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Home » Browse » The Cambridge History
of American Foreign Relations Vol. 2: The American Search for Opportunity,
1865–1913
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The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913

Series The Cambridge History of American Foreign
Relations, Volume 2

Edited by Walter
Lafeber

Publication Date 1993

Hardback ISBN-13 9780521381857

Hardback ISBN-10 0521381851

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.1017/CHOL9780521381857

Overview

Between the American Civil War and the outbreak of world War I, global
history was transformed by two events: the United States's rise to the status of
a great world power (indeed, the world's greatest economic power) and the
eruption of nineteenth- and twentieth-century revolutions in Mexico, China,
Russia, Cuba, the Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Nicaragua, and elsewhere. The
American Search for Opportunity traces the U.S. foreign policy between 1865 and
1913, linking these two historic trends by noting how the United States -
usually thought of as antirevolutionary and embarked on a 'search for order'
during this era - actually was a determinative force in helping to trigger these
revolutions. Walter LaFeber argues that industrialization fuelled
centralisation: Post-Civil War America remained a vast, unwieldy country of
isolated, parochial communities, but the federal government and a new corporate
capitalism now had the power to invade these areas and integrate them into an
industrialization, railway-linked nation-state. The furious pace of economic
growth in America attracted refugees from all parts of the world. Professor
LaFeber describes and influx of immigration so enormous that it led to America's
first exclusionary immigration act. In 1882, the United States passed
legislation preventing all Chinese immigrant labour, skilled and unskilled, from
entering the country for the next 10 years.

For more details of the print
book, and how to buy it online, please see The American Search for Opportunity,
1865–1913 in the Cambridge University Press online catalogue.

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Table of Contents

The
Cambridge History of American Foreign Relations Vol. 2: The American Search for
Opportunity, 1865–1913

Frontmatter

Springboards
and strategies

The
second Industrial Revolution at home and abroad

Race
for empire

“America
Will Take This Continent in Hand Alone”

Crossing
the oceans

1893–1896:
chaos and crises

The
empire of 1898 – and upheaval

Pacific
empire – and upheaval

Theodore
Roosevelt: conservative as revolutionary

William
Howard Taft and the age of revolution

Conclusion:
The 1865–1913 Era Restated

Bibliographic
Essay

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