ГЕНЕЗИС ВНЕШНЕЙ ПОЛИТИКИ США: ЗАРОЖДЕНИЕ ИСТОРИОГРАФИИ ТЕМЫ, 1610–1820-Е ГОДЫ

Abstract

The research is devoted to the study of the origin of the historiography of the topic of the genesis of the US foreign policy. The key thesis of the work challenges the established position in the scientific literature about the fundamental role of the work of T. Lyman, Jr. «The diplomacy of the United States: being an account of the foreign relations of the country, from the first treaty with France, in 1778, to the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, with Great Britain», published in 1826. The article puts forward an alternative hypothesis: the emergence of the historiography of the genesis of the foreign policy of the United States occurred before the beginning of the second quarter of the XIX century – during the colonial period and the first fifty years of the North American state. A study of the works of thirty-five authors who worked during the 1610s and 1820s showed that amater historians expressed a common opinion about North America’s belonging to the Eurocentric system of international relations; they were sure that both the colonists and the founding fathers perceived international processes on the basis of raison d’être. The conceptualization of the intellectual heritage of non-professional historians allowed us to distinguish three interpretations of the origin of the United States foreign policy: «Autochthonous» – focused on purely North American reasons; «Atlantic» – postulated the borrowing of European practice of international relations by means of the system of relations that developed in the Atlantic in the XVII–XVIII centuries; «Imperial» – stated the adaptation of the British experience. The obtained data refute the provisions of scientific thought of the XX–XXI centuries and create new guidelines for further study of the topic.