The Master Narrative of U.S. Foreign Relations

Abstract

This is a big book—nearly 1,000 pages of text—on a huge subject—the history of U.S. foreign relations from the founding of the republic to 2007. It is the seventh volume published of twelve projected in the Oxford History of the United States. It is the only topical volume; each of the others covers a discrete time period of approximately thirty years. From Colony to Superpower is about two hundred pages longer than the other volumes published so far. But because it has to cover so many subjects across more than two centuries, it is also the least detailed. Consequently, it is both a heavy door stopper of a book, hard physically to handle, and a very fast read. I started reading it in hard cover, and it was a chore to haul it onto my lap. I finished it on a Kindle, and I could not put it down. George Herring had to define the boundaries of his subject narrowly. He could not discuss all the interactions the U.S. government or private American citizens had outside the country's borders. Such a book could have been two or three thousand pages long. Instead, he concentrates on high policy, the traditional arena of diplomatic history. The first three hundred pages discuss eighteenth and nineteenth centuries' wars and peace. These events set the boundaries of the continental United States and the extent of its overseas empire. The remaining seven hundred pages examine the United States as a world power. They show how the United States joined the Europeans as one of several powers with global interests after 1900, set the norms for international conduct after 1918, became the dominant ally in World War II, emerged as one of two superpowers in the Cold War, outlasted the Soviet Union, and was the world's hyperpower at the beginning of the twenty-first century.