 History changes
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Apr. 14th, 2018 @ 09:04 pm 
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Recently I've been reading a booklet on US Foreign Policies through history - one that was written in 1943, revised in 1945.
It's interesting.
At some point I'm going to do a detailed writeup of... a bunch of things, really, but a highlight to note about this booklet:
1) The author throws some truly amazing shade. It's all about foreign policy, so it largely skims domestic issues, and yet... there is shade in the most arch and neutral way. It's beautiful.
2) More importantly/notably: in the recitation of events, he blandly recounts a number of events in the manner of one reminding the reader of things that are well-known to be true but a non-historian might have forgotten.
The curious thing is that some of them are events that I recall, in my lifetime, people getting very excited about, "So we thought this wasn't true, but it turns out that it is!"
For example, I have clear recollection of a discussion of divers discovering that the wreck of the Lusitania turned out to hold ammunition, and this being a surprise because it was believed that it did not.
And yet, in this booklet written in the 40s, the author casually notes that the Lusitania was carrying munitions, and discusses the issue of the sinking of the Lusitania in that context.
It also brought home to me in ways I had never consciously considered that, as a matter of policy and practice, the US was militarily weak throughout its history until the Second World War.
I should be clear that it was written by an American when I get to this part.
He reviews how the US's survival from the Revolutionary War onward was dependent on others; on the aid of France in the Revolutionary War itself, and onwards. How the Monroe Doctrine, at the outset, was sustained because the US was sheltered behind the "stout wooden walls" of the British fleet.
He notes that the US's entry into the World Wars was delayed, in part, by the great appeal of profiting by selling to both sides, and reviews in detail how badly the US mishandled various things in the period between the wars.
Without quite using the word, that I recall, he acknowledges that the US was profoundly hypocritical in its approach to some matters dealing with the European Powers.
It's strange, because a measured critique of American policy, by an American, that acknowledges that the US's behaviour has been flawed, and that dispassionately identifies the ways in which assorted events were driven by national self-interest rather than some kind of noble purpose is kind of novel.
Apparently it used to be allowed.
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| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) sovay |
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April 14th, 2018 04:21 pm (UTC) |
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It's strange, because a measured critique of American policy, by an American, that acknowledges that the US's behaviour has been flawed, and that dispassionately identifies the ways in which assorted events were driven by national self-interest rather than some kind of noble purpose is kind of novel.
May I ask who it was written and published by? The 1943–5 date also interests me.
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| From: | sami |
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April 14th, 2018 11:57 pm (UTC) |
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You may!
Under the imprint of Headline Books, this was:
America's Foreign Policies: Past and Present, by Thomas A. Bailey
Copyright 1943
Foreign Policy Association, Incorporated
22 East 38th Street, New York, N.Y.
Also on the copyright page?
PRODUCED UNDER UNION CONDITIONS AND COMPOSED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY UNION LABOR
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
My copy used to belong to the Air Ministry.
Bailey was, according the the About the Author section, a professor of history in Standford University. Author of a bunch of things, and also Albert Shaw lecturer on diplomatic history in the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations, The John Hopkins University, 1941.
Headline Books were, apparently, a series that the Foreign Policy Association put out that were intended "to provide sufficient unbiased background information to enable readers to reach intelligent and independent conclusions on the important international problems of the day".
It's a 96-page soft-covered booklet, and it's actually pretty brilliant.
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| From: | sovay |
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April 14th, 2018 11:58 pm (UTC) |
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Headline Books were, apparently, a series that the Foreign Policy Association put out that were intended "to provide sufficient unbiased background information to enable readers to reach intelligent and independent conclusions on the important international problems of the day".
How shockingly useful!
I'm glad you have that.
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| From: | sami |
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April 15th, 2018 12:01 am (UTC) |
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So useful!
I think I acquired it on one of my periodic pokes at Abebooks for older books. Books about "recent history" that aren't recent can be fascinating.
I meant to include, though, btw, on the dates: First published May 1943, Revised November 1945.
Not that a lot happened in that period oh wait.
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| From: | sovay |
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April 15th, 2018 12:23 am (UTC) |
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Books about "recent history" that aren't recent can be fascinating.
Agreed. Especially since it sounds as though this one got in under the wire of most of the myths of World War II.
Not that a lot happened in that period oh wait.
Does the booklet itself discuss the revisions?
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| From: | sami |
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April 15th, 2018 12:39 pm (UTC) |
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Not explicitly, but I can guess.
It goes through policy discussion up to Lend-Lease and then Pearl Harbour and going to war, but not much of how things went during the war.
What it does do is go through a summary of the principles of foreign policy and diplomacy that the US/everyone should remember henceforth. I don't know whether that would have been in the original, it's stuff that's applicable regardless.
What was definitely new was the section about, to paraphrase, the United Nations, the atomic bomb, and Okay The Stakes Are Higher Now.
I suspect it was all too new and shocking to draw real conclusions about it all, but he did put strong emphasis on so if we get this wrong now the world could end.
It would be a difficult new world to grapple with.
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