Rebels or Revolutionaries? Irish-American Nationalism and American Diplomacy, 1865–1885

Abstract

Recent scholarship in the history of American diplomacy has stressed that attention should be focused on the domestic background to the foreign policy process. Echoing George Kennan, J. L. Gaddis has stressed that foreign policy can be the product of 'internal forces operating within the United States'.' With its weak tradition of career diplomacy and strong tradition of political influences in foreign policy, that country should offer many opportunities to test such an assertion. This article will attempt to do so with regard to an issue which has been central to the experience of the United States in the modern world: the tension between its own revolutionary traditions and the growth of new doctrines which have flourished since the late nineteenth century. In i887, one American argued that: