Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right (Hill and Wang Critical Issues) - Softcover

Stephenson, A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809015846 ISBN 13: 9780809015849

Publisher: Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S., 1996

Synopsis

The Hill and Wang Critical Issues Series: concise, affordable works on pivotal topics in American history, society, and politics.

Stephanson explores the origins of Manifest Destiny--the American idea of providential and historical chosenness--and shows how and why it has been invoked over the past three hundred years. He traces the roots of Manifest Destiny from the British settlement of North America and the rise of Puritanism through Woodrow Wilson's efforts to "make the world safe for democracy" and Ronald Reagan's struggle against the "evil empire" of the Soviet Union. The result is a remarkable and necessary book about how faith in divinely ordained expansionism has marked the course of American history.

About this title

About the Author

Anders Stephanson, professor of history at Columbia University, is the author of Kennan and the Art of Foreign Policy.

From the Back Cover

When John O'Sullivan wrote in 1845, "...the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of Liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us", he coined a phrase that aptly describes how Americans from colonial days and into the twentieth century perceived their privileged role. Anders Stephanson examines the consequences of this idea over more than three hundred years of history, as Manifest Destiny drove the westward settlement to the Pacific, defining the stubborn belief in the superiority of white people and denigrating Native Americans and other people of color. He considers it a component in Woodrow Wilson's campaign "to make the world safe for democracy" and a strong factor in Ronald Reagan's administration.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0809015846
• ISBN 13: 9780809015849
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 160