2008 Nonfiction Finalist From Colony to Superpower, by George C. Herring

by Eric Banks | Mar-09-2009

Each day leading up to the March 12 announcement of the 2008 NBCC awards, we highlight one of the thirty finalists. Today, NBCC board member Eric Banks discusses George C. Herring’s From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 (Oxford University Press).

From its very moment of independence in 1776, the United States has been a global player, sometimes deft, sometimes daft, but at all times acutely aware of the impact of the world around it on its security and prosperity. From the earliest days of the nation, when independence relied for success on foreign recognition and financial support, through the birth of the first political parties out of policy schisms over the Jay Treaty and relations with England, to the bungled approach to the first war of the new country’s life in 1812, it is inconceivable to imagine from the very beginning the role of foreign policy in the nation’s history. George Herring’s monumental From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 reminds us that a history of the country simply can’t be constructed without an understanding of its relationship with others—no matter the weight of isolationist myth or the no-cost fantasies of “free security.” From Benjamin Franklin to James Blaine, Dean Acheson to Condeleezza Rice, Herring presents this history with a breadth that makes the word sweeping an understatement and the thirty-page biographical essay at the end a flip-of-the-wrist afterthought.

Exploring the powers of myths—from the American belief in the singularity of its virtue to an abiding and lasting faith in the nation’s particular destiny—drives much of Herring’s history. He does so, however, with the patience of a narrator of an epic and with the understanding of how definitive those myths remain even as the world changed, other powers receded, and American military and economic might mushroomed. (Part of the plus ça change experience of the reading of Herring’s book is the recognition of the roots so many bedrock foreign-policy objectives and assumptions in the pre-Wilsonian days of the republic. How many times did a secretary of state figure that economic, diplomatic, or military intervention in the affairs of another state would be greeted with the open arms of the happily liberated? Or how early “blowback” could be recognized as the long-run result?) “Few nations have had as much experience at war,” Herring reminds us at the beginning of From Colony to Superpower, despite the overwhelming home view of the country’s mission as traditionally peaceful. At the same time, few countries have had as much success in the promulgation of foreign policy to achieve its objectives, pace much recent history.

Beyond his compelling and exhaustive retelling of the long histories of American unilateralism and the particular insistence on the lust for economic expansion and unobstructed trade, whether in 1810s Barbary Coast, 1870s Hawaii, or the current-day Middle East, Herring is particularly even-handed in his presentation. His on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand mode of historicizing is compellingly deployed, and even at when he is at his most contentious the basic judiciousness of his argument is a model of writing history for both the lay reader and the professional in the field. This is no easy trick to pull off in a book that runs to 1,035 pages, where the urge to get along with the story could easily force a too quick moment of closure. It is in the writing of From Colony to Superpower that Herring’s feat is most impressive. The Herculean feat of massaging such an overwhelming amount of specialist knowledge into a highly readable account where details never threaten the whole and the whole never distracts from the details. He doesn’t seem to miss a single conflict or history of international relations, whether it is the case with Canadian border struggles in Maine, Russian support for the Union army, or Reagan’s foray into Grenada. Herring studs his tome with an ear to the perfect quote, the clinching anecdote, the ever-brief foray into biographical detail (there are plenty of memorable occasions, but the one that sticks out for me is when he pauses, in describing Joel Poinsett’s disastrous role in relations with Mexico, to remind us that the South Carolinian is “better known for giving his name to a brightly colored Christmas flower native to Central America”). I hope it doesn’t detract at all from the value of book he has written to note how thoroughly entertaining it is to read.