From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (159 page)

The War of 1898 and the acquisition of overseas empire are analyzed from the perspective of gender in Kristin Hoganson,
Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
(New Haven, Conn., 1998) and from a more traditional point of view in John L. Offner,
An Unwanted War: The Diplomacy of the United States and Spain over Cuba, 1895–1898
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992).
The Crisis of 1898: Colonial Redistribution and Nationalist Mobilization,
edited by Angel Smith and Emma Dávila-Cox (New York, 1998), contains valuable essays on numerous topics. Louis A. Pérez has challenged long-standing ideas about the war and its aftermath in
Cuba Between Empires, 1878–1902
(Pittsburgh, 1983),
Cuba and the United States: Ties of Singular Intimacy
(2nd ed., Athens, Ga., 1997),
On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999), and the especially insightful
The War of 1898: The United States and Cuba in History and Historiography
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998). David F.
Trask,
The War with Spain in 1898
(2nd ed., Lincoln, Neb., 1996) is a good military history, Gerald F. Linderman,
The Mirror of War: American Society and the Spanish-American War
(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1974) a valuable social history. Robert Beisner,
Twelve Against Empire: The Anti-Imperialists, 1898–1900
(2nd ed., Chicago, 1985) is excellent on the debate over imperialism. The United States' involvement in the Philippines is broadly treated in H. W. Brands,
Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines
(New York, 1992) and Stanley Karnow,
In Our Image: America's Empire in the Philippines
(New York, 1989). The Philippines War is handled quite critically in Stuart Creighton Miller,
"Benevolent Assimilation": The American Conquest of the Philippines, 1899–1903
(New Haven, Conn., 1982) and more sympathetically in John M. Gates,
School-books and Krags: The United States Army in the Philippines, 1898–1902
(Westport, Conn., 1973) and Brian McAllister Linn,
The Philippine War, 1899–1902
(Lawrence, Kans., 2000), the most up-to-date and comprehensive study. Glenn Anthony May,
Battle for Batangas: A Philippine Province at War
(New Haven, Conn., 1991), an important local study, raises new questions and offers new interpretations. Richard E. Welch,
Response to Imperialism: The United States and the Philippine-American War, 1898–1902
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1978) is good on the domestic reaction. Paul A. Kramer,
The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006) is an important new study. Thomas J. McCormick,
China Market: America's Quest for Informal Empire, 1893–1901
(Chicago, 1967) and Paul A. Varg,
The Making of a Myth: The United States and China, 1897–1912
(East Lansing, Mich., 1968) debate the role of economic interests in the Open Door policy and the importance of the policy itself.

1901–1921:
Judy Crichton,
America 1900: The Turning Point
(New York, 1998) provides an interesting glimpse at turn-of-the-century America. A good recent biography of the major figure is H. W. Brands,
T. R.: The Last Romantic
(New York, 1997). Studies of Roosevelt's foreign policy include Howard K. Beale,
Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of America to World Power
(New York, 1962), Raymond Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and the International Rivalries
(Waltham, Mass., 1970), Frederick Marks,
Velvet on Iron: The Diplomacy of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lincoln, Neb., 1979), Richard H. Collin,
Theodore Roosevelt: Culture, Diplomacy, and Expansionism: A New View of American Imperialism
(Baton Rouge, La., 1985), and Lewis L. Gould,
The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
(Lawrence, Kans., 1991). Surprisingly, there is no good biography of Root, one of the more important figures of twentieth-century America. Richard W. Leopold,
Elihu Root and the Conservative Tradition
(New York, 1954) is
useful. Kenton J. Clymer,
John Hay: The Gentleman as Diplomat
(Ann Arbor, Mich., 1975) is good on another important and especially colorful person. The beginning of the modern foreign service is analyzed in Warren Frederick Ilchman,
Professional Diplomacy in the United States, 1779–1939
(Chicago, 1961) and Richard Hume Werking,
The Master Architects: Building the United States Foreign Service, 1890–1913
(Lexington, Ky., 1977). Studies of the peace movement include Charles DeBenedetti,
The Peace Reform in American History
(Bloomington, Ind., 1984), John W. Chambers, ed.,
The American Peace Movement and United States Foreign Policy, 1900–1922
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1991), C. Roland Marchand,
The American Peace Movement, 1898–1918
(Princeton, N.J., 1973), and David S. Patterson,
Toward a Warless World: The Travail of the American Peace Movement, 1887–1914
(Bloomington, Ind., 1976). For relations with Britain, see Bradford Perkins,
The Great Rapprochement: England and the United States, 1895–1914
(Berkeley, Calif., 1968) and William N. Tilchin,
Theodore Roosevelt and the British Empire: A Study in Presidential Statecraft
(New York, 1997). For China, see Hunt,
Making of a Special Relationship,
and Delber L. McKee,
Chinese Exclusion Versus the Open Door Policy, 1900–1906
(Detroit, Mich., 1977). Saul's
Concord and Conflict
is good on the conflicts over Jewish immigration and trade, as is Gary Dean Best,
To Free a People: American Jewish Leaders and the Jewish Problem in Eastern Europe, 1890–1914
(Westport, Conn., 1982). Roosevelt's role in the Russo-Japanese War is covered in Raymond A. Esthus,
Double Eagle and Rising Sun: The Russians and Japanese at Portsmouth in 1905
(Durham, N.C., 1988) and Eugene P. Trani,
The Treaty of Portsmouth: An Adventure in American Diplomacy
(Lexington, Ky., 1969). For the expanding U.S. role in the Caribbean, see David F. Healy,
Drive to Hegemony: The United States in the Caribbean, 1898–1917
(Madison, Wisc., 1988) and Richard H. Collin,
Theodore Roosevelt's Caribbean: The Panama Canal, the Monroe Doctrine, and the Latin American Context
(Baton Rouge, La., 1990). International rivalries are covered in Nancy Mitchell,
The Danger of Dreams: German and American Imperialism in Latin America
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1999) and Thomas D. Schoonover,
Germany in Central America: Competing Imperialism, 1821–1929
(Tuscaloosa, Ala., 1998). Walter LaFeber's
Search for Opportunity
and
The Panama Canal: The Crisis in Historical Perspective
(New York, 1979) are excellent. For U.S. colonial administration, see Pedro A. Cabán,
Constructing a Colonial People: Puerto Rico and the United States, 1898–1932
(Boulder, Colo., 1999) and Glenn Anthony May,
Social Engineering in the Philippines: The Aims, Execution, and Impact of American Colonial Policy, 1900–1913
(Westport, Conn., 1980), which finds little lasting impact
from U.S. activities. Emily S. Rosenberg,
Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900–1930
(Durham, N.C., 2003) breaks new ground by analyzing the role of the ubiquitous U.S. financial advisers. Cyrus Veeser,
A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America's Rise to World Power
(New York, 2002) is good on that topic.

Two excellent recent studies of the Great War by distinguished military historians are John Keegan,
The First World War
(New York, 2000) and Michael Howard,
The First World War
(London, 2003). The United States during the war period is covered in Robert H. Ferrell,
Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917–1921
(New York, 1985), Ellis W. Hawley,
The Great War and the Search for a Modern Order: A History of the American People and Their Institutions, 1917–1933
(2nd ed., New York, 1992), and Robert H. Zieger,
America's Great War
(Lanham, Md., 2000). David M. Kennedy,
Over Here: The First World War and American Society
(New York, 1980; rev. ed., 2004) focuses on the home front. Studies of Woodrow Wilson abound. Arthur Link was his authoritative biographer, and his
Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace
(Arlington Heights, Ill., 1979) summarizes his major arguments on Wilson's foreign policy. Other valuable studies include Kendrick Clements,
Woodrow Wilson, World Statesman
(Boston, 1987) and
The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson
(Lawrence, Kans., 1992), Lloyd E. Ambrosius,
Wilsonian Statecraft: Theory and Practice of Liberal Internationalism During World War I
(Wilmington, Del., 1991), a neo-realist critique, Frederick Calhoun,
Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilson's Foreign Policy
(Kent, Ohio, 1986), which focuses on Wilson's military interventions, Thomas J. Knock,
To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order
(New York, 1992), which provides numerous insights into his ideas and foreign policy, Lloyd C. Gardner,
Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913–1923
(New York, 1987), and John A. Thompson,
Woodrow Wilson
(London, 2002), a balanced and thoughtful survey. Biographies of other key figures include William C. Widenor,
Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy
(Berkeley, Calif., 1980), Godfrey Hodgson,
Woodrow Wilson's Right Hand: The Life of Colonel Edward M. House
(New Haven, Conn., 2006), and Michael Kazin,
A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan
(New York, 2006), a needed revision of a much maligned secretary of state. Wilson's interventions in Central America and the Caribbean are critically analyzed in Bruce J. Calder,
The Impact of Intervention: The Dominican Republic During the United States Occupation of 1916–1926
(Austin, Tex., 1984), Hans Schmidt,
The United States Occupation of Haiti, 1915–1934
(New Brunswick, N.J., 1985), Mary
A. Renda,
Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S. Imperialism
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), Brenda Gayle Plummer,
Haiti and the United States: The Psychological Moment
(Athens, Ga., 1992), and Michael Gobat,
Confronting an American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule
(Durham, N.C., 2005). Wilson's involvement with Mexico is broadly covered in Mark T. Gilderhus,
Diplomacy and Revolution: U.S.-Mexican Relations Under Wilson and Carranza
(Tucson, Ariz., 1977). Robert E. Quirk,
An Affair of Honor: Woodrow Wilson and the Occupation of Veracruz
(Lexington, Ky., 1962) is readable and still useful. Friedrich Katz,
The Life and Times of Pancho Villa
(Stanford, Calif., 1998) is authoritative and much broader in coverage than might appear. John Mason Hart,
Empire and Revolution: The Americans in Mexico Since the Civil War
(Berkeley, Calif., 2002) is a first-rate study by a leading scholar of the Mexican revolution. The United States' entry into World War I was controversial from the outset. Ernest R. May,
The World War and American Isolation, 1914–1917
(Chicago, 1959), based on multi-archival research, and Ross Gregory,
The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War
(New York, 1971) are still valuable on U.S. involvement in the war. John W. Coogan,
The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights, 1899–1915
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1981) takes a broader approach to neutral rights issues and is more critical of U.S. policy. Anti-war opposition is analyzed in Frances H. Early,
A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I
(Syracuse, N.Y., 1997). The armistice is covered in Bullitt Lowry,
Armistice 1918
(Kent, Ohio, 1997) and Klaus Schwabe,
Woodrow Wilson, Revolutionary Germany, and Peacemaking, 1918–1919: Missionary Diplomacy and the Realities of Power,
translated by Rita and Robert Kimber (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1985). A readable recent study of the Versailles peacemaking is Margaret Macmillan,
Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World
(New York, 2001). Arno J. Mayer,
Politics and Diplomacy at Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–1919
(New York, 1967) is sweeping in scope and bold in interpretation. Erez Manela,
The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism
(New York, 2007) skillfully analyzes the reactions of oppressed people worldwide to Wilson's diplomacy. The problem of Bolshevik Russia at the peace conference is discussed in N. Gordon Levin Jr.,
Woodrow Wilson and World Politics: America's Response to War and Revolution
(New York, 1968). The interventions in North Russia and Siberia are covered in Betty Miller Unterberger,
America's Siberian Expedition: A Study of National Policy
(Durham, N.C., 1959) and David Fogelsong,
America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War
(Chapel Hill, N.C.,
1996). David W. McFadden,
Alternative Paths: Soviets and Americans, 1917–1920
(New York, 1992) deals with official and informal contacts during these years. Unterberger's
The United States, Revolutionary Russia, and the Rise of Czechoslovakia
(Chapel Hill, N.C., 1989) provides a valuable case study of the application of self-determination. Wilson's 1919–20 defeat is analyzed from various perspectives in Ralph Stone,
The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations
(Lexington, Ky., 1970), Lloyd E. Ambrosius,
Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective
(New York, 1987), and Herbert F. Marguiles,
The Mild Reservationists and the League of Nations Controversy in the Senate
(Columbia, Mo., 1989). An authoritative recent study is John M. Cooper Jr.,
Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations
(New York, 2001).