1. Continuities

About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we start by looking at the key continuities in US foreign policy for this period in comparison to earlier decades. The US maintained many aspects of its earlier Foreign Policy in this period and held onto key beliefs about its role in the world. These continuities included: (i) the idea of American Empire; (ii) the significance of race; (iii) the level of debate.

Course

In this course, Professor Jay Sexton (University of Missouri) explains the similarities and differences in attitudes about the US’s proper role in the world in the period 1865-98. We start by looking at the key continuities in US foreign policy for this period in comparison to earlier decades. After this, we'll turn to explain the key differences in this period which included: (i) the international and economic context; (ii) pro-imperialism; and (iii) the politics of annexation. After this, we'll then turn to examine the role and arguments of the anti-imperialists.

Lecturer

Jay Sexton is the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy and Professor of History at the University of Missouri. He is also a former Director of the Rothermere American Institute (RAI), a Distinguished Fellow of the RAI and an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He specialises in the political and economic history of the nineteenth century and has written a number of books including A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History, Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873, and The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America.