"What follows is more than a collection of highly informative essays on the history of the foreign relations of the United States. It also asks a series of questions: What have been the key moments and themes in the history of U.S. foreign relations? How do those moments reflect the broader nature of the nation's global interactions? How did the United States become a colonial power and a global superpower? Who has shaped and been shaped by major foreign policy decisions, at home and abroad? In short, why is the study of the history of U.S. foreign relations so fundamentally important? This generation of historians have written new histories that build on ongoing debates about the nature of American international power rather than replace them. Such a roomy and inclusive understanding of the field of U.S. foreign relations should be celebrated, and this collection serves as a snapshot of a dynamic field. Its first volume contains essays that analyze the history of U.S. foreign relations from the eighteenth century to the Second World War, a period in which the United States won independence, expanded its borders rapidly, fought major wars, and joined the ranks of the modern, industrial imperial powers. Readers will find much of interest in terms of traditional questions of power, expansion and wealth. They will also find essays that cover topics from propaganda to philanthropy, as well as people from legislators and diplomats to artists and missionaries. The essays cover a wide variety of methodologies, drawing from fields of U.S. political, diplomatic, legal, and military history, but also examining the links between U.S. foreign relations and the study of American culture, ideology, race, gender, and religion, as well as the study of migration, Native American history, the political economies of industrialization and imperialism, and U.S. interactions with a wide variety of characters at home and abroad"-- |