Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T19:46:48.099Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Woodrow Wilson, Alliances, and the League of Nations1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Lloyd E. Ambrosius
Affiliation:
University of Nebraska—Lincoln

Extract

People in the United States and other countries, if they know anything about Woodrow Wilson, identify this American president with the League of Nations. They regard his role in its creation as his major contribution to world history. Beyond this general consensus, however, there is considerable disagreement.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Ambrosius, Lloyd E., “Woodrow Wilson and World War I” in A Companion to American Foreign Relations, ed. Schulzinger, Robert D. (Maiden, MA, 2003), 149–67.Google Scholar

3 Baker, Ray Stannard and Dodd, William E., eds., The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 6 vols. (New York, 1925-1927), 4: 184–88.Google Scholar

4 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 4: 407–14.Google Scholar

5 For the ongoing debate over the balance of power and hegemony, see Ikenberry, G. John, ed., America Unrivaled: The Future of the Balance of Power (Ithaca, NY, 2002).Google Scholar

6 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 616.Google Scholar

7 Ross, Dorothy, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, UK, 1991)Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York, 1996), 1776Google Scholar; Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK, 1988), 61132CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breisach, Ernst A., American Progressive History: An Experiment in Modernisation (Chicago, 1993)Google Scholar. For recent attempts to escape the historic framework of American exceptionalism by the Organization of American Historians' Project on Internationalizing the Study of American History, see Bender, Thomas, ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Santis, Hugh De, Beyond Progress: An Interpretive Odyssey to the Future (Chicago, 1996)Google Scholar.

8 Gamble, Richard M., The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE, 2003)Google Scholar; Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (Cambridge, UK, 1987), 1213CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Marty, Martin E., Modern American Religion, Vol. I: The Irony of It All, 1893-1919 (Chicago, 1986), 398416Google Scholar; Stephanson, Anders, Manifest Destiny: American Expansionism and the Empire of Right (New York, 1995), 113–29Google Scholar; and McDougall, Walter A., Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (Boston, 1997), 122–46Google Scholar.

9 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 155–62.Google Scholar

10 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 253–61.Google Scholar

11 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 329.Google Scholar

12 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 395400.Google Scholar

13 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 413.Google Scholar

14 Mulder, John M., Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation (Princeton, NJ, 1978)Google Scholar; Rowlands, David T., “Democracy, American Nationalism and Woodrow Wilson's Search for Identity” (Ph.D. diss., University of Sydney, 1999)Google Scholar.

15 Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism during World War I (Wilmington, DE, 1991), 1112.Google Scholar

16 Nordholt, Jan Willem Schulte, Woodrow Wilson: A Life for World Peace, trans. Rowen, Herbert S. (Berkeley, 1991).Google Scholar

17 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 444–55.Google Scholar

18 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 478–81.Google Scholar

19 Boyle, Francis Anthony, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations, 1898-1922 (Durham, NC, 1999).Google Scholar

20 Zasloff, Jonathan, “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: From the Gilded Age to the New Era,” New York University Law Review 20 (2001): 1128Google Scholar; Zasloff, Jonathan, “Law and the Shaping of American Foreign Policy: The Twenty Years' Crisis,” New York University Law Review 20 (2002): 1100Google Scholar.

21 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 509–15.Google Scholar

22 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 523–24.Google Scholar

23 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 537–52.Google Scholar

24 , Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition, 136–71.Google Scholar

25 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 5: 574–80.Google Scholar

26 , Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition, 172250.Google Scholar

27 Ambrosius, Loyd E., “Wilson's League of Nations,” Maryland Historical Magazine 65 (Winter 1970): 369–93.Google Scholar

28 Ambrosius, Lloyd E., “Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security after World War I,” Journal of American History 59 (Sept. 1972): 341–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 , Ambrosius, “Wilson, the Republicans, and French Security,” 341–52Google Scholar; , Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition, 108-13, 123, 137, 139-40, 152-53, 164-65, 211–14Google Scholar. See also Widenor, William C., Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley, 1980), 266348Google Scholar.

30 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 6: 277–92.Google Scholar

31 , Baker and , Dodd, Public Papers, 6: 299310.Google Scholar

32 Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson and His Legacy in American Foreign Relations (New York, 2002), 51-64, 9199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 McDougall, Walter A., Promised Land, Crusader State, 122–46.Google Scholar

34 Ikenberry, G. John, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order after Major Wars (Princeton, NJ, 2001)Google Scholar. References in chapters on the settlements of 1815, 1919, and 1945 show Ikenberry's extensive reliance on three historical studies: Schroeder, Paul W, The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford, 1994)Google Scholar; , Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition;Google Scholar and Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963 (Princeton, NJ, 1999). See also Gaddis, John Lewis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New York, 1987)Google Scholar.

35 , Ikenberry, After Victory, 117–62.Google Scholar

36 Knock, Thomas J., To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

37 Cooper, John Milton Jr, Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (Cambridge, UK, 2001).Google Scholar

38 Despite efforts by some U.S. and foreign historians, such as the Project on Internationalizing the Study of American History, to escape American exceptionalism, that framework continues to influence historical writing on the Progressive era. The nationalist bias of American exceptionalism, which characterized that era, still shapes historical scholarship on U.S. and world history during the Progressive era. This is a fundamental problem in Dawley, Alan, Changing the World: American Progressives in War and Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2003)Google Scholar, despite his attempt to relate American progressivism to world history and his advocacy of a new “world consciousness.” He ignored even the most outstanding scholarship by foreign historians (such as Klaus Schwabe, Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, and John A. Thompson) on Wilson, Woodrow, “the preeminent progressive.” See my review ofGoogle Scholar, Dawley's book in Peace and Change 30 (July 2005): 398429CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Iriye, Akira, The Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations, Vol. III: The Globalising of America, 1913-1945 (Cambridge, UK, 1993), 72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 Iriye, Akira, Global Community: The Role of International Organisations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, 2002).Google Scholar

41 Smith, Tony, America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ, 1994).Google Scholar

42 Ninkovich, Frank, The Wilsonian Century: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1900 (Chicago, 1999).Google Scholar

43 Perlmutter, Amos, Making the World Safe for Democracy: A Century of Wilsonianism and Its Totalitarian Challengers (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997).Google Scholar

44 Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (New York, 1992).Google Scholar

45 Mandlebaum, Michael, The Ideas that Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets in the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2002).Google Scholar

46 Ruggie, John Gerard, Winning the Peace: America and World Order in the New Era (New York, 1996).Google Scholar

47 McNamara, Robert S. and Blight, James G., Wilson's Ghost: Reducing the Risk of Conflict, Killing, and Catastrophe in the Twenty-First Century (New York, 2001), 3.Google Scholar

48 , Ambrosius, Wilsonianism, 2129Google Scholar; Fry, Joseph A., Dixie hooks Abroad: The South and U.S. Foreign Relations, 1789-1973 (Baton Rouge, LA, 2002), 139–74Google Scholar; MacMillan, Margaret, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York, 2001), 98-106, 306–21Google Scholar.

49 Ambrosius, Lloyd E., “Wilsonian Diplomacy and Armenia: The limits of Power and Ideology” in America and the Armenian Genocide of 1915, ed. Winter, Jay (Cambridge, UK, 2003), 113–45Google Scholar; Power, Samantha, “A Problem From Hell“: America and the Age of Genocide (New York, 2002), 116Google Scholar; Balakian, Peter, The Hurtling Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America's Response (New York, 2003)Google Scholar.

50 , Ambrosius, Wilsonianism, 1418Google Scholar; Kennedy, David M., “What ‘W’ Owes to WWThe Atlantic 295 (March 2005): 3640Google Scholar.

51 Halper, Stefan, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (Cambridge, UK, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, James, Rise of the Vulcans: The History of hush's War Cabinet (New York, 2004)Google Scholar.

52 Judis, John B., The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Team from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson (New York, 2004)Google Scholar, criticized President Bush for his pursuit of an American empire, comparing him unfavorably with TR and , Wilson, who had learned “the folly of empire.” Contrary to , Judis, Gaddis, John Lewis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge, MA, 2004), emphasized continuity in U.S. foreign relations from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the Bush DoctrineGoogle Scholar.

53 In contrast, Ferguson, Niall, Colossus: The Price of America's Empire (New York, 2004), 132–66, recognized the false dichotomy that some made between multilateralism and unilateralism, noting that these two approaches often went together in recent U.S. foreign relations.Google Scholar

54 , Ambrosius, Wilsonianism, 157–73.Google Scholar