Product Description

The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation in print. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize-winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of prestigious Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. From Colony to Superpower is the only thematic volume commissioned for the series. Here George C. Herring uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower.
A sweeping account of United States' foreign relations and diplomacy, this magisterial volume documents America's interaction with other peoples and nations of the world. Herring tells a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life. And Herring does all this in a story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin and Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman and Dean Acheson played key roles in America's rise to world power. But America's expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests in foreign lands.
From the American Revolution to the fifty-year struggle with communism and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, From Colony to Superpower tells the dramatic story of America's emergence as superpower--its birth in revolution, its troubled present, and its uncertain future.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7028 in Books
• Published on: 2008-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1056 pages

Amazon.com Review
The Oxford History of the United States is the most respected multi-volume history of our nation in print. The series includes three Pulitzer Prize-winners, a New York Times bestseller, and winners of the prestigious Bancroft and Parkman Prizes. From Colony to Superpower is the only thematic volume commissioned for the series. Here, George C. Herring uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's dramatic rise from thirteen disparate colonies huddled along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower. A sweeping account of United States foreign relations and diplomacy, this magisterial volume documents America's interaction with other peoples and nations of the world. Herring tells a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life. Herring does all this in a story rich in human drama and filled with epic events. Statesmen such as Benjamin Franklin, Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, and Dean Acheson played key roles in America's rise to world power. But America's expansion as a nation also owes much to the adventurers and explorers, the sea captains, merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests abroad. From the American Revolution to the fifty-year struggle with communism and conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, From Colony to Superpower tells the dramatic story of America's emergence as superpower--its birth in revolution, its troubled present, and its uncertain future.

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Read an Amazon Exclusive interview with author George C. Herring and David M. Kennedy, editor of the Oxford History of the United States series.

Questions for George C. Herring

Kennedy: Your book covers the entire span of the history of the United States. What was the biggest challenge of writing a book of this scope for the Oxford History of the United States series?

Herring: Managing such a large subject and such a vast quantity of source material was daunting, indeed, at times, downright intimidating. Somewhat to my surprise, I also found it more difficult to write those chapters dealing with subjects I knew the most about, the Vietnam War era, for example. The great joys of doing the book, on the other hand, were to have the opportunity to pull together in some meaningful fashion what I had been teaching and writing about for forty years and especially to find myself learning new things each day.

Kennedy: Do you accept the conventional notion that the United States was isolationist for much of its history?

Herring: The idea of an isolationist America, still included in some textbooks, is one of the great myths of United States history. For good reasons, the nation for its first century and a half did pursue a unilateralist foreign policy, avoiding alliances that would restrict its freedom of action or entangle it in wars. But it was never strictly isolationist. Especially in the realm of economics, Americans sought full engagement with the world. The one time when the United States can accurately be said to have been isolationist is the era of the Great Depression, the 1930s.

Kennedy: What period did you find yourself most surprised by as you wrote this book?

Herring: I’m not sure that surprise is the right word, but I especially enjoyed doing the chapter covering the period 1837-1861. I got to know wonderful characters such as naval officers Charles Wilkes and Matthew Perry, merchant/diplomats Caleb Cushing and Edmund Roberts, filibusterer William Walker, and statesmen Henry Clay, James K. Polk, and Daniel Webster. More than I had appreciated, Americans were engaged in a great variety of activities and running up against different people all over the world. Through the Oregon treaty and the war with Mexico, the United States added a vast expanse of territory. There was so much energy, so much happening.

Kennedy: In what ways has religion shaped American foreign policy?

Herring: From the founding to the present, religion has played a subtle but often very important role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Americans have seen themselves as a chosen people, “God’s American Israel,” the Puritans called it, uniquely virtuous and benevolent. In the nineteenth century, they believed it their Manifest Destiny to spread across the North American continent and later to uplift lesser peoples in overseas territories. The influence of religion has especially been felt through individuals such as Woodrow Wilson, a minister’s son, whose sense of America’s destiny and his own had powerful religious undertones, and the born-again Christians Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.

Kennedy: How did the current interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan shape your writing of these events as history? Was it a challenge to write about them in a non-partisan way?

Herring: It was of course difficult to treat these events as history since at the time I was writing the outcome in each case was very much in doubt. I had strongly opposed the war against Iraq, and I would be less than honest if I said that my opposition to that war did not influence my writing about it. I do believe that I was able to put the two wars in the larger framework of post Cold War and 9/11 U.S. foreign policies. These wars also caused me to look more closely at earlier interventions–of which, going back to 1775, there have been many–and to conclude that while Americans generally have viewed themselves as liberators the principal result in most cases has been to spur nationalism on the part of the people invaded.

Kennedy: With all of the foreign policy issues facing the U.S. right now, what will readers take away from reading about the deep history of America’s relationship with the world?

Herring: I hope, first, that readers will enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed writing about the exciting events and colorful personalities described in these pages. I also hope that they will take away from the book a fuller and more balanced appreciation of America’s dealings with other nations. The United States has been a “force for good in the world,” as the mantra of this year’s election campaign goes, but that is only part of the story, and I hope by gaining a fuller and more complex view they will better understand who we are as a nation and how others see us. I would also hope that readers might gain a better comprehension of the complexity of diplomacy and the reasons why it works or fails to work. Finally, by seeing where we as a nation have been, I hope that readers might have a better sense of where we are and where we need to go.

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American Foreign Policy in Images

Take a look at paintings, an engraving and an photograph that depict pivotal moments in war and diplomacy.
Click any detail below for the full image and explanatory text by George C. Herring.

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From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. This latest entry in the outstanding Oxford History of the United States is continually engrossing in its overview of American diplomacy. Herring (America's Longest War), an authority on the history of American foreign policy, emphasizes that George Washington's 1796 farewell was not a call for isolationism but simply a warning to be careful in forming alliances; America was already enmeshed in the bitter war between Britain and France. Herring details how aggressively U.S. diplomats and soldiers pressured Spain, Mexico and Britain to yield territory as the nation expanded. The passion for spreading American ideals reached its first peak after WWI with Woodrow Wilson, whose principles the author admires though many, such as national self-determination, have proved disastrous. Entering the 21st century, the U.S. was at its peak as the world's sole superpower. Herring take his narrative up through 9/11, the rise of the renewed passion, led by neoconservatives, to spread democracy and the war in Iraq, whose only winner, Herring says, is Iran. Herring's lucid prose and thought-provoking arguments give this large tome a pace that never flags. 51 b&w illus. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
When President Washington expressed the hope that his new, fragile nation would eventually reach a stage “when none can make us afraid,” he could not have anticipated the “hyper power” status currently achieved by the U.S. The purpose of this ambitious and massive work is to track and explain how 13 separate, vulnerable British colonies evolved to carve out a position of dominance in world affairs. This is the latest volume in the Oxford History of the United States series. Earlier volumes dealt with specific chronological periods, but this is the first to utilize a thematic approach. Herring’s recurring theme is the intimate connection between American foreign policy and our territorial and economic expansion, especially in the nineteenth century. Herring effectively dismisses the myth of American isolationism. Even before our Revolution, Americans had strong economic ties with several European powers, and our diplomatic efforts were essential in facilitating the westward movement. Herring also deftly deals with the often-conflicting strains of idealism and pragmatism that have motivated our policy makers. Patient and well-informed general readers will find this well worth the effort. --Jay Freeman

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Customer Reviews

A Grand Overview of United States Foreign Relations
This new volume of the Oxford History of the United States tells the story of the foreign relations of the United States from its inception in 1776 to the present day. The author, George C Herring, is the Alumni Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. He is the author of many books on United States foreign affairs, centering upon the War in Vietnam. Herring's study is nearly 1000 pages in length, but it is not a word too long. In its scope, learning, wisdom, and attempt to be even-handed, it is a joy to read.

Herring tells a long story of a subject with many unexpected turns and changes of perspective over the years. I enjoyed the sense of continuity that this large history brings to its subject. Herring shows how leading ideas and tensions in American foreign policy developed from the beginning of the new nation and both persisted and were transformed as the nation developed. His book encourages the reader to see how United States policy developed in particular parts of the world over time, such as in Latin America, Canada, the Middle East, and Vietnam. This encourages a depth of understanding that cannot be provided from reading the newspapers or even from specialized scholarly accounts of a single period.

The book begins with the Revolutionary era, and the first two of Herring's chapter titles state themes of American history that are repeated many times throughout the study: America's perceived mission "To Begin the World Over Again" and the need to keep the nation strong and prepared so that there are "None who Can Make us Afraid." The theme of mission is tied, broadly, to American idealism and exceptionalism. The theme of strength is tied, again generally, to realism. Herring identifies a combination of these broad traits in, among other ways, the "practical idealism" of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln.

From the Revolution, the book proceeds through the War of 1812, American expansionism and "Manifest Destiny" in the Mexican War, foreign relationships during the Civil War, the Spanish-American War and American Empire, World War I and II, the Cold War and its aftermath, Vietnam, and our nation's current situation in Iraq, among many other recurring themes. The final section of the book on the war in Iraq seems to me rushed. It is difficult to bring a historical perspective to bear upon ongoing, changing events.

Herring pays close attention to transitional periods that are sometimes overlooked, including foreign policy in the Gilded Age and foreign policy in the years between the two world wars, that helped me to understand the larger, better-known aspects of the United States's foreign relations. Commendably, Herring also considers the United States's relationships with the Indian tribes as within the purview of foreign affairs during the time in which the United States expanded across the continent.

In general, Herring writes non-dogmatically and non-polemically. He makes his opinions known but frequently points out other interpretations and ways of trying to understand the history. He seems to admire greatly Woodrow Wilson and his efforts before, during, and after WW I to bring a just peace to a troubled world. Herring also finds much to praise, as well as to question, in figures such as Washington, Hamilton, Adams, and Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Elihu Root, and Franklin Roosevelt. He offers qualified praise for George H.W. Bush, for "the strategic vision of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger" and for the "ability to adapt and adjust displayed by Ronald Reagan."

In the introduction to his study, Herring develops themes such as the relationship between realism and idealism in informing United States foreign policy, expansionism, and the tensions between the Executive Branch, Congress, lobbying groups, and the electorate in the conduct of foreign affairs. Herring is critical of what he perceives as the current unilateralist tendency in American foreign relations and he recommends a course that disclaims American exceptionalism or arrogance. He concludes that "the United States cannot dictate the shape of a new world order, but the way it responds to future foreign policy challenges can help ensure its security and well-being and exert a powerful influence for good or ill."

Herring has written an outstanding addition to the Oxford History of the United States. It taught me a great deal about American history and the American experience.

Robin Friedman

A History Of U.S. Foreign Relations
George C. Herring's "From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776" is the latest volume of the Oxford History of the United States, but there is a key difference between this book and the rest in the series. This is the one book in the series which is intended to cover a single aspect, i.e. Foreign Relations, while the other works all cover a period of time during the history of the United States. My opinion of this work changed dramatically while reading it. I had read a couple of books from this series before and found one to be outstanding and the other to be only slightly above average, but with the nature of this work being different, I was intrigued into seeing how effective this book would be at covering the subject.

I'll start with the easiest and also probably the least important aspect of the work and that is the organization. Though less important than completeness and accuracy, a poorly organized book can be very trying on the reader. This work attempts to cover Foreign Relations in a chronological fashion in 20 chapters. Each chapter provides a year range for what it covers, so one would expect that it would be fairly straight forward, but that isn't the case. As an example, the first chapter indicates that it covers from 1776 to 1778, but in fact it covers the entire period prior to 1789. Within each chapter it is tricky as well, as the author jumps around within the periods quite a lot, and the reader does have difficulty in following the examples at times. Herring also doesn't stay within the time periods indicated in the chapter headings. Overall though, these issues are minor and by themselves would not lower my rating.

The second issue for a work like this is completeness. I don't think that it is too surprising that trying to cover the entire history of U.S. Foreign Relations in a book, even one which is close to 1,000 pages, would be problematic. There clearly have to be things which would be left out. That being said, my feeling after the first two chapters was that the author was doing a very good job of covering the topic, but this perception began to change at the end of the third chapter and the start of the fourth. There is a decent discussion of the War of 1812, but absolutely no discussion at all of the second war with the Barbary States. This appears to get worse throughout the 4th chapter, though this is not a period that I have studied recently, but I have spent a great deal on the period covered in chapter five (1837-1861) and the gaps are very problematic. This problem gets worse as continues as the interactions with other countries become more detailed and complex and it simply isn't possible to cover them in the detail needed.

The last issue, accuracy, is by far the most important, as the lack of specifics and the so-so organization could still allow this to be a decent overview of the subject. I became worried when the author discussed Manifest Destiny, which he then referred to as a "sectional rather than national phenomenon, its support strongest in the Northeast and Northwest and weakest in the South, which supported only the annexation of Texas." While I strongly disagree with the statement that Manifest Destiny had its strongest support in the Northeast and Northwest, I do have to allow that such a statement is largely subjective opinion and that the author may well have reasons for believing that (though he doesn't make any attempt to support it). On the other hand, the statement that the South only supported the annexation of Texas is not just wrong, but it shows a complete lack of knowledge and understanding of the history of the United States prior to the Civil War.

Fortunately, the author proceeds to cover the historical events which refute his own statement, and so the statement is puzzling and unsupported, but not a complete indication of failure on the author's part to provide a reliable history. He does discuss the South's efforts to turn the territories into slave states, the use of the annexation of Texas to get a war with Mexico which allowed the U.S. to take those territories. He also discusses the South's plots and attempts to annex Cuba, additional parts of Mexico, Central America, and even part of South America in an attempt to gain more slave territory. All of these things and more are evidence that his statement was fundamentally wrong, but one cannot judge an entire book on a single sentence.

In the 10th chapter, "'A New Age': Wilson, the Great War, and the Quest for a New World Order, 1913-1921" Herring makes a mistake of omission, stating "...in the face of Germany's U-boat attacks he (Wilson) eventually--and reluctantly--concluded that intervention was necessary to defend his nation's rights..." Once again, this is rather sloppy history. Herring seems to ignore the Zimmermann Telegram intercepted by the British which showed the Germans attempting to foment war between Mexico and the United States as a key event in Wilson's decision to go to war. Germany renewed its unrestricted U-boat war at the start of February, and the British presented the intercept showing that the Germans were attempting to get the Mexicans to declare war on the U.S. should the U.S. declare war on Germany as a result of the U-boat strategy. However, as with the statement about the South only wanting to annex Texas, when Herring gets down to the details of the situation he gets it correct, but one again questions the reason for the initial statement.

There are additional events which are either barely mentioned or completely left out which one has to wonder about as well. The situation with Somoza in Nicaragua gets only a very small mention. There is no discussion at all of Marcos in the Philippines in 1986. One would have thought that nothing went on between Iraq and the U.S. between the first Gulf War and the pre-emptive invasion in 2003, and George W. Bush's focus on China prior to the tragedy of September 11th is also not mentioned.

On the positive side, Herring treats no President as perfect. Though he seems to have a very positive view of what Wilson was trying to do, he has more than a few bad things to say about him. The same is true for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Those who idolize any of the Presidents will probably think that they are not receiving proper credit. For myself, I prefer to have the bad with the good, and so I appreciated his efforts at being even-handed.

To finish, I question why this book was needed for the series. Certainly foreign relations were covered in the other books in this series that I have read, so this volume duplicates that effort to a certain degree. The fact is that one can't discuss foreign policies without also discussing the domestic conditions under which they were formed. For me, this book's value is limited to being a one volume history of the U.S. foreign relations, but that serious historical studies require much more detail, and you get much more of that detail in the other volumes of the series. Ultimately this is a difficult book to rate, some of it is extremely well done, but there are also significant weaknesses.

masterful!!!
The Oxford University Press has assembled a set of books on the history of the United States. Each one is comprehensive and offers the reader brilliant insights into those specific aspects of history. Herring, by far one of the most respected scholars in the field, deftly covers aspects of foreign relations, provides scholarly interpretation, and ties together many events. Chapters are divided up by eras. Sections are divided using numerals. I wish that, even beyond this, the publisher would have divided sections by specific events. Pulling together events more tightly to help the reader appreciate chronology, the effects of other nations' domestic and international events, American culture ... is achieved quite brilliantly. Herring writes in a style that is quite easy to read and, with this text, he offers a real page-turner. When assembling such an overview of the history of American diplomacy, I can only imagine that the author struggles with providing enough detail to whet the reader's appetite, but, not providing so much detail as to overwhelm us. While this is a masterful overview of American foreign policy, for readers with expertise and who wish greater detailed coverage of specific events, you would be advised to, of course, see any number of the thousands of books written that cover each of these topics in tremendously greater detail. I give full accolades to Herring for this truly outstanding addition to the literature!!!