Union, nation, or empire : the American debate over international relations, 1789-1941 / David C. Hendrickson.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-384) and index.

Pt. 1. Introduction -- 1. The Problem and Its Modes -- 2. American Internationalism -- 3. Imperialism and Nationalism -- Pt. 2. The Age of Revolution and War -- 4. The Rival Systems of Hamilton and Jefferson -- 5. The Causes of War -- 6. Louisiana! -- 7. Balances of Power -- Pt. 3. A Rage for Federative Systems -- 8. The Confederation of Europe -- 9. New World and Old World -- 10. To the Panama Congress -- 11. Into the Deep Freeze -- Pt. 4. The Travails of the Union -- 12. Great and Fearfully Growing -- 13. The Title Page -- 14. Constitutional Disorder -- 15. Decentralizing Tendencies -- 16. The Hope of the World -- Pt. 5. Empire and Its Discontents -- 17. Reds and Whites -- 18. The Removal of the Cherokee -- 19. Annexation of Texas and War with Mexico -- 20. The Great Debate of 1848 -- 21. Intervention for Nonintervention: The Kossuth Tour -- Pt. 6. Into the Maelstrom -- 22. Invitation to a Beheading -- 23. Causes of the War, Causes of the Peace -- 24. D.I.V.O.R.C.E. -- 25. The Tragedy of Civil War -- Pt. 7. "At Last We Are a Nation" -- 26. The New Nation -- 27. A New Birth of Freedom? -- 28. "Free Security" and "Imperial Understretch" -- 29. A World of Its Own -- 30. The Unionist Paradigm Revisited -- Pt. 8. A Commission from God -- 31. The New Nationalism and the Spanish War -- 32. Imperialism and the Conquest of the Philippines -- 33. Informal Empire and the Protection of Nationals -- 34. Seward and the New Imperialism -- Pt. 9. The New Internationalism Comes and Goes -- 35. Before the Deluge -- 36. "Great Utterance" and Madisonian Moment -- 37. Safe for Democracy -- 38. The Liberal Peace Program Goes to Paris -- 39. The Great Debate of 1919 -- Pt. 10. The Crisis of the Old Order -- 40. Nationalism, Internationalism, and Imperialism in the 1920s -- 41. The Great Depression and Economic Nationalism -- 42. Isolation and Neutrality -- 43. The Final Reckoning.

"Most overviews of American history depict an isolationist country finally dragged kicking and screaming onto the world stage by the attack on Pearl Harbor. David Hendrickson shows that Americans instead conducted often-raucous debates over international relations in the long epoch customarily seen as isolationist-debates that form the ideological origins of today's foreign policy arguments." "Union, Nation, or Empire is a sequel to Hendrickson's acclaimed Peace Pact, in which he identified a "unionist paradigm" that defined America's political understanding in 1787. His new book examines how that paradigm was transformed by the great wars that followed. Through skillfully drawn portraits of American statesmen, from Hamilton and Jefferson to Wilson and the two Roosevelts, Hendrickson analyzes "union, nation, and empire" as fundamental categories of political discourse that have shaped our engagement with the world since 1776." "Hendrickson argues that the ongoing debate over union, nation, and empire in American history encompasses and illuminates the great questions of international relations-such as whether democracies are as prone to war as monarchies, whether trade promotes peace, or whether empire is compatible with free institutions. Setting these debates in the context of historical events, from the birth of our federal government to America's entry into World War II, he shows the significance of the federal union in our history and demonstrates that internationalism has deep roots in America's past. His assessment of the unionist tradition, in counterpoint to rival ideologies of nationalism and imperialism, includes new insights into the causes of the Civil War and shows how after that conflict the building blocks of the original paradigm were reconstructed to shape the internationalist persuasion in the twentieth century." "Deftly combining intellectual, constitutional, and diplomatic history, this gracefully written work revives the compelling rhetoric of yesterday's statesmen to offer readers a lucid narrative of American international thought. It challenges accepted interpretations of our role in the world as it restores the federal union to its proper place in the understanding of American statecraft"--BOOK JACKET.