William Appleman Williams
Encyclopedia
William Appleman Williams (June 12, 1921 – March 5, 1990) was one of the 20th century's most prominent revisionist
historian
s of American
diplomacy
, and has been called "the favorite historian of the Middle American
New Left
." He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
.
. He attended Kemper Military School
in Boonville, Missouri
, then earned a degree in engineering at the United States Naval Academy
in Annapolis. He graduated and was commissioned in 1945. After serving in the Pacific
in World War II, he was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas
where he made plans to become a naval aviator. A wartime injury had required spinal fusion surgery and it was determined that this made him ineligible for flight training. He retired from the Navy in 1946 and moved to University of Wisconsin–Madison
to begin graduate studies. He earned a Master's Degree and a PhD there and came under the influence of the great historians Fred Harvey Harrington, Merle Curti
, and Howard K. Beale
. After teaching at various other colleges, he returned to Madison
in 1957 to teach in the history department.
in the United States. Like Williams, its articles offered a critique of the dominant liberalism, but after it moved to offices to New York in 1963, the club reflected less of his thinking and gradually declined and soon expired.
Williams departed from the mainstream of U.S. historiography in the 1950s. Whereas many U.S. historians wrote the story of the U.S. in terms of the spread of freedom, Williams argued that the U.S. had also spread as an empire. Williams's "central conception of American diplomacy," one critic has written, is that it was shaped "by the effort of American leaders to evade the domestic dilemmas of race and class through an escapist movement: they used world politics, he feels, to preserve a capitalist frontier safe for America's market and investment expansion." In this regard, Williams's understanding of American history owes a considerable debt to Frederick Jackson Turner
and the first generation of American progressive historians. Because his history of American diplomacy pivots on John Hay
's Open Door
Notes to China–at around the same time as the closing of the internal American frontier–Williams's larger argument is sometimes referred to as the "Open Door thesis."
Williams maintained that the United States
was more responsible for the Cold War
than the Soviet Union
. Williams argued that American politicians, fearful of a loss of markets in Europe
, had exaggerated the threat of world domination from the Soviet Union. Amid much criticism, Williams made no moral distinction between the foreign policy of Joseph Stalin
in Eastern Europe and the foreign policy of the United States in Latin America, Africa, or Asia. In the context of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, he went out of his way in an expanded second edition of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1962) to strongly criticize the behavior of the Soviet Union, but he also had the Kennedy Administration's Bay of Pigs Invasion
of Cuba as a parallel behavior. The difference in domestic policy between Stalin's Soviet Union and American democracy, he argued, made the U.S. embrace of empire all the more "tragic."
Williams inspired a generation of historians to re-think the Cold War, including Gar Alperovitz
, Lloyd Gardner
, Patrick J. Hearden
, Gabriel Kolko
, Walter LaFeber
, and Thomas J. McCormick
who along with Williams argued that the Vietnam War
was neither democratizing nor liberating but was an attempt to spread American dominance.
He later edited a book of readings together with Gardner, LaFeber and Thomas McCormick (who had taken his place at UW–Madison when Williams left to teach in Oregon) called America in Vietnam: A Documentary History in 1989.
Williams' The Tragedy of American Diplomacy is often described as one of the most influential books written on American foreign policy
. Bradford Perkins
, a traditionalist diplomatic historian emeritus at the University of Michigan, said this in a twenty-five-year retrospective on Tragedy: "The influence of William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy... is beyond challenge." Tragedy brought Williams to the attention of not only academics but also American policymakers. Adolf A. Berle, a former member of FDR's Brain Trust
, was quite impressed with Williams after reading Tragedy and meeting him in person in Madison asked if he would be his "personal first assistant" in the new position Berle had taken in the Kennedy Administration as the head of an interdepartmental task force on Latin America. Williams turned down the offer to serve in the Kennedy Administration and later claimed that he was glad he had because of Kennedy's sponsorship of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
After witnessing the turmoil of the 1960s in Madison and tiring of the grind of teaching graduate students, he moved to Oregon State University
in 1968 to, in the words of his biographer, Paul Buhle
"teach undergraduates, live by the ocean, and live in a diversified community of ‘ordinary’ Americans.". While in Oregon, Williams "called for a return to the Articles of Confederation
and a radical decentralization
of political and economic power." "Not only did he see the U.S. under the Articles as a relatively anti-imperial era, he also believed that the strong localism made possible under the Articles was the only form of governance suitable to real Americans living real lives."
Williams served as President of the Organization of American Historians
in 1980, retired in 1988, and died in Oregon
in 1990. Always a bit eccentric and not a little idiosyncratic, Williams gave his interpretation of the nation's past a moralistic tone, finding soul mates in conservatives like John Quincy Adams
and Herbert Hoover
. He always distrusted cosmopolitanism and championed small communities, while distrusting intellectuals who sneered at the unwashed masses. For all his radicalism, he never outgrew the kind of populist approach that he believed was an important part of the American heritage. In this sense he fit in well with his Wisconsin colleagues, William B. Hesseltine and Merrill Jensen
, all of whom added to what has been called the "Wisconsin school" of historical interpretation.
's larger economic analysis of American history. In 1974, for instance, N. Gordon Levin Jr.
compared Williams to Beard and argued that the Open Door
model "is inadequate because it insists on forcing all political-moral and strategic motivations" for American foreign policy into "the Procrustean confines" of relentless economic expansion. Williams' response was that he was merely re-stating what American intellectual and political leaders said at the time.
Another serious critique of Williams's work was offered by Robert W. Tucker
in 1971, followed by Robert James Maddox in 1973, and by Howard Schonberger in 1975. Tucker’s arguments challenged those of Williams by arguing that United States foreign policy had been generally passive, rather than aggressive, before 1939. Tucker’s arguments were elaborated and expanded later by other scholars. Maddox in The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War criticized Williams, Lloyd Gardner
, and other revisionist scholars for alleged pervasive misuse of historical source documents and for a general lack of objectivity. Williams and the others published detailed rebuttals in the New York Times Book Review in 1973.
In 1986, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whom Williams always distrusted for his closeness to power brokers, criticized him from a liberal perspective in The Cycles of American History. In the 1950s, Schlesinger had accused Williams of "Communist" influence, because of Williams's critique of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in American-Russian Relations and the Monthly Review
article "Second Look at Mr. X," a response to George F. Kennan
's Foreign Affairs
article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the moniker Mr. X in 1947.
, who uses them as a starting point for his own critique of US policies since the end of the Cold War in American Empire
.
Morris Berman
, in his 2006
book Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire also cites Williams as "perhaps the greatest of the so-called revisionist historians" whose influence can be seen in the works of Lloyd Gardner, Walter LaFeber
, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko
, and Gar Alperovitz
. NYU Greg Grandin wrote an essay in The Nation marking the 50th anniversary of Tragedy of American Diplomacy, called "Off Dead Center," and Grandin's Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism works within a Williams framework.
Historical revisionism
In historiography, historical revisionism is the reinterpretation of orthodox views on evidence, motivations, and decision-making processes surrounding a historical event...
historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
s of American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
diplomacy
Diplomacy
Diplomacy is the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states...
, and has been called "the favorite historian of the Middle American
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States is one of the four U.S. geographic regions defined by the United States Census Bureau, providing an official definition of the American Midwest....
New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
." He achieved the height of his influence while on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
.
Biography
Williams was born and raised in the small town of Atlantic, IowaAtlantic, Iowa
Atlantic is a city in and the county seat of Cass County, Iowa, United States, located along the East Nishnabotna River. The population was 7,112 in the 2010 census, a decline from the 7,257 population in the 2000 census. -History:...
. He attended Kemper Military School
Kemper Military School
Kemper Military School & College was a private military school located in Boonville, Missouri. Kemper filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2002. The school's motto was "Nunquam Non Paratus" .-Early years under Frederick T. Kemper:...
in Boonville, Missouri
Boonville, Missouri
This page is about the city in Missouri. For other communities of the same name, see Boonville Boonville is a city in Cooper County, Missouri, USA. The population was 8,202 at the 2000 census. It is the county seat of Cooper County. The city was the site of a skirmish early in the American Civil...
, then earned a degree in engineering at the United States Naval Academy
United States Naval Academy
The United States Naval Academy is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located in Annapolis, Maryland, United States...
in Annapolis. He graduated and was commissioned in 1945. After serving in the Pacific
Pacific Theater of Operations
The Pacific Theater of Operations was the World War II area of military activity in the Pacific Ocean and the countries bordering it, a geographic scope that reflected the operational and administrative command structures of the American forces during that period...
in World War II, he was stationed in Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi, Texas
Corpus Christi is a coastal city in the South Texas region of the U.S. state of Texas. The county seat of Nueces County, it also extends into Aransas, Kleberg, and San Patricio counties. The MSA population in 2008 was 416,376. The population was 305,215 at the 2010 census making it the...
where he made plans to become a naval aviator. A wartime injury had required spinal fusion surgery and it was determined that this made him ineligible for flight training. He retired from the Navy in 1946 and moved to University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
to begin graduate studies. He earned a Master's Degree and a PhD there and came under the influence of the great historians Fred Harvey Harrington, Merle Curti
Merle Curti
Merle Curti was a leading American historian. He taught a large number of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in developing the fields of social history and intellectual history. As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy, and to the Turnerian...
, and Howard K. Beale
Howard K. Beale
Howard Kennedy Beale was an American historian. He specialized in nineteenth and twentieth-century American history, particularly the Reconstruction Era. He also wrote biographies of Theodore Roosevelt, Edward Bates, and Charles A. Beard. Beale was born in Chicago to Frank A. and Nellie Kennedy...
. After teaching at various other colleges, he returned to Madison
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the capital of the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Dane County. It is also home to the University of Wisconsin–Madison....
in 1957 to teach in the history department.
Academic career
Graduate students found his challenges to the established historiography quite compelling and flocked to the University to study with him, regardless of their fields. The same year that his most influential book, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy was published, Williams's students who were members of the campus's Socialist Club, began publication of Studies on the Left, a manifesto of the emerging New LeftNew Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
in the United States. Like Williams, its articles offered a critique of the dominant liberalism, but after it moved to offices to New York in 1963, the club reflected less of his thinking and gradually declined and soon expired.
Williams departed from the mainstream of U.S. historiography in the 1950s. Whereas many U.S. historians wrote the story of the U.S. in terms of the spread of freedom, Williams argued that the U.S. had also spread as an empire. Williams's "central conception of American diplomacy," one critic has written, is that it was shaped "by the effort of American leaders to evade the domestic dilemmas of race and class through an escapist movement: they used world politics, he feels, to preserve a capitalist frontier safe for America's market and investment expansion." In this regard, Williams's understanding of American history owes a considerable debt to Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner
Frederick Jackson Turner was an American historian in the early 20th century. He is best known for his essay "The Significance of the Frontier in American History", whose ideas are referred to as the Frontier Thesis. He is also known for his theories of geographical sectionalism...
and the first generation of American progressive historians. Because his history of American diplomacy pivots on John Hay
John Hay
John Milton Hay was an American statesman, diplomat, author, journalist, and private secretary and assistant to Abraham Lincoln.-Early life:...
's Open Door
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a concept in foreign affairs, which usually refers to the policy in 1899 allowing multiple Imperial powers access to China, with none of them in control of that country. As a theory, the Open Door Policy originates with British commercial practice, as was reflected in...
Notes to China–at around the same time as the closing of the internal American frontier–Williams's larger argument is sometimes referred to as the "Open Door thesis."
Williams maintained that the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
was more responsible for the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
than the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
. Williams argued that American politicians, fearful of a loss of markets in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, had exaggerated the threat of world domination from the Soviet Union. Amid much criticism, Williams made no moral distinction between the foreign policy of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
in Eastern Europe and the foreign policy of the United States in Latin America, Africa, or Asia. In the context of the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, he went out of his way in an expanded second edition of The Tragedy of American Diplomacy (1962) to strongly criticize the behavior of the Soviet Union, but he also had the Kennedy Administration's Bay of Pigs Invasion
Bay of Pigs Invasion
The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US government, in an attempt to overthrow the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The invasion was launched in April 1961, less than three months...
of Cuba as a parallel behavior. The difference in domestic policy between Stalin's Soviet Union and American democracy, he argued, made the U.S. embrace of empire all the more "tragic."
Williams inspired a generation of historians to re-think the Cold War, including Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz is Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Government and Politics. He is a former Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding Fellow of Harvard’s Institute of Politics; a Fellow at the Institute for Policy...
, Lloyd Gardner
Lloyd Gardner
Lloyd C. Gardner is a diplomatic historian. He is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University, where he has taught since 1963. A specialist in 20th century foreign policy, Gardner has held several national fellowships, including two Fulbright Professorships in England and...
, Patrick J. Hearden
Patrick J. Hearden
Patrick J. Hearden is the Professor of History at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. He specializes in the history of American foreign policy. He received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1971...
, Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko is an American historian and author.Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University and the University of Wisconsin , married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania...
, Walter LaFeber
Walter LaFeber
Walter LaFeber was a Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in the Department of History at Cornell University...
, and Thomas J. McCormick
Thomas J. McCormick
Thomas J. McCormick is an emeritus professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has used Wallersteinian World Systems perspective to describe the dynamics of corporatism in US diplomatic history.-Education:...
who along with Williams argued that the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
was neither democratizing nor liberating but was an attempt to spread American dominance.
He later edited a book of readings together with Gardner, LaFeber and Thomas McCormick (who had taken his place at UW–Madison when Williams left to teach in Oregon) called America in Vietnam: A Documentary History in 1989.
Williams' The Tragedy of American Diplomacy is often described as one of the most influential books written on American foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
. Bradford Perkins
Bradford Perkins (historian)
Bradford Perkins was an American historian who spent the bulk of his career at the University of Michigan. He was the son of the historian Dexter Perkins.-Life:...
, a traditionalist diplomatic historian emeritus at the University of Michigan, said this in a twenty-five-year retrospective on Tragedy: "The influence of William Appleman Williams's The Tragedy of American Diplomacy... is beyond challenge." Tragedy brought Williams to the attention of not only academics but also American policymakers. Adolf A. Berle, a former member of FDR's Brain Trust
Brain Trust
Brain trust began as a term for a group of close advisors to a political candidate or incumbent, prized for their expertise in particular fields. The term is most associated with the group of advisors to Franklin Roosevelt during his presidential administration...
, was quite impressed with Williams after reading Tragedy and meeting him in person in Madison asked if he would be his "personal first assistant" in the new position Berle had taken in the Kennedy Administration as the head of an interdepartmental task force on Latin America. Williams turned down the offer to serve in the Kennedy Administration and later claimed that he was glad he had because of Kennedy's sponsorship of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
After witnessing the turmoil of the 1960s in Madison and tiring of the grind of teaching graduate students, he moved to Oregon State University
Oregon State University
Oregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are more than 200 academic degree programs offered through the...
in 1968 to, in the words of his biographer, Paul Buhle
Paul Buhle
Paul Merlyn Buhle is a Senior Lecturer at Brown University, author or editor of 35 volumes including histories of radicalism in the United States and the Caribbean, studies of popular culture, and a series of nonfiction comic art volumes. He is the authorized biographer of C. L. R...
"teach undergraduates, live by the ocean, and live in a diversified community of ‘ordinary’ Americans.". While in Oregon, Williams "called for a return to the Articles of Confederation
Articles of Confederation
The Articles of Confederation, formally the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, was an agreement among the 13 founding states that legally established the United States of America as a confederation of sovereign states and served as its first constitution...
and a radical decentralization
Decentralization
__FORCETOC__Decentralization or decentralisation is the process of dispersing decision-making governance closer to the people and/or citizens. It includes the dispersal of administration or governance in sectors or areas like engineering, management science, political science, political economy,...
of political and economic power." "Not only did he see the U.S. under the Articles as a relatively anti-imperial era, he also believed that the strong localism made possible under the Articles was the only form of governance suitable to real Americans living real lives."
Williams served as President of the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
in 1980, retired in 1988, and died in Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
in 1990. Always a bit eccentric and not a little idiosyncratic, Williams gave his interpretation of the nation's past a moralistic tone, finding soul mates in conservatives like John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams
John Quincy Adams was the sixth President of the United States . He served as an American diplomat, Senator, and Congressional representative. He was a member of the Federalist, Democratic-Republican, National Republican, and later Anti-Masonic and Whig parties. Adams was the son of former...
and Herbert Hoover
Herbert Hoover
Herbert Clark Hoover was the 31st President of the United States . Hoover was originally a professional mining engineer and author. As the United States Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s under Presidents Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge, he promoted partnerships between government and business...
. He always distrusted cosmopolitanism and championed small communities, while distrusting intellectuals who sneered at the unwashed masses. For all his radicalism, he never outgrew the kind of populist approach that he believed was an important part of the American heritage. In this sense he fit in well with his Wisconsin colleagues, William B. Hesseltine and Merrill Jensen
Merrill Jensen
Merrill Monroe Jensen was an American historian whose research and writing focused on the ratification of the United States Constitution. His historical interpretations are generally considered to be of the "Progressive School" of American history, the most famous exponent of which was Charles A....
, all of whom added to what has been called the "Wisconsin school" of historical interpretation.
Criticism
To some degree, Williams's economic interpretation of American diplomacy has been criticized on the same grounds as Charles A. BeardCharles A. Beard
Charles Austin Beard was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science...
's larger economic analysis of American history. In 1974, for instance, N. Gordon Levin Jr.
N. Gordon Levin Jr.
Norman Gordon Levin Jr. is an American historian, and Dwight Morrow Professor of History and American Studies at Amherst College.-Life:He graduated from Yale University in 1956, and from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1967....
compared Williams to Beard and argued that the Open Door
Open Door Policy
The Open Door Policy is a concept in foreign affairs, which usually refers to the policy in 1899 allowing multiple Imperial powers access to China, with none of them in control of that country. As a theory, the Open Door Policy originates with British commercial practice, as was reflected in...
model "is inadequate because it insists on forcing all political-moral and strategic motivations" for American foreign policy into "the Procrustean confines" of relentless economic expansion. Williams' response was that he was merely re-stating what American intellectual and political leaders said at the time.
Another serious critique of Williams's work was offered by Robert W. Tucker
Robert W. Tucker
Robert Warren Tucker, an American realist, is a writer and teacher who is Professor Emeritus of American Foreign Policy at the Johns Hopkins University, Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences....
in 1971, followed by Robert James Maddox in 1973, and by Howard Schonberger in 1975. Tucker’s arguments challenged those of Williams by arguing that United States foreign policy had been generally passive, rather than aggressive, before 1939. Tucker’s arguments were elaborated and expanded later by other scholars. Maddox in The New Left and the Origins of the Cold War criticized Williams, Lloyd Gardner
Lloyd Gardner
Lloyd C. Gardner is a diplomatic historian. He is the Charles and Mary Beard Professor of History at Rutgers University, where he has taught since 1963. A specialist in 20th century foreign policy, Gardner has held several national fellowships, including two Fulbright Professorships in England and...
, and other revisionist scholars for alleged pervasive misuse of historical source documents and for a general lack of objectivity. Williams and the others published detailed rebuttals in the New York Times Book Review in 1973.
In 1986, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., whom Williams always distrusted for his closeness to power brokers, criticized him from a liberal perspective in The Cycles of American History. In the 1950s, Schlesinger had accused Williams of "Communist" influence, because of Williams's critique of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union in American-Russian Relations and the Monthly Review
Monthly Review
Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
article "Second Look at Mr. X," a response to George F. Kennan
George F. Kennan
George Frost Kennan was an American adviser, diplomat, political scientist and historian, best known as "the father of containment" and as a key figure in the emergence of the Cold War...
's Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
article "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," published under the moniker Mr. X in 1947.
Revival
Some of Williams' ideas about the imperial nature of American foreign policy have been revived by Andrew BacevichAndrew Bacevich
Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr. is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a retired career officer in the United States Army...
, who uses them as a starting point for his own critique of US policies since the end of the Cold War in American Empire
American Empire
American imperialism is a term referring to the economic, military and cultural influence of the United States on other countries. The concept of an American Empire was first popularized during the presidency of James K...
.
Morris Berman
Morris Berman
Morris Berman was born in Rochester, New York. He earned his BA in mathematics at Cornell University in 1966 and his Ph.D. in the history of science at The Johns Hopkins University in 1972...
, in his 2006
2006 in literature
The year 2006 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Literature:*Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Half of a Yellow Sun*Chris Adrian - The Children's Hospital *Martin Amis - House of Meetings...
book Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire also cites Williams as "perhaps the greatest of the so-called revisionist historians" whose influence can be seen in the works of Lloyd Gardner, Walter LaFeber
Walter LaFeber
Walter LaFeber was a Marie Underhill Noll Professor of History and a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow in the Department of History at Cornell University...
, Joyce and Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko
Gabriel Kolko is an American historian and author.Kolko was born in Paterson, New Jersey, attended Kent State University and the University of Wisconsin , married Joyce Manning in 1955, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1962. Following graduation he taught at the University of Pennsylvania...
, and Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz
Gar Alperovitz is Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, College Park Department of Government and Politics. He is a former Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; a founding Fellow of Harvard’s Institute of Politics; a Fellow at the Institute for Policy...
. NYU Greg Grandin wrote an essay in The Nation marking the 50th anniversary of Tragedy of American Diplomacy, called "Off Dead Center," and Grandin's Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States and the Rise of the New Imperialism works within a Williams framework.
Works by Williams
- American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947, 1952
- America and the Middle East: Open Door Imperialism or Enlightened Leadership?, 1958
- The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 1959
- The Contours of American History, 1961
- The United States, Cuba, and Castro: An Essay on the Dynamics of Revolution and the Dissolution of Empire, 1962
- The Great Evasion: An Essay on the Contemporary Relevance of Karl Marx and on the Wisdom of Admitting the Heretic Into the Dialogue About America's Future, 1964
- The Roots of the Modern American Empire: A Study of the Growth and Shaping of Social Consciousness in a Marketplace Society, 1969
- Some Presidents: Wilson to Nixon, 1972
- History as a Way of Learning, 1973
- America Confronts a Revolutionary World: 1776-1976, 1976
- Americans in a Changing World: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century, 1978
- Empire as a Way of Life: An Essay on the Causes and Character of America's Present Predicament, Along With a Few Thoughts About an Alternative, 1980
Further reading
External links
- The William Appleman Williams Papers at the Oregon State University Libraries.
- William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of Empire book review by Michael Meeropol.
- William Appleman Williams, American-Russian Relations, 1781-1947' (1952) article at Explorations Deep Into the Quagmire Known blog.
- http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090720/grandin
- http://members.tripod.com/~MILTENOFF/WAWilliams.html