200Google Scholar; RMAE, pp. 43, 361Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 254, 294.Google Scholar

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45 TAD, p. 117.Google Scholar

46 It‘organized data around economic criteria’. TAD, pp. 229, 30.Google Scholar

47 TAD, p. 200Google Scholar. Cf. RMAE, pp. 271–2, 314.Google Scholar

48 RMAE, p. 436Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 212, 208.Google Scholar

49 It is only on this basis that it makes sense to say, for instance, as Williams does, that ‘China was by 1937 firmly established in the minds of most policy-makers, and even below the level of conscious thought, as the symbol of the new frontier of America's ideological and economic expansion’. (TAD, p. 190Google Scholar, italics in original.) Cf. Gardner's description, of the 1928 prospectus of the Federal International Investment Trust as ‘a classic example of the pervasive, yet seemingly unconscious, and therefore all the more interesting influence of the frontier thesis on foreign policy assumptions’. Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy, p. 19.Google Scholar

50 TAD, pp. 29–30Google Scholar; The Great Evasion, p. 27.Google Scholar

51 TAD, pp. 79, 77.Google Scholar

52 It is not altogether reassuring that the two occasions on which Williams explicitly refers to the ‘vast amount of primary evidence’ on which his account is based concern points which would surprise few students of late-nineteenth century America – the broad agrarian support for silver in 1893, and the desire of eastern leaders to secure an international agreement on bimetallism. RMAE, pp. 363, 364, notes 69, 74.Google Scholar

53 RMAE, pp. 144, 265Google Scholar. For a more detailed critique of the way the late-nineteenth-century evidence is interpreted by the Williams school, see Holbo, Paul S., ‘Economics, Emotion and Expansion: an Emerging Foreign Policy’ in Morgan, H. Wayne (ed.), The Gilded Age (revised and enlarged edition, Syracuse, N.Y. 1970), pp. 201–13.Google Scholar

54 FCtE, pp. 297, 295–6Google Scholar. See also TAD, p. 189Google Scholar; The Great Evasion, p. 45.Google Scholar

55 TAD, pp. 211, 231–2, 245, 257–8.Google Scholar

56 TAD, pp. 37–42Google Scholar; LaFeber, , The New Empire, pp. 410–17Google Scholar; RMAE, pp. 438–42Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 197–8.Google Scholar

57 LaFeber, , The New Empire, p. 416.Google Scholar

58 FCtE, pp. 243–4, 246–7Google Scholar; TAD, pp. 106–8.Google Scholar

59 See Williams, , ‘The Legend of Isolationism in the 1920s’, Science and Society, 18 (Winter 1954), 1–20Google Scholar; TAD, Chapter 4, cf. Chapter 1; FCtE, pp. 254–68Google Scholar, cf. p. 197.

60 TAD, p. 123.Google Scholar

61 FCtE, pp. 27, 478.Google Scholar

62 RMAE, pp. 37, 223–4Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 171–2, 157, 179–83.Google Scholar

63 RMAE, pp. 137–8, 356Google Scholar; TAD, pp. 111–12, 142–3, 147–55Google Scholar; FCtE, pp. 272, 291–2Google Scholar; Gardner, , Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy, p. 61.Google Scholar

64 Cf. Higham, John, ‘The Cult of the “American Consensus”: Homogenizing Our History’, Commentary (02 1959), pp. 93–100.Google Scholar

65 RMAE, p. 42Google Scholar. Also Chapter 14

66 LaFeber, , The New Empire, pp. 414–15 at 415.Google Scholar

67 FCtE, pp. 5, 329–33, 326.Google Scholar

68 FCtE, p. 265Google Scholar. Cf. Williams's disclaimer after analysing the causes of the War of 1898 in terms of ‘the general and active support for economic expansion’ – ‘It should be made clear, however, that in suggesting this explanation of the war there is no direct or implicitargument that other considerations were non-existent or unimportant’. TAD, pp. 28–9.Google Scholar

69 See, particularly, Gardner, Lloyd C.'s essays on United States foreign policy since 1945 in FCtE, pp. 338–474Google Scholar. It should be pointed out, however, that, in his introduction, Williams expresses his personal dissent from Gardner's emphasis on‘the extent to which American policy makers were coping with external events rather than moving to impose their will upon reality‘. FCtE, p. 6.Google Scholar

70 This seems to be the thrust of Williams's general survey in the Conclusion to FCtE, pp. 476–87Google Scholar. It is also Gardner's argument in his introduction to the paperback edition of Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Boston, 1971), especially pp. xii–xiii.Google Scholar

71 For William's acknowledgement of his debt to the literature on ‘the imperialism of free trade’, see TAD, p. 90nGoogle Scholar. For an introduction to that literature, see Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade’, Economic History Review, Second series, 6 (1953), 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Robinson, Ronald and Gallagher, John with Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (London, 1961)Google Scholar; Platt, D. C. M., ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade: Some Reservations’, Economic History Review, Second series, 21 (1968), 296–306CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Semmell, Bernard, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy and the Empire of Free Trade (Cambridge, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 TAD, pp. 155–6.Google Scholar

73 RMAE, p. 238.Google Scholar

74 Semmel, , The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism, p. 202.Google Scholar

75 RMAE, pp. 62, 118Google Scholar; TAD, p. 172. Williams attributes this view to Marx. See The Great Evasion, p. 40.Google Scholar

76 RMAE, p. 209Google Scholar. Also pp. 22, 103. W. N. Mathew has pointed out, in another context, that ‘to argue that dominance alone is sufficient token of economic imperialism, that the heavy dependence of one country on another for its markets, its imports, and its capital is representative of colonial status … would, for example, necessitate viewing the United States as a British colony of sorts for most of the nineteenth century and would take much of the bite out of the concept’, ‘The Imperialism of Free Trade: Peru, 1820–70’, Economic History Review, Second series. 21 (1968), 562–79 at 563.Google Scholar