The Genesis of America investigates the ways in which US foreign policy contributed to the formation of an American national consciousness. Interpreting American nationalism as a process of external demarcation, Jasper M. Trautsch argues that, for a sense of national self to emerge, the US needed to be disentangled from its most important European reference points: Great Britain and France. As he shows, foreign-policy makers could therefore promote American nationalism by provoking foreign crises and wars with these countries, hereby creating external threats that would bind the fragile union together. By reconstructing how foreign policy was thus used as a nation-building instrument, Trautsch provides an answer to the puzzling question of how Americans - lacking a shared history and culture of their own and justifying their claim for independent nationhood by appeals to universal rights - could develop a sense of particularity after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War.
Author(s): Jasper M. Trautsch
Series: Cambridge Studies In US Foreign Relations
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 330
Tags: US Foreign Policy, Formation Of National Identity
Cover......Page 1
Half-title page......Page 3
Series page......Page 4
Title page......Page 5
Copyright page......Page 6
Dedication......Page 7
Contents......Page 9
List of Figures......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 11
Note on Citations......Page 14
List of
Abbreviations......Page 15
Introduction......Page 17
1 Political Ideologies and American Identity in the Era of the French Revolution......Page 54
2 Foreign Policies of Unneutrality and the Jay Treaty......Page 87
3 Federalists and the Origins of the Quasi-War......Page 123
4 Disentangling America from France......Page 147
5 Republicans and the Origins of the War of 1812......Page 184
6 Disentangling America from Great Britain......Page 231
Conclusion......Page 271
Bibliography......Page 286
Index......Page 320
