Book Review: The Rising American Empire
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206301800126 |
| Published date | 01 March 1963 |
| Date | 01 March 1963 |
| Author | George W. Brown |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
114
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL
It
goes
without
saying
that
Armstrong
does
not
offer
complete
answers. But
he
does
manage to establish the
questions
in
a
meaning-
ful
way while hewing to his purpose
of
remaining
general
and brief.
Through
an
adroit
use
of
succinct concepts
and
generalized
instances
(there
is
hardly
room
for
specific
ones)
he
manages
also
to
be
inform-
ative
in
a
way
that
leads
to
practical
understanding
of
complicated
issues.
The following
passage
illustrates
his
method
and
is
also
a
good
example of
his
restrained
style
on
tendentious
matters:
At
an
early
date,
the
Soviet
leadership
intuitively grasped
the
sociological
principle
that
transmission
of
ideas
is
most
effectively
accomplished
by
"opinion
leaders"
who
are
in
face-to-face
contact
with
small
groups.
Communist
Party
members
constitute
the
back-
bone
of
the
huge force
of
"agitators"
who
implement
this
principle.
During
a
rest
period
in
a
factory
workshop,
for
example,
a
Com-
munist
agitator
will
read
an
editorial
from
the
Party
newspaper,
Pravda,
embodying
the current
"line",
to
his
fellow
workers,
lest
they
idle
away
their
time.
While
there
is
evidence
that
such
em-
phasis
on
indoctrination
often
irritates
the
average
Soviet
citizen,
the
constant
reiteration
of
the
regime's
viewpoint,
unchallenged
by
any
opposing
opinion, is
bound
to
induce a
considerable
measure
of
acceptance.
Nowhere
does
the West's
knowledge
lag
behind
reality
with
such
potentially
perilous
consequences
as
in
the
field
of
Soviet
Communism.
Professor
Armstrong,
whose
brief
book
contains
small
and
unforbidding
bibliographies
at
the
end
of
each
chapter,
with
a
comment
on
the
value
of
each
reference, makes
that
lag
very
much
less excusable.
It
can
be
used
by
dedicated beginners
as
well
as
by
the
advanced
student
who
wishes
to
step
back
and
obtain
a
fresh
perspective
on
the
basic
pattern
of
the
Soviet
labyrinth.
Toronto
A.
DAvrD
Levy
THE
RISING
AMERiCAN
Emputs.
By
R.
W.
Van
Alstyne.
1960.
(New
York:
Toronto:
Oxford
University
Press.
ix,
215pp.
$6.00.)
This
study
of
the
"American
Empire" from
the
period
of
the
American Revolution
to
the
First
World
War
was
the
outgrowth
of
the
Commonwealth
Fund
Lectures
delivered
in
the
University
of
London
in
1956,
and
has
therefore
a
panoramic
quality
though
it
con-
tains
a
surprising
amount
of
interesting
and
relevant
detail.
Pro-
fessor
Van
Alstyne's
writings
have made
him deservedly known
as
an
authority
on
the
history
of
American
diplomacy
and foreign
policy,
not
only
in
the
United
States
but
in
other
countries,
especially
Canada
and
the
United Kingdom.
The
author's
thesis
is
that
the
growth
of
the
United
States
has
been
marked
by
"clearly
recognizable
urges or
drives"
revealing
expansion-
ist
and
imperialistic
impulses,
and
that
it
is
a
naive
illusion
of
the
American
people
that
the
United
States
has
not
been
an
empire
and
has
had
no
imperialist
ambitions.
American
imperialism has,
of
course,
had
its
own
distinctive
characteristics,
and
these
have
been
demon-
strated
throughout
the
history
of
the
country
in
public
policy
and
by
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