Table of Contents

1. Springboards and strategies; 2. The second industrial revolution at home and abroad; 3. Race for empire; 4. 'America will take this continent in hand alone'; 5. Crossing the oceans; 6. 1893–6: chaos and crises; 7. The Empire of 1898 - and beyond; 8. Pacific empire - and upheaval; 9. Theodore Roosevelt: conservative as revolutionary; 10. William Howard Taft and the age of revolution; Conclusion: 11. The 1865–1913 era restated.

Promotional Information

This second volume of the updated edition describes the dynamics of United States foreign policy from 1865 to 1913.

About the Author

Walter LaFeber is Andrew Tisch and James Tisch Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Department of History at Cornell University. He is the author of America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945–2006, 10th edition (2007), The New Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1865–1898, 25th anniversary edition (1998), which received the Albert G. Beveridge Prize from the American Historical Association, The Clash: US–Japan Relations throughout History (1997), which received the Bancroft Prize in American History and the Ellis Hawley Prize from the Organization of American Historians, The American Age: US Foreign Policy Abroad and at Home since 1750, 2nd edition (1994), and Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd edition (1992), which won the Gustavus Myers Prize.

Reviews

'The American Search for Opportunity is vintage LaFeber: provocatively conceived, forcefully argued, and beautifully written. In this revised edition, LaFeber has retained and strengthened his arresting thesis that U.S. policy makers, prompted by a search for markets and flawed racial views, aggressively pursued opportunity and informal empire abroad at the expense of international order and stability.' Joseph A. Fry, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

'This is a masterful account of the United States' rise to global power by one of the most eminent scholars of U.S. foreign relations. Drawing on the latest scholarship and original research, Walter LaFeber eloquently demonstrates how U.S. economic expansion wreaked havoc around the world. He also shows that the disorder created by U.S. political and industrial leaders abroad gave rise to an imperial presidency at home. This thought-provoking book is essential reading for anyone interested in U.S. hegemony in a globalizing world - and the effects of globalization on the United States.' Michel Gobat, University of Iowa

'No one has done more to revolutionize our thinking about U.S. foreign policy in the era following the Civil War than Walter LaFeber. His path-breaking The New Empire demonstrated how those years set the stage for America's twentieth-century career as a world power. The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 not only takes that story beyond 1898, it highlights what a powerfully destabilizing and unsettling experience for other lands American expansion into the world has often been. Professor LaFeber addresses compellingly an issue that students of the past, and citizens of the present, would do well to give much greater attention.' Robert E. Hannigan, Suffolk University

'The American Search for Opportunity, 1865–1913 is much more than a survey of U.S. foreign policy from the Civil War to World War One. It is an elegant interpretive essay. LaFeber argues boldly and persuasively that the relentlessness of the U.S. search for global economic opportunities jostled societies as disparate as Russia and Haiti, inspiring revolution and turmoil around the world.' Nancy Mitchell, North Carolina State University