Empire Without Tears: America's Foreign Relations 1921-1933

Warren I. Cohen

Temple University Press

1987

Suggestions for Further Reading

 

Three superb essays will serve to introduce the newcomer to the issues and recent literature on the history of the international relations of the 1920s. John Jacobson's "Is There a New International History of the 1920s?" American Historical Review, 88 (1983), 617-45, is Europe-centered. John Braeman's "Power and Diplomacy: The 1920s Reappraised," Review of Politics, 44 (1982), 342-69, and his surprisingly generous "The New Left and American Foreign Policy During the Age of Normalcy: A Re-examination," Business History Review, 57 (1983), 73-104, both focus on American relations worldwide.

If one has time for only a few books from which to gain a quick insight into the contribution of recent scholars to the study of American foreign relations in the 1920s and early 1930s, I recommend the work of Michael J. Hogan, Melvyn F. Leffier, and Joan Hoff Wilson, noted below. Richard W. Leopold, writing without benefit of the monographs of the last twenty-five years, provides the best textbook discussion of the 1920s in his Growth of American Foreign Policy (1962). For a useful general history of the period, see Ellis W. Hawley's The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order. Hawley stresses the ideas of the "organizational" or "managerial" school of historians. Emily S. Rosenberg, Spreading the American Dream:

American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 189~1945 (1982), is very thoughtful. An early seminal article on the United States in the 1920s, William Appleman Williams, "The Legend of Isolationism in the 1920s," Science and Society, 18 (1954), 1-20, is replete with the brilliant insights and excesses that usually mark his work.

There are a number of useful works focusing on important participants. Wilson is covered well by N. Gordon Levin's Woodrow Wilson and World Politics (1968) and John Milton Cooper's The Warrior and the Priest Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (1983). Hughes, or a reasonable facsimile, can be found in Merlo J. Pusey's two-volume Charles Evans Hughes (1951), and Betty Glad's "realist" critique, Charles Evans Hughes and the illusions of Innocence (1966)-but see Hughes at work in some of the monographic literature. Hoover gets the attention he deserves in excellent books by Joseph Brandes, Herbert Hoover and Economic Diplomacy: Department of Commerce Policy, 1921-1928 (1962), and Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten Progressive (1975). There is not yet a biography of Lamont, but my The Chinese Connection: Roger S. Greene, Thomas W. Lamont, George E. Sokolsky and American East Asian Relations (1978) contains useful material on the man as well as his role in East Asia. Michael Hogan is the principal source for Lamont's activities in Europe. See especially his "Thomas W. Lamont and European Recovery," in Kenneth Paul Jones (ed.), U.S. Diplomats in Europe, 1919-1941 (1981). For Lamont in Mexico, see Robert Freeman Smith's superb United States and Revolutionary Nationalism in Mexico, 1916-1932 (1972). Peter Marabell, Frederick Libby and the American Peace Movement (1982), is the only book on the most important figure in the peace movement. The standard work on Kellogg is Frank B. Kellogg and American Foreign Relations, 1925-1929 (1961), by L. Ethan Ellis. Elting E. Morison, in Turmoil and Tradition (1960), offers a sensitive sketch of Stimson. Insights into the minds of all these men appear in the studies of the events in which they participated.

Some of the recent works most useful for my discussion of the Harding inheritance were Mira Wilkins, The Maturing of the Multinational Enterprise: American Business Abroad from 191~1970 (1974), Robert D. Schulzinger's The Making of the Diplomatic Mind: The Training, Outlook, and Style of United States Foreign Service Officers 19O~1931 (1975), and articles by Burton I. Kaufman, "The Organizational Dimension of United States Economic Foreign Policy, 190~1920," Business History Review, 46 (1972), 17~4, and Waldo H. Heinrichs, "Bureaucracy and Professionalism in the Development of American Career Diplomacy," in John Braeman et al. (eds.), Twentieth-Century American Foreign Policy (1971). For a review of the military in this period, I found George T. Davis, A Navy Second to None: The Development of Modern American Naval Policy (1940), valuable and beautifully written. Russell Weigley's History of the United States Army (1967) and Alfred Goldberg (ed.), A History of the United States Air Force 1907-1957(1957), are the best on their respective services.

On the cultural involvement of the United States abroad, see Rosenberg's Spreading the American Dream and Frank Costigliola, Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933 (1984). Warren F. Keuhl's Seeking World Order: The United States and International Organization to 1920 (1969) remains the best approach to the peace movement in the Wilsonian era.

The best source of information on American economic power in the 1920s is the magnificent U.S. Department of Commerce volume, The United States in the World Economy (1943), prepared by Hal B. Lary and associates. Nowhere else can all the questions of "how much?" be answered. Without it we are all reduced to vague theorizing. Michael J. Hogan's Informal Entente: The Private Structure of Cooperation in Anglo-American Economic Diplomacy, 191~1929 (1977), and Joan Hoff Wilson's American Business and Foreign Policy, 192~1933 (1971) are important, as are the Brandes and Wilkins volumes. Still of value are Herbert Feis, The Diplomacy of the Dollar; 1919-1932 (1950), and Carl Parrini, Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy 19161923 (1969). See also William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (eds.), Economics and American Diplomacy: An Assessment (1981).

Roger Dingman's Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 191~1922 (1976) is the single most important book on the Washington Conference. J. Chalmers Vinson's The Parchment Peace: The United States Senate and the Washington Conference, 1921-1922 (1955) remains useful on domestic politics.

The two most recent studies of the peace movement are Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 191~1941 (1971), and Charles DeBenedetti, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement (1978). Marabell's on Libby and Harold Josephson's James T. Shotwell and the Rise of Internationalism in America (1975) detail the thoughts of two of the principal leaders of the movement. Robert H. Ferrell, Peace in Their Time: The Origins of the Kellogg-Briand Pact (1952), is less sympathetic to the peace organizations and thus an important antidote.

In addition to Smith's U£ and Revolutionary Nationalism in Mexico, I found Karl M. Schmitt's Mexico and the United States, 1821-1973 (1974) helpful. So were a pair of articles by N. Stephan Kane, "American Businessmen and Foreign Policy: The Recognition of Mexico, 192~1923," Political Science Quarterly, 90 (1975), 293-313, and "Bankers and Diplomats: The Diplomacy of the Dollar in Mexico, 1921-1924," Business History Review, 47(1973), 335-52. For Central America, especially Nicaragua, I continue to find Bryce Wood's The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (1961) eminently sensible.

John L. Gaddis, Russia, the Soviet Union, and the United States (1978), is a tour de force. Russia and the West under Lenin and Stalin (1960) by George F. Kennan is still worth a look, as is Robert C. Williams, Russian Art and American Money, 190~1940 (1980). For the response to the Chinese revolution, see Akira Iriye, After Imperialism: The Search for a New Order in the Far East, 1921-1931 (1965), my Chinese Connection, and Dorothy Borg's classic American Policy and the Chinese Revolution, 1925-1928 (1947).

One important catalyst for the explosion of work on the international relations of Europe in the 1 920s was Charles S. Maier's Recasting Bourgeois Europe: Stabilization in France, Germany, and Italy in the Decade after World War I (1975). Stephen Schuker's The End of French Predominance in Europe: The Financial Crisis of 1924 and the Adoption of the Dawes Plan (1976), and Leffier's The Elusive Quest America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security, 1919-1933 are eloquent testimonials to the quality of the best of the recent literature. See also the essays in Jones (ed.), US. Diplomats in Europe, 1919-1941.

The standard work on the foreign affairs of the Hoover administration remains Robert H. Ferrell's American Diplomacy During the Great Depression (1957). Christopher Thorne's massive The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931-1933 (1972) swallows the work of dozens of other scholars. Almost everything ever written about the crisis in Manchuria can be found in it. I am probably alone in retaining sympathy for Stimson's efforts. See also Stephen E. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor: The Failure of the Second London Naval Conference and the Onset of World War II (1974).