From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776

More about the book

Historian Herring uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's rise from thirteen disparate colonies along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower. He documents America's interaction with other peoples and nations, a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life, and how much America's expansion as a nation also owes to the adventurers and explorers, the merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests in foreign lands.--From publisher description. Historian Herring uses foreign relations as the lens through which to tell the story of America's rise from thirteen disparate colonies along the Atlantic coast to the world's greatest superpower. He documents America's interaction with other peoples and nations, a story of stunning successes and sometimes tragic failures, captured in a fast-paced narrative that illuminates the central importance of foreign relations to the existence and survival of the nation, and highlights its ongoing impact on the lives of ordinary citizens. He shows how policymakers defined American interests broadly to include territorial expansion, access to growing markets, and the spread of an "American way" of life, and how much America's expansion as a nation also owes to the adventurers and explorers, the merchants and captains of industry, the missionaries and diplomats, who discovered or charted new lands, developed new avenues of commerce, and established and defended the nation's interests in foreign lands.--From publisher description