The New Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations: Volume 2, The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913

This second volume of the updated edition describes the dynamics of United States foreign policy from 1865 to 1913.

Walter LaFeber (Author)

9781107536203, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 16 April 2015

272 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.43 kg

'The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 is much more than a survey of U.S. foreign policy from the Civil War to World War One. It is an elegant interpretive essay. LaFeber argues boldly and persuasively that the relentlessness of the U.S. search for global economic opportunities jostled societies as disparate as Russia and Haiti, inspiring revolution and turmoil around the world.' Nancy Mitchell, North Carolina State University

Since their first publication, the four volumes of the Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations have served as the definitive source for the topic, from the colonial period to the Cold War. This second volume of the updated edition describes the causes and dynamics of United States foreign policy from 1865 to 1913, the era when the United States became one of the four great world powers and the world's greatest economic power. The dramatic expansion of global power during this period was set in motion by the strike-ridden, bloody, economic depression from 1873 to 1897 when American farms and factories began seeking overseas markets for their surplus goods, as well as by a series of foreign policy triumphs, as America extended its authority to Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Panama Canal Zone, Central America, the Philippines and China. Ironically, as Americans searched for opportunity and stability abroad, they helped create revolutions in Central America, Panama, the Philippines, Mexico, China and Russia.

1. Springboards and strategies
2. The second industrial revolution at home and abroad
3. Race for empire
4. 'America will take this continent in hand alone'
5. Crossing the oceans
6. 1893–6: chaos and crises
7. The Empire of 1898 - and beyond
8. Pacific empire - and upheaval
9. Theodore Roosevelt: conservative as revolutionary
10. William Howard Taft and the age of revolution
Conclusion: 11. The 1865–1913 era restated.

Subject Areas: Diplomacy [JPSD], International relations [JPS], History of the Americas [HBJK], History [HB]