Book Review: International Politics and Economics: The Historian and the Diplomat

Date01 June 1967
DOI10.1177/002070206702200212
Published date01 June 1967
Subject MatterBook Review
312
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
and
in no
way
constitutes
a
break-through
in
historical
method.
Which
shows
again
that
you
can lead
a
computer
to
the
archives,
but
you
can't
make
it
think.
University
of
Toronto
JOHN
C.
CAIRNS
THE
HISTORIAN
AND
THE
DIPLOMAT.
Edited
by
Francis
L.
Loewenheim.
1966.
(New
York:
Harper
&
Row.
Toronto:
Fitzhenry
&
Whiteside.
ix,
213pp.
$8.75)
This
is
a
book
of
essays
on
a
subject
that
is
not
easily
described
in
a
title.
Professor
Loewenheim, who
contributes
the
first
paper
and
the
introduction,
explains
that
the
objects
are
to
show
what
role
history
has
played
in
the
development
of
American
foreign
policy
since
the
first
World
War
and
how
foreign
policy
has
influenced
American
his-
torical
scholarship. This broad
definition
still
leaves
a
reader
a
little
puzzled,
and
indeed
the
other
contributors
to
the
volume
range
around
this
large
theme. There
is
an
inevitable
tendency
to
jump
from
descrip-
tions
of
and
comments
on
policy
itself
to criticisms
of
the
historians,
some
of
whom
are
professionals
and
some
not.
Most
of
them
do
not
come
out
of
the
examination unscathed.
Mr.
Loewenheim's
lengthy
essay
is
an argument
for
a
policy
that
was
based
on
what
he
sees
as
the
idealism
of
the
revolution.
Any
deviations
from
that
were
exceptions, as,
for
example,
Mexico
and
Central
America.
Canadians may
be
pardoned if
they
do
not
wholly
recogmze
this
picture, but
then
they
are
not
mentioned in
the
index
or
the
text.
A
great
deal
of
this
essay
is
devoted to
the
historians
that
followed
the
first
World
War,
and,
one
gathers,
thoroughly
confused
the
issue.
They
do
not
come
out
much
better
after
the
second
World
War.
Professor
Mayer
regrets
the
historians' attitude
toward
Woodrow
Wilson.
Mr.
Feis
contemplates
the
problem
of
records
for
recent
history
He
states
that
the
military
branches
of
the
American
government
made
better
provision
than
did
the
White
House
or
the
State
Department.
Brief and fugitive
notes
were
made
of
important
conversations
and
conferences
and
many
of
these have
disappeared.
Professor
Morton
comes
well
down
to
earth
in his
paper
entitled
"The
Cold
War
and
American
Scholarship"
He
deprecates
the
tendency
to compare
the
American
revolution
with
modern
movements
for
in-
dependence.
"The
American
attitude
toward
revolution"
he
adds,
"is
ambiguous.
On
the
one
hand,
we
view
ourselves
as inheritors
of
a
revolutionary
tradition
and
the
example
of
the
most
successful
ex-
periment
in
self-government
On
the
other
hand,
the
United
States
appears
to
many
as
the leader
of
anti-revolutionary forces.
He
faces
the
distinction
between
the
American aversion to
imperialism
and
its
own
methods
of
expansion
(which
were
not
always
gentle
or
in
the
spirit
of
self-determination).
"The
image"
he
writes,
"we
have
of
our
selves
as
a
peaceful, freedom-loving
and honest
people
is
not
always
shared
by
others.

To continue reading

Request your trial

VLEX uses login cookies to provide you with a better browsing experience. If you click on 'Accept' or continue browsing this site we consider that you accept our cookie policy. ACCEPT