Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“If we seek to understand a people, we have to try to put ourselves, as far as we can, in that particular historical and cultural background,” said Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to a New York audience in 1949. In Visit to America , Nehru observes that understanding the way of life of a people or a country is not easy. The effort, he admits, can cause “great irritation.” Nor does he promise success as he insists that the attempt must be made ( Nehru 1950 : 58). Historians who analyze culture and American foreign relations know these motivations, challenges, limitations, and rewards. In the last decade, they have produced an impressive number of books and articles contributing fresh perspectives to the analysis of US foreign relations. As this survey of the recent literature demonstrates, studies of culture and American foreign relations are a diverse lot, embracing a variety of traditional and non-traditional approaches, new methodologies, and a multitude of sources, written by historians who are convinced that the ways in which people understood their world affected their international interactions. The new questions raised have been in part inspired by the changing times. After decades of defining its global role in terms of the confrontation with the Soviet Union, how would the United States determine its international identity? Some historians wish to test what Robert ... log in or subscribe to read full text