Syllabi

Jonathan R. Hunt, The University of Texas at Austin Syllabi Contents Landmarks of American History from the Columbian Exchange to the U.S. Civil War Landmarks of American History from Reconstruction to Obama Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: U.S. Foreign Relations from the Spanish American War to Hiroshima Uneasy Colossus: U.S. Foreign Relations, 1945-Present Seminar: Paradox: War and Peace in the Age of the Atom Graduate Seminar: Coming Together, or Coming Apart?: Colonialism, Decolonization, and Neocolonialism in the 20th Century Seminar: Upsetting the Balance: An Environmental History of Globalization (not included) Seminar: The Vietnam Wars (not included) ! Landmarks of U.S. History from Contact to the U.S. Civil War Jonathan R. Hunt Office Hours: Monday 3:00-5:00 p.m. or by appointment Course Objectives The aims of this course are twofold. First, it will furnish students with a broad and textured understanding of the history of North America from Christopher Columbus’s landing in Hispaniola in 1492 to the sectional crisis that climaxed in the U.S. Civil War. The lectures will emphasize the messy, dynamic, and unpredictable ways in which peoples from around the Atlantic World and beyond collided, and how new empires, republics, biomes, ecosystems, states, and nations formed from the resulting patchwork. Major topics will include the pre-Columbian Americas and the Columbian Exchange; European empires and the competition among them; unfree labor, commodity chains, and the Atlantic world; Native Americans and their travails; the American War of Independence; the U.S. Constitution; popular democracy, public culture, and partisan politics; Manifest Destiny; and the sectional crisis. This course will consequently highlight how personal and impersonal forces combined to bring about the events, processes, and ideas that marked the rise of the United States as a centralized nation-state and quasi-democracy. The significant undercurrent of class discussion and readings will be the cosmopolitan makeup of American society and the contests that arose not only over the political character of North American society, but over the question of who belonged in it and in what station. The course reading will accordingly feature a set of autobiographical accounts from a cast of character ranging from the heights of power to the margins of society and historical memory. Second, the course will teach students how to evaluate historical subjects by availing themselves of the mainstays of historical inquiry while introducing them to the many pathways by which historians approach the past. By semester’s end, the students should be able to answer a few basic questions about the discipline of history itself. What does it mean to study history? How do different historians study history differently? And how do our historical opinions shape how we live and think today? Readings We will read five books and a collection of short documents from the course packet. The required books are available at the campus bookstore and the course packet from a local printing store. Audio recordings, video, and other media will supplement these written sources when possible and will be made available on my personal website or via Friday screenings. • • • • • Peter Rhoads Silver, Our Savage Neighbors: How Indian War Transformed Early America Joseph J. Ellis, Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation Henry Bibb, The Life & Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln & American Slavery The course packet can be picked up from University Printers @ 111 College Ave. Requirements This course has four requirements. 1. Six unannounced quizzes to be administered in class. They will consist of 3 short-answer or multiple choice questions culled from the material presented in class lectures and readings. The quizzes will be administered at random intervals and without warning. Students will receive half credit for attendance that day. 2. A mid-term examination [date TBD]. The exam will consist of three parts and draw on material from course lectures and readings. The first section will pose five multiple-choice questions and five identifications wherein the student will write the event, person, or concept that best completes the sentence. In the second section, the student will write short (3-5 sentence) descriptions of 3 of the 5 terms provided. The final section will be an essay based on three prompts that will be circulated a week before the examination, two of which will touch on lecture material and one of which will center on readings. Two prompts will be chosen at random on the exam day. Student will choose one of those prompts on which to write. 3. Each student will write a medium-length essay on a topic of their choice from the material covered in class. The aim of the assignment is to explain why a significant event in American history (the Columbian Exchange; the War of 1812; African chattel slavery) arose when and how it did. The students will present an abstract with a provisional topic sentence and a short bibliography with at least five secondary and three primary sources (e.g. newspapers, novels, memoirs, on-line archives) one week after the mid-term. The final 8-10 page papers must be printed and turned in with a cover sheet on the final day of class. 4. The final exam will consist of an in-class examination whose structure will be similar to the mid-term but expanded to test the whole range of information that the student ought to have mastered over the semester’s course. There will be 10 multiple choice and 10 identification; students will answer 6 of 8 short descriptions; and write on two prompts winnowed from 4 that will be circulated in advance. Class Policies 1. Do not arrive early late nor leave early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but if you are seen anything other than a Word Processing program open your final exam will be docked 2pts without a chance to appeal. 4. Late papers will be subject to a penalty of 10% per day. 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted. 6. All work must conform to the University Code of Academic Integrity. 7. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the University. 8. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student is required to contact me in advance of the exam and receive my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Hunt - 2 Grading Grades will be calculated accordingly: Quizzes & Participation: 15% Mid-Term Exam: 25% Short Paper: 25% Final Exam: 35% Schedule of Lectures and Readings The course will be split into three half-chronological, half-thematic sections so as to bring some order to our thinking and time together. The mid-term exam will cover the first two sections and the final exam will review the whole course with the weight of questions touching on material covered during the course’s home stretch. Planting Empires Building Republics Forging Nations 1492-1763 1763-1820 1820-1865 Planting Empires: Collision and Rearrangement in the Atlantic World Week One | Introduction: Requirements, Readings, Techniques, and Themes Readings: Begin Silver (Introduction – Ch. 1) Week Two | The Columbian Exchange & the Spanish Empire Readings: Silver, Chapters 2 & 3; From the Course Packet read Bartolomé de las Casas, A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies and J.H. Parry’s “Demographic Catastrophe” from Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development Week Three | The Dutch, French, and English Plantations and Unfree Labor in Early America Readings: Silver, Chapters 4 & 5; From the Course Packet read excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano; Edmund S. Morgan, “Slavery and Freedom: the American Paradox” in Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development. Week Four| Fraught Cosmopolitanism in Colonial Pennsylvania, Religion in New England, and Indians at Bay Readings: Silver, Chapters 6 & 7; From the Course Packet read Jonathan Edwards, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt, No. 49 and Margo Burns “Arthur Miller’s The Crucible: Fact & Fiction:” [http://www.17thc.us/docs/fact-fiction.shtml]. The Crucible [1996] will be screened on Thursday afternoon @ 5pm. Hunt - 3 Week Five | A Tour of Colonial North America before the Seven Year’s War Readings: Finish Silver; From the Course Packet read Benjamin Franklin, “Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress” and the Introduction of Annette Gordon-Reed’s The Hemingses of Monticello. Building Republics: Colonial Revolt, Constitution Making, and American Identity Week Six | The French and Indian War, British Hegemony, and American Provincialism Readings: Read Ellis’ Founding Brothers, Preface to Ch. 1; From the Course Packet read T. H. Breen, “‘Baubles of Britain:’ The American and Consumer Revolutions of the Eighteenth Century” and Benjamin Franklin, “Testimony Against the Stamp Act.” Week Seven | The Imperial Crisis and the American War of Independence Readings: Ellis, Chapters 2 & 3; From the Packet: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense; Gordon S. Wood, “Rhetoric & Reality in the American Revolution” and “The Radicalism of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paines Considered,” from The Idea of America: Reflections on the Birth of the United States; and The Declaration of Independence. Week Eight | The Short-Lived American Confederation Readings: Ellis, Chapters 4 & 5; from the Course Packet read excerpts from Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia. Mid-term examination at the end of the week Week Nine | The Constitutional Debate, Slavery, and the Rise of Partisanship Readings: Finish Ellis; from the Course Packet read Federalist Nos. 10, 14, 39, 51, 70, 78, & 84, and the Northwest Ordinance. Topic Sentences and Paper Abstract due at the end of the week Week Ten | The Early Republic, Madison’s War, and Monroe’s Doctrine Readings: from the Packet: “The Monroe Doctrine,” “Jefferson’s Secret Message to Congress Regarding the Lewis & Clark Expedition,” Selected Chapters from Alexis de Toqueville’s Democracy in America (Volume 1: IV (“The Principle of Sovereignty of the People of North America”), X (“Parties in the United States), XI (“Liberty of the Press in the United States”), XIII (“Government of the Democracy in America”), XIV (“What Are the Real Advantages which American Society Derives from a Democratic Government”). Hunt - 4 Forging a Nation: Westward Expansion, Descent to War Week Eleven | Democracy, Commerce, Race, and Religion in the Early Republic Readings: Read the first half of Henry Bibb’s The Life & Adventures of Henry Bibb: An American Slave; from the Course Packet: More Selected Chapters from de Tocqueville, and “The Missouri Compromise.” Week Twelve | Gender, Race, and National Identity in Jacksonian America Readings: Finish reading Bibb; from the Course Packet: Transcript of Andrew Jackson’s Message to Congress ‘On Indian Removal;” George Fitzhugh, “Slavery Justified,” excerpts from F. C. Wallace’s The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians regarding the Indians’ experience; Week Thirteen | West the Course of Empire: The Second Party System, Texas, California, and the Making of a Continental Nation Readings: Begin Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial (Preface to Ch. 3); from the Course Packet read excerpts of A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett. Week Fourteen | The Sectional Crisis: the Territories, Abolitionism, and Slavery Readings: Read Foner (Chapters 4-6); from the Course Packet read “The Compromise of 1850,” “The Kansas-Nebraska Act,” “Article I and Addendum to Constitution of the State of New Mexico, “Dred Scott v. Sanford.” Week Fifteen | Things fall Apart: The Motives of Secession and Unionism and the Conduct of Civil War Readings: Finish Foner; from the Course Packet read “South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession,” Charles Sumner’s “On the Crime against Kansas,” & “The Gettysburg Address.” Hunt - 5 Landmarks of American History from Reconstruction to Obama Jonathan R. Hunt Professor Jonathan R. Hunt jrhunt@utexas.edu Spring 2013 Lectures: T Th 9:00-10:30 AM Office Hours: Monday 3:30-5:00 p.m. or by appointment “The decisive means for politics is violence. ... Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant.” — Max Weber Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. — Martin Luther King, Jr. Course Objectives This course will leave students with a basic knowledge of U.S. History since 1865. Major topics include the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the modern fiscal-military state; the Industrial Age and its environmental, social, and political consequences; the contestation of prevailing ideas about race, gender, political economy, consumption, the environment, and the commonweal; U.S. interactions with the world; social protest movements; American liberalism and conservatism and their conflicts. This course will accordingly highlight how personal and impersonal forces combined to bring about the events, structures, and ideas that have marked the past century-and-a-half of American life. A key leitmotif running through lectures, readings, discussions, assignments, and examinations will be the use and non-use of violence in society, between man and nature, and among vying interest groups in American politics. This theme encompasses the many forms of violence—some invisible, others highly visible—that discipline, undergird, and challenge how Americans interact with one another and other peoples: for example, lynchings in Jim Crow Mississippi; urban violence during Prohibition; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; the peaceful and non-peaceful civil rights movements; the modern prison-industrial complex; and terrorism, torture, and interventionist war. The lectures and readings situate the United States in the broader setting of world history. With this in mind, primary- and secondary-source readings, films, and writing assignments will encourage students to think about what makes the United States exceptional, typical, or simply peculiar in the annals of human history. Finally, the course will teach students how to evaluate historical subjects by availing themselves of the mainstays of historical inquiry, introduce them to the many paths by which historians approach the past, and train them to see the fingerprints of historical subjects and debates on the present. By semester’s end, the students should be able to answer a few basic questions about the discipline of history. What does it mean to study history? How do different historians study history differently? How do our opinions about historical subjects shape the way we live today? In essence, what is history and why is it important? Hunt - 6 Readings We will read five books and several shorter documents from the course packet. The required books are available at the campus bookstore and the course packet from a local printing store. Audio recordings, video, and other media will supplement these written sources and will be made available on my personal website. • • • • • • • David Oshinsky, Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement Robert S. McElvaine, The Depression and New Deal: A History in Documents H.W. Brands, The Devil We Knew: Americans and the Cold War Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X Bethany Moreton, To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise Films will include The Birth of a Nation, The Jazz Singer, Dr. Strangelove, & Wall Street Requirements This course has four requirements. 1. Six unannounced quizzes will be conducted in class. They will consist of 3 short-answer or multiple choice questions culled from the material presented in class lectures and the assigned readings. The student must complete at least 4 of the quizzes in order to receive any points on this component of their final grade. 2. A mid-term examination on [TBD]. The exam will consist of three parts and draw on material from course lectures and the readings. The first section will pose five multiple-choice questions and five identifications wherein the student will fill in the event, person, or concept that best completes the sentence. In the second section, the student will write short (2-4 sentence) descriptions of 5 of the 8 terms provided. The final section will involve one essay replying to one of two essay questions chosen from four prompts circulated the week before. One the prompts will draw on the periodic Friday films screenings. 3. Each student will write a medium-length essay (8-10 pages) on a topic of his or her choice with respect to U.S. History since 1865. The goal of the assignment is to explain why a significant event in American history (e.g. Populism; the women’s suffrage movement, the Cold War, the rise of modern conservatism) arose when and how it did. The students will present an abstract with a provisional topic sentence and a short bibliography with at least five secondary and three primary sources (e.g. newspapers, novels, memoirs, on-line archives) two weeks after the mid-term examination. The final 8-10 page papers must printed and turned in with a cover sheet on the last day of class. 4. The final exam will consist of an in-class examination with slightly larger multiple-choice, identification, and short answer sections along with three essay prompts from which the student must choose two to answer. These three prompts will be randomly selected from five circulated two weeks beforehand. Hunt - 7 Class Policies 1. Do not arrive to class late nor leave it early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but if you are caught doing anything other than taking notes with them your final grade will be docked 3 points. 4. Late papers are subject to a 10% penalty per day and won’t be accepted after the 4th day. 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted online. 6. All work must conform to the University Code of Academic Integrity. 7. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the university. 8. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student is required to contact me in advance of the exam and receive my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Grading Grades will be calculated accordingly: Quizzes & Participation: 15% Mid-Term Exam: 25% Short Paper: 25% Final Exam: 35% Schedule of Lectures and Readings The course will be split into five quasi-chronological, quasi-thematic sections so as to bring order to our thinking and time together. The mid-term exam will cover the first three sections while the final exam will review the entire course with a noticeable leaning toward more recent material. Beyond Redemption: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age An Imperial Democracy: American Enters the World Stage The Waxing and Waning of American Fortune Cold War America The Fracturing of America: From Vietnam to Obama 1865-1898 1898-1919 1920-1939 1945-1965 1965-present Section 1 | Beyond Redemption: Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1898 Week 1: Th | Defining the Subjects: Who is American? What is History? Reading: 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments Week 2: T | War’s End: A Story from Three Perspectives Reading: Eric Foner, “Prologue,” in Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2005) and Steven Hahn, “Introduction” and Chapter 3 “Of Rumors and Revelations,” in A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South, from Slavery t the Great Migration. Th | Rebuilding: the Freedmen and the Politics of Reconstruction Reading: Hahn, Chapter 5 “A Society Turned Bottomside Up.” Hunt - 8 Week 3: T | Whose Redemption? The End of Reconstruction, the New South, and the Birth of Jim Crow Reading: Begin Oshinsky, Prologue-Ch. 2; Plessy v. Ferguson Th | The Machine: Final Conquest of the American Landscape Reading: Oshinsky, Chapters 3 & 4; “Act Establishing Yellowstone Park” Friday film: Birth of a Nation Week 4: T | The Machine II: Gilded Age Society Reading: Oshinsky, Chapters 5 & 6. Th | Rage against the Machine: Populism and Workers’ Uprisings Reading: Oshinsky, Chapters 7 & 8. Section 2 | An Imperial Democracy: 1898-1919 Week 5: T | The Spanish-American War and the Question of American Imperialism Reading: Finish Oshinsky; “Yellow Journalism” Th | Exoduses: The Great Migration & the 1893 Columbian Exposition Reading: McGerr, A Fierce Discontent, Preface-Ch. 1; “World’s Columbian Exposition: A History of the Fair,” @ http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA96/WCE/history.html Week 6: T | American Reformation: Profiles in Progressivism Reading: McGerr, Ch. 3; “19th Amendment” Th | American Reformation II: The Interventionist State Reading: McGerr, Chapters 4 & 5; “16th Amendment” Week 7: T | The War to End All Wars: Wilsonianism, Communism, & the Seeds of Debt Reading: McGerr, Ch. 6; Woodrow Wilson’s “14 Points” Section 3 | The Waxing and Waning of American Fortune, 1920-1945 Th | Outrageous Fortune: Prohibition amid Prosperity Reading: McGerr, Chapters 7 & 8; Week 8: T | The Roaring Twenties: The Jazz Age, the Harlem Renaissance, and the Golden Age of American Film Reading: Finish McGerr; Langston Hughes, “I, Too, Sing America.” Th | Bursting the Bubble: The Great Crash Reading: Select Documents from McElvaine Friday film screening: The Jazz Singer Hunt - 9 Week 9: SPRING BREAK – Begin reading Malcolm X, Introduction – “Detroit Red” Week 10: T | Descent into Depression I: Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal Reading: Select Documents from McElvaine Th | Descent into Depression II: The World Economy, Protectionism, and the Rise of Fascism Reading: Select Documents from McElvaine Week 11: T | Cataclysm: The Second World War Reading: Brands, Preface – Ch. 1; “Eisenstein’s Letter to FDR Calling for an All-Out Effort to Build the Bomb,” & Richard H. Kohn, “History and the Culture Wars: The Case of the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay Exhibition.” Section 4 | Reaction and Insurrection in Cold War America Th | The Origins of the Cold War Reading: Brands, Ch. 2 – 3.; George Kennan, “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” & “NSC-68” Week 12: T | Cold War Society and Culture: Consumerism, Suburbia, and Armageddon Reading: Brands, Ch. 4; Malcolm X, “Hustler” – “Satan;” Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Address.” Th | The Civil Rights Movements: From Military Desegregation to the Civil Rights Act Reading: Malcolm X, “Saved” – “Black Muslims;” Brown v. Board of Education; Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream.” Friday film screening: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Week 13: T | The Collapse of the Great Society: Vietnam, the New Left, and the Urban Question Reading: Malcolm X, “Icarus” – “El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz;” Richard Perlstein, “Violence,” in Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America; the Port Huron Statement. Th | Nixon: The Unmaking of a President and the Descent into Partisan Politics Reading: Finish Malcolm X; Brands, Ch. 5. Section 5 | The Fracturing of America, 1973-2012 Week 14: T | New Conservatism: Free Markets, Religion, the Sun Belt, and Small Government Reading: Perlstein, Ch. 19; Moreton, Prologue to Ch. 2. Th | The Women’s Movement and the New Environmentalism Reading: Moreton, Ch. 3-5. Week 15: T | The Reagan Revolution and the End of the Cold War Hunt - 10 Reading: Brands, Ch. 6-7. Th | “New World Order”? : From George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton Reading: Moreton, Ch. 8; Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 72(3) (Summer 1993), pp. 22-49; Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989). Friday Film Screening: Wall Street Week 16: T | Globalization and its Discontents: From September 11th to the Great Recession Reading: Moreton, Ch. 9-10; Kevin Powers’ The Yellow Birds: A Novel, Ch. 1 “September 2004: Al Tafar, Nineveh Province, Iraq. Th | The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, and Situating Barack Obama in America’s Racial Past Reading: Moreton, 11-13; Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Fear of a Black President,” The Atlantic, September 2012. " Hunt - 11 Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace U.S. Foreign Relations from the Spanish American War to Hiroshima Professor Jonathan R. Hunt jrhunt@stanford.edu Fall 2013 Lectures: TTh 9:00-10:30 AM Office Hours: Monday 3:30-5:00 p.m. or by appointment We are a Nation—with the biggest kind of N, a great imperial Republic destined to exercise a controlling influence upon the actions of mankind and to affect the future of the world.” “The World must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.” -- Woodrow Wilson -- Kentucky Journalist Henry Watterson Course Objectives This course is the first half of a yearlong sequence on the history of U.S. foreign relations after 1898. It will furnish students with a broad knowledge of America’s place in the world and an ability to explain the basic contours, ideas, and debates that animated U.S. foreign policy from the Spanish American War to the fiery climax of the Second World War and beyond. Major topics include the rising position of the U.S. in the world economic and financial system; the Spanish-American and Filipino-American wars, the question of American imperialism, the Open Door to China, U.S.-Latin American relations, the First World War and Wilsonianism, the interwar Peace Movement, the politics of oil, the global dimensions of the Great Depression, and the origins, course, and conclusion of the Second World War. We will conclude the semester with a discussion of how these topics illustrate a set of core themes, values, and ideas that define how Americans think about the past, present, and future of U.S. foreign relations. The course thus advances a broad and varied argument about the character of U.S. contact with other states, nations, and peoples and the related conduct of U.S. foreign policy, military affairs, and diplomacy. Recent scholarship has expanded the compass of inquiry with regard to how Americans have acted as official and unofficial representatives of the nation. The perspectives afforded by paying attention to cultural artifacts, social structures, economic interests, religious persuasions, ethical bearings, and ideological constructs will supplement traditional accounts of U.S. foreign relations history. The course will pay particular attention to the paradox of a former colony whose cherished political principles strongly condemn imperialism and non-representative forms of government practicing various forms of geopolitical, economic, cultural, and military hegemony during what historians now refer to as “the American century.” Students ought to finish the course with a solid foundation in the history of a critical period in the history of U.S. foreign relations and international history, a mastery of relevant terminology, and a keener sense of their opinions with respect to America’s historical and contemporary status in global affairs. The course assigns emphasis to developing critical thinking, reading capacity, and written and verbal communications skills. The History of U.S. Foreign Relations, 1898-1945 Readings 1. Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the SpanishAmerican and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998). 2. John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and the Priest: Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt (Boston, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983). 3. Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2009). 4. Christopher Nichols, Promise and Peril: America at the Dawn of a Global Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011). 5. Charles P. Kindleburger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California University Press, 1986) 6. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race & Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986). Requirements This course has five requirements. 1. Since the information conveyed by my lectures will not be available otherwise, attendance is mandatory and will be taken daily. You are permitted two unexcused absences. Be prepared to discuss the weekly readings on Tuesday. The first 15 minutes of class will be devoted to discussing one or more of them. 2. Every other week you’ll put yourself in the shoes of a historical personage and write a 1-page memorandum about a key topic covered in class or the readings that week (e.g. why the U.S. should or should not go to war with Spain in 1898 or how the US should combat European protectionism amid the Great Depression). The memo will be due at the beginning of class on Monday. Each memo should be double-spaced with 1.5-inch margins and 12-pt Courier font, adding up to less than 200 words not including an address and a signature. You should aim at concision, coverage, and clearness of aim and expression. I will assign the memos a grade of 1-4 (1 = Completion; 2 = Adequate; 3 = Good; 4=Superior) 3. One mid-term examination. The exam will consist of three parts and draw on material from course lectures and readings. The first section will pose five multiple-choice questions and five identifications wherein the student will identify the event, person, or idea that best completes the sentence. In the second section, the student will write short (2-3 sentence) descriptions of 3 of 5 provided terms. The final section will be an essay replying to one of two essay prompts that will be selected from three prompts circulated the week before. 4. Each student will write a medium-length essay (8-10 pages) on a topic of his or her choice. The goal of the assignment is to explain why a significant event in the history of U.S. foreign policy (e.g. U.S. intervention in World War I or the decision to drop the atom bomb on Japan) arose when and how it did. The students will present an abstract with a provisional topic sentence and a short bibliography with at least five secondary and three primary sources (e.g. newspapers, novels, memoirs, on-line archives) two weeks after the mid-term examination. The final 8-10 page papers must printed and turned in with a cover sheet on the last day of class. 5. The final exam will consist of an in-class examination with the same sections as the midterms albeit slightly enlarged. The students will be presented with five essay prompts on the last day of class. Three of the prompts will be included in the final from among which the student will answer two. Hunt - 2 The History of U.S. Foreign Relations, 1898-1945 Class Policies 1. Do not arrive early late nor leave early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but 3 points will be deducted from your final grade if you are caught doing anything except taking notes. 4. Late papers will be penalized 10% per day late and won’t be accepted after the 4th day. 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted. 6. All work must conform to the University Code of Academic Integrity. 7. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the university. 8. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student is required to contact me in advance of the exam and receive my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Grading Attendance & Weekly Memos: 20% Mid-Term Exam: 25% Final Paper: 25% Final Exam: 30% Schedule of Lectures and Readings Week 1 T | Introduction: The 1893 Columbia Expedition and the Failed Annexation of Hawaii: The Ambivalence of U.S. Power at the Dawn of the American Century Th | Gilded Age America: William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold Speech and the Domestic Crucible of Global Power Read: Hoganson, Introduction – Ch. 3. Week 2 T | “A Splendid Little War:” War-Fever, Race, Gender, and the Spark of the Spanish-American War Th | Empire by Default, Accident, or Design? Explaining the Course of the Spanish-American War Read: Hoganson, Ch. 4 – 6. Week 3 T | Commerce & Empire: The Open Door in China and the Panama Canal Adventure Th | Race & Empire: The White Man’s Burden, the Philippines War, and Immigration Read: Finish Hoganson; LaFeber, Preface – Ch. 2 Hunt - 3 The History of U.S. Foreign Relations, 1898-1945 Week 4 T | Making a Progressive U.S. Foreign Policy Establishment Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, and War and Peace in American Society Th | Beneath U.S.?: America in Latin America The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine Read: LaFeber, Ch. 3 – 5; Cooper, Part I Week 5 T | Taft’s Dollar Diplomacy Th | Woodrow Wilson – Man and Myth The Caribbean as an American Lake, and the Mexican and Chinese Revolutions Read: Finish LaFeber; Cooper, Part II Week 6 T | “The Torpedoes Heard Round the World:” The U.S., U-Boats, Law of the Sea, and the Great War Th | Into the Meat Grinder: America’s Entry into the First World War Read: Cooper, Part III Week 7 T | The Peace to End All Peace: The Paris Peace Conference and Wilsonianism – America’s Global Gospel Th | MID TERM Read: Cooper Part IV Week 8 T | Emporium in Place of Internationalism: The Senate’s Non-Ratification of Wilson’s League, Isolationism, and the Americanization of the World Th | Drugs, Rubber, and Oil: The Foreign Relations of Prohibition, Industry, and Mending Fences in Latin America Read: Kindelburger, Ch. 1 – 3; de Grazia chs. on “Hollywood Star System” and “Advertising” Week 9 T | How an Airman and a Women’s Congress Taught the World to Love Peace The Washington Naval Conference, Dawes and Locarno, and the Kellogg-Briand Pact Th | The End of Globalization?: How a Stock Market Crash in New York City Triggered a Global Depression Read: Kindelburger, Ch. 4 – 6. Week 10 T | One Nation Apart: Roosevelt, Isolationism, Manchuria, and the Good Neighbor Policy Th | Rise of the Dictators: Recognizing the Soviet Union and Militarism in Italy, Germany, and Japan Hunt - 4 The History of U.S. Foreign Relations, 1898-1945 Read: Kindelburger, Ch. 7 – 10. Week 11 T | Non-State Actors: American Volunteers and the Ill Omens of the Spanish Civil War Th | Appeasement as Banality Hitler, Stalin, and Munich Read: Finish Kindelburger, Start Dower, Part I “Enemies” Week 12 T | The Illusion of Neutrality: Lend-Lease, Destroyers for Bases, and the Special Relationship Th | Pearl Harbor in World History: Read: Dower, Part II “The War in Western Eyes” Week 13 T | The Second Front: Allied Politics on the European Front Th | Race War in the Pacific and at Home Read: Dower, Part III “The War in Japanese Eyes” + “Epilogue” Week 14 T | Triumph, Crime, or Accident?: Explaining Truman’s Decision to Drop the Bomb Th | Four Themes of U.S. Foreign Relations Isolationism, Anglo-Saxonism, Imperialism, and Wilsonianism Read: Walker *** Term Papers are due on the final day of class Hunt - 5 Uneasy Colossus U.S. Foreign Relations, 1945-Present Professor Jonathan R. Hunt jrhunt@stanford.edu Fall 2013 Lectures: TTh 9:00-10:30 AM Office Hours: Monday 3:30-5:00 p.m. or by appointment “All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” -- Ho Chi Minh (1945) Vietnamese Declaration of Independence “The advance of liberty is the path to both a safer and better world.” -- George W. Bush (2004) Speech to the UN General Assembly Course Objectives This course is the second half of a yearlong sequence on the history of U.S. foreign relations after 1898. It will furnish students with a broad knowledge of America’s place in the world and the ability to explain the basic ideas, processes, and interests that animated U.S. foreign policy from the end of World War II to the present. Major topics include the dominant position of the United States in the postwar world, the origins of the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, the Korean War, coverts ops and foreign intervention, the Vietnam War, oil and tumult in the Middle East, the shocking end of the Cold War, the Gulf War, the Rwandan genocide, the Bosnian War, September 11th, and the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. We will conclude the semester by discussing how these topics illustrate a set of core themes, values, and concepts and how they inform current debates about the forward trajectory of U.S. foreign relations. The course advances a broad and composite argument about the character of American relations with other nations, states, and peoples and the related conduct of U.S. foreign policy, security affairs, immigration policy, cultural sway, and diplomacy. New scholarship has expanded the compass of inquiry regarding how Americans have acted as official and unofficial ambassadors of the nation-state and how global movements have reciprocally affected U.S. foreign policy. The views afforded by paying attention to cultural artifacts, social structures, economic interests, ethical bearings, religious persuasions, diasporic networks, and ideological constructs will supplement more traditional topics in U.S. foreign relations history in course lectures and readings. Nevertheless, the course will tilt slightly in its coverage toward diplomacy, interstate relations, and global governance in recognition of the professional needs of Foreign Service officers and others desirous of work in the global arena. Together, we will chart how U.S. foreign policy and domestic debate about it questioned the applicability of core U.S. values including self-representation, democracy, and human rights to the external actions of a superpower. Students ought to finish the course with a solid foundation in the history of the past 70 years of U.S. foreign relations and international history, a mastery of relevant terminology, and a keener sense of their opinions with respect to the United States’ historical and contemporary status in world politics. The course assigns emphasis to the development of critical thinking, reading capacity, and written and verbal communications skills through biweekly memos, a research paper, and essay-based examinations. Readings 1. Craig Campbell and Federik Logevall, America’s Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard, 2009). 2. Mark Atwood Lawrence, The Vietnam War: A Concise International History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) 3. Selections from Jeremi Suri, American Foreign Relations since 1898: A Documentary Reader 4. Selections from Samantha Power, “A Problem from Hell:” American and the Age of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 2002) 5. James Mann, The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New York: Viking, 2004). Requirements 1. Since the information conveyed by my lectures will not be available otherwise, attendance is mandatory and will be taken daily. You are permitted two unexcused absences. Be prepared to discuss the weekly readings on Tuesdays. The first 15 minutes of class will be devoted to discussing one or more of them. 2. Every other week you’ll put yourself in the shoes of a historical personage and write a 1-page memorandum about a key topic covered in class or the readings those two weeks (e.g. how the U.S. should respond to Soviet expansion into Eastern Europe after WWII or whether the U.S. should increase troop levels in Vietnam after the Tonkin Gulf incident). The memo will be due at the beginning of class on Monday. Each memo should be double-spaced with 1.5inch margins and 12-pt Courier font, adding up to less than 200 words not including an address and a signature. You should aim at concision, coverage, and clearness of aim and expression. I will assign the memos a grade of 1-4 (1 = Completion; 2 = Adequate; 3 = Good; 4=Superior) 3. One mid-term examination. The exam will consist of three parts and draw on material from course lectures and readings. The first section will pose five multiple-choice questions and five identifications wherein the student will identify the event, person, or concept that best completes the sentence. In the second section, the student will write short (2-3 sentence) descriptions of 3 of 5 provided terms. The final section will be an essay replying to one of two essay prompts that will be selected from three circulated a week before. 4. Each student will write a medium-length essay (8-10 pages) on a topic of his or her choice. The goal of the assignment is to explain why a significant event in the history of U.S. foreign policy (the Cuban Missile Crisis or U.S. and UN intervention in Bosnia) arose when and how it did. The students will present an abstract with a provisional topic sentence and a short bibliography with at least five secondary and three primary sources (e.g. newspapers, novels, memoirs, on-line archives) two weeks after the mid-term examination. The final 8-10 page papers must be printed and turned in with a cover sheet on the last day of class. 5. The final exam will consist of an in-class examination with the same sections as the midterms albeit slightly enlarged. The students will be presented with five essay prompts on the last day of class. Three of the prompts will be included in the final from among which the student must answer two. Hunt - 2 Class Policies 1. Do not arrive early late nor leave early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but 3 points will be deducted from your final grade if you are caught doing anything except taking notes. 4. Late papers will be penalized 10% per day late and won’t be accepted after the 4th day. 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted. 6. All work must conform to the University Code of Academic Integrity. 7. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the university. 8. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student is required to contact me in advance of the exam and receive my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Grading Grades will be calculated accordingly: Attendance & Weekly Memos: 25% Mid-Term Exam: 20% Final Paper: 25% Final Exam: 30% Schedule of Lectures and Readings Week 1 T | Introduction: The American Century in International History Th | After Hiroshima: The Aftermath of the Second World War Read: Campbell & Logevall (henceforth C&L), Ch. 1 “The Demise of Free Securit.” John Hersey, “Introduction,” Hiroshima; C. Vann Woodward, “The Age of Reinterpretation;” Bernard Brodie, “The Absolute Weapon.” Watch: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/hiroshima-nagasakiaugust-1945-1970.html Week 2 T | “A Parliament of Man:” The San Francisco Conference, and the Making of the United Nations Th | Rebuilding the Ruins: Soviet-American Standoffs in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia Read: C&L, Ch. 2 “Confrontation;” Mark Mazower, “Introduction,” No Enchanted Palace; Paul Kennedy, “Introduction,” The Parliament of Man; Winston Churchill, “Iron Curtain Speech in Fulton, Missouri.” Listen: George C. Marshall announces the European Recovery Program at Harvard University: http://www.marshallfoundation.org/library/index_av.html Hunt - 3 Week 3 T | World Colliders: The Origins of the Cold War and the Invention of U.S. Strategic Thought Th | Losing China, the Red Scare, and the Korean War The Militarization of Containment Read: C & L, Ch. 3 “To the Ends of the Earth;” Martin Sherman and Kai Bird, “Part Five,” American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer. George Kennan, “Long Telegram;” the Truman Doctrine; Dean Rusk, “The Loss of China;” NSC-68; Watch: “Army-McCarthy Hearings:” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAur_I077NA Week 4 T | Supermen: The Thermonuclear Revolution, Massive Retaliation, and Global Fallout Th | Ike the Peacemaker?: Cold War Civil Rights, Dien Bien Phu, Suez, Hungary, and Covert Ops Read: Lawrence, Ch. 1 “The Road to Revolution.” GAC Committee Report on the “Super;” Herman Kahn’s, “Introduction,” On Thermonuclear War; Russell-Einstein Manifesto; John Foster Dulles, “Massive Retaliation.” Week 5 T | The Sputnik Moment The Age of Vulnerability, Space Race, and Military Industrial-Complex Th | Kennedy’s Wars: Laos, Cuba, and Vietnam Read: C&L, Ch. 4 “Leaner & Meaner.” Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Farewell Speech;” Mao’s Little Red Book; Browse: “How Much is Enough?: The U.S. Navy and “Finite Deterrence,” National Security Archive, Briefing book No. 275. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb275/index.htm Watch: Dr. Strangelove or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Week 6 T | To the Brink: The Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and Soviet-American Rapprochement Th | Another Land War in Asia: Tonkin Gulf and Escalation in Vietnam Read: Lawrence, Ch. 2 “Colonialism and Cold War;” C&L, Ch. 5 “The Nuclear Rubicon.” Kennedy’s American University Speech; Cuban Missile Crisis Tapes; Benjamin Schwarz, “Review of Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory,” The Atlantic (Jan/Feb 2013); Listen: “Cuban Missile Crisis Tapes,” National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/audio.htm Hunt - 4 Week 7 T | Integration or Disintegration?: The Peace Movement, Civil Rights, and Immigration Th | Nukes & Machine Guns The Tet Offensive, Czechoslovakia, and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty Read: Lawrence, Ch. 3-5 “An Anguished Peace,” “Escalation,” and “War on Many Fronts;” C&L, Ch. 6 “Gulliver’s travails.” “Port Huron Statement;” “Peace without Conquest;” “Oral Histories;” and “My Lai Massacre;” Watch: Walter Cronkite Declares Vietnam War Stalemate, February 27, 1968: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn4w-ud-TyE Listen: LBJ’s Conversations: Richard Russell (http://millercenter.org/presidentialclassroom/exhibits/lbj-and-richard-russell-on-vietnam) & Richard Nixon (http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/dictabelt.hom/highlights/may68jan69.shtm); Browse: http://www.notevenpast.org/listen/lbj-and-vietnam-conversation Week 8 T | MID-TERM EXAMINATION Th | Nixon & Kissinger: Machiavellis in an Ideological Moment? Read: C&L, Ch. 7 “Nixon’s World;” Lawrence, Ch. 6-7, “The Tet Offensive,” and “Ending the American War.” Excerpts from Kissinger’s On Diplomacy & On China, The Pentagon Papers Browse: “Brazil Conspired with U.S. to Overthrow Allende,” The National Security Archive, Briefing Book No. 282. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB282/index.htm Watch: Deer Hunter Week 9 T | Long Lines at the Gas Pump, Unrest Abroad The Yom Kippur War, the Oil Crisis, and Chile Th | Human Rights, Malaise, Camp David, and Hostages: Was Jimmy Carter’s Adrift Foreign Policy a Self-Inflicted Wound? DUE: Précis of Research Paper Read: Lawrence, Ch. 8, “Wars Unending;” C&L, Ch. 8 “A New Cold War;” Mann, Ch. 1-6. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, “Dictatorships and Double Standards,” Commentary Magazine, 68:5 (November 1979): 34-45; “The Helsinki Final Act;” “Carter’s Address to Notre Dame;” Watch: Argo Browse: “Interview with President Jimmy Carter,” National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-18/carter1.html Week 10 T | Fighting an “Evil Empire:” The Recrudescence of the Cold War Th | “Future Generations Will Not Forgive Us:” Hunt - 5 Reykjavik, the Montreal Treaty, and Gorbachev’s Reforms Read: C&L, Ch. 9 “Endgame;” Mann, Ch. 7-11. Reagan, “Evil Empire Speech;” “Reagan Speech and Q&A at Moscow State University;” Jonathan R. Hunt and Paul H. Walker, “The Legacy of Reykjavik and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol 67(6) (2011), pp. 63-72; Browse: “Reykjavik File,” NSA: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/index.htm Week 11 T | The Wall Comes Down, the Tanks Drive In: The Differential Impacts of the Cold War’s in Eastern Europe, Russia, and China Th | New World Order?: The UN, an Indispensible Nation, and the Responsibility to Protect Read: Mann 12-15. “Bush and Gorbachev, End of the Cold War;” Mary Sarotte, “China’s Fear of Contagion: Tiananmen Square and the Power of the European Example,” International Security, 37:2 (Fall 2012): 156-182. Watch: “The Berlin Wall Falls 1989;” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK1MwhEDjHg “1991 The Soviet Coup, 3 Parts;” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7lZKyDgMgo “RT Interview with Mikhail Gorbachev; ”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jG0o9RJEbY Week 12 T | The End of History?: Desert Storm and the Post-Cold War Order Th | Shame of the World: U.S. and International Reactions to the Rwandan Genocide and the Bosnian War Read: Samantha Power, “Bystanders to Genocide,” Atlantic Monthly, 288(2) (Sept. 2001): 84-108 and “Bosnia: No More than Witnesses at a Funeral;” Ch. 8 & 9; Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History and the Last Man,” The National Interest (1989): http://www.wesjones.com/eoh.htm; Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?,” Foreign Affairs, 72(3) (Summer 1993), pp. 22-49. Alan Kuperman, “Rwanda in Retrospect,” Foreign Affairs, (Jan/Feb 2000. Browse: “Ghosts of Rwanda,” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ghosts/ Week 13 T | The Looming Towers: Causes and Consequences of September 11th Th | America’s Longest War: The Afghanistan War and the Problem of Stateless Actors Read: Mann, Ch. 17-20; Power, “Srebrenica: “Getting Creamed.” “The Bush Doctrine;” Sayyid Qutb, “Introduction,” “Islam is the Real Civilization,” (skim) “Jihadd in the cause of God,” Milestones (http://web.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/books/milestones/hold/index_2.htm). Watch: “Attack on the World Trade Center”,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6b913fsTcw (warning: the video features images of death) ; President George W. Bush, “Axis of Evil Speech:” http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/bush-coins-term-axis-evil-9232436 Hunt - 6 Week 14 T | A War of Choice: The Iraq War, Intelligence, and the Unmaking of Neo-conservatism? Th | Conclusion: Obama’s Wars, the Great Recession, and the Future of U.S. Foreign Relations Read: Finish MANN; Power, “Kosovo: A Dog and a Fight; “The Bush Doctrine,” and Packer, “the Iraq War;” Obama’s Prague (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-As-Delivered) and Nobel Peace Prize speeches (http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-acceptancenobel-peace-prize); John Yoo “Memo Regarding the Torture and Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States,” (http://www.aclu.org/files/pdfs/safefree/yoo_army_torture_memo.pdf); Department of Justice “White Paper: Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed against a U.S. Citizen Who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al-Qa’ida or an Associated Force.” (http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf); Finish Mann Watch: “Iraq WMD Speech at UN: Powell Aide Lawrence Wilkerson debates Norman Solomon,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDnMopHZWzI [OR read the transcript: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/feb/05/iraq.usa]; Zero Dark Thirty Browse: “Torture and Obama’s Drone Program,” The New Yorker, Blogs (please read follow up ONE link in the post as well): http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/02/torture-andobamas-drone-program.html ! *** Term Paper due on final class day Hunt - 7 Paradox: War and Peace in the Age of the Atom Professor Jonathan R. Hunt jrhunt@stanford.edu Fall 2014 Lectures: T Th 9:00-10:30 AM Office Hours: Monday 3:30-5:00 p.m. or by appointment “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought. The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” -- Ronald Reagan, 1984 State of the Union Address The United States seeks the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons. This is a long-term goal, but it is imperative that we continue to take concrete steps toward it now. At the same time, we must maintain the safety, security, and effectiveness of the U.S. nuclear deterrent as long as nuclear weapons exist, without a return to underground nuclear testing. -- 2010 U.S. Nuclear Employment Guidance Course Objectives This course is an advanced seminar on the political history of nuclear science and technology exploring the impact of the nuclear revolution on attitudes and behaviors relating to war, strategy, energy, diplomacy, the environment, and international relations. Over the semester, the class will grapple with two historical puzzles. How have the man-made offspring of nuclear physics shaped the modern world? And, relatedly, how have a diverse and global cast of actors thought about, made use of, and debated nuclear power in its various forms? A third question inheres in the subject matter for students to work out for themselves: Is nuclear power worth its risks? The central argument is that the meanings of the nuclear revolution have been contested from the start and that early debates on nuclear weapons and energy have bequeathed to us a number of knotty paradoxes. First, why is nuclear energy seen as both a panacea for our energy and climate woes and as a ticking time bomb in the form of reactor meltdowns, nuclear waste, and proliferation trends? Second, why are nuclear weapons regarded as both the cause of the “Long Peace” since World War II and as a major threat to human civilization and planetary survival? Third, why does the international community license some states’ nuclear arsenals while leveling crippling sanctions or armed intervention against others alleged to pursue the Bomb? Finally, why is nuclear disarmament held to be an urgent imperative and an impossible fantasy? You should finish the course with a deep well of knowledge of two superimposed constellations of ideas, facts, and controversies related to nuclear power. The course lectures and readings will introduce you to key concepts that have framed our thinking about nuclear power and weapons and how they evolved in historical time, for example, fission and fusion, deterrence, counterforce and counter-value, second-strike capability, flexible response, mutual assured destruction, the nuclear taboo, the “Long Peace,” testing, fallout, nuclear winter, nonproliferation, arms control, disarmament, nuclear-free zones, Global Zero, preventive war, and the global nuclear order. These topics will be presented in their original contexts by situating them in the domestic, transnational, and international circumstances from which they arose, raising the question of whether our current thinking about nuclear security, energy, and diplomacy is pouring old wine in new bottles, or whether 21st-century nuclear politics has undergone a paradigm shift in the years since the end of the Cold War. Readings 1. John Hersey, Hiroshima (1946) 2. J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction (1997) 3. Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon 4. Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964 (1997) 5. Francis J. Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age (2012) 6. Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl (2006) 7. Feroz Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (2012) 8. Mohamed El Baradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (2011) 9. Cormac McCarthy, The Road Requirements 1. Since the information conveyed by my lectures will not be available otherwise, attendance is mandatory and will be taken daily. You are permitted two unexcused absences. Be prepared to discuss the weekly readings on Tuesdays. The first 20 minutes of class will be devoted to discussing one or more of them in a Socratic fashion. 2. Every other week you’ll put yourself in the shoes of a historical personage and write a 1-page memorandum, Op-Ed, or diary entry about a topic covered in class or the readings those two weeks (e.g. whether the United States should drop the atom bomb on Japan, or what the international response should be to Iranian intransigence in opening their nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection). The memo will be due at the beginning of class on Thursday. Each memo should be double-spaced with 1-inch margins and 12-pt font, adding up to less than 300 words not including the address and signature. You should aim at concision, coverage, and clearness of aim and expression. I will assign the memos a grade of 1-4 (1 = Completion; 2 = Adequate; 3 = Good; 4=Superior) 3. Each student will write an essay (5000 words) on a topic of his or her choice. The goal of the assignment is to explain a significant event, topic, or debate in international nuclear history. The students will present an abstract with a preliminary subject, question, brief outline, and bibliography with at least five secondary and three primary sources (e.g. newspapers, novels, memoirs, on-line archives, published papers) by October 30th. The final papers must be printed and turned in with a cover sheet and bibliography on the final day of class. 4. The final exam will consist of an in-class examination consisting of three sections and drawing on course lectures and readings. The first section will pose ten multiple-choice questions and ten identifications wherein the student will identify the event, personage, or idea that best completes the sentence. In the second section, the student will write short (2-3 sentence) descriptions of 7 of 10 selected terms. In the final section, the student will write essays responses to two of three essay prompts selected from five prompts circulated earlier. Class Policies 1. Do not arrive early late nor leave early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but 3 points will be deducted from your final grade if you are caught doing anything except taking notes. 4. Late papers will be penalized 10% per day late and won’t be accepted after the 4th day. Hunt - 2 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted. 6. All work must conform to the University Code of Academic Integrity. 7. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the university. 8. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student is required to contact me in advance of the exam and receive my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Grading Grades will be calculated accordingly: Attendance & Bi-Weekly Memos: 30% Final Paper: 30% Final Exam: 35% Schedule of Lectures and Readings * indicates supplementary reading that are specified for reference purposes Week 1 T | World Set Free?: The Janus-Faced Meanings of the Nuclear Age Th | Playing Dice: The Golden Age of Physics Read: Selections from John Hersey, Hiroshima; Jeremi Suri, “Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of Global Conflict since 1945;” "Enrico Fermi and Nuclear Energy" from Emilio Segre, "From X-Rays to Quarks" Modern Physicists and Their Discoveries (1980); *Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, introduction – Chapter 11. Watch: The Atomic Cafe: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssKiI1P3lT4] Week 2 T | Manhattan: The Adventure of the Bomb Th | Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Decisions, Controversies, and Legacies Read: Preface - Chapter 4 of Walker’s Prompt & Utter Destruction; Henry Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Bomb, Harpers (1947) [http://www.columbia.edu/itc/eacp/japanworks/ps/japan/stimson_harpers.pdf]; the MAUD Report; Einstein’s letter to FDR; *Wilson D. Miscamble, The Most Controversial Decision (2011); Browse: “The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm] Watch: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/08/hiroshima-nagasakiaugust-1945-1970.html Week 3 T | The Atom Bomb, the Origins of the Cold War, and the Failure of Nuclear Internationalism Th | Overkill: The Absolute Weapon and the Start of the Arms Race Read: Finish Walker; David Holloway, “Entering the Nuclear Arms Race: The Soviet Decision to Build the Atomic Bomb, 1939-1945; The General Advisory Council final report on the “Super;” The Acheson-Lilienthal Report; *Herbert York, The Advisors. Hunt - 3 Week 4 T | Atoms for War and Peace Th | Ashes of Death: Atmospheric Nuclear Testing and Global Nuclear Culture Read: Foreward – Chapter 7 in Kaplan’s Wizards of Armageddon; Bernard Brodie’s two chapters in “The Absolute Weapon;” Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace Speech.” Watch: On the Beach Week 5 T | “A Moral Tract on Mass Murder:” Was Nuclear War Winnable? Th | Ike’s Gamble: Brinksmanship and Peaceful Coexistence Read: Chapters 8 – 13 in Kaplan; C. Vann Woodward, “The Age of Reinterpretation;” Hermann Khan, On Thermonuclear War, introduction; *Evan Thomas, Ike’s Bluff. Browse: Week 6 T | “The Most Potent Status Symbol:” The British and French Nuclear Programs Th | McNamara’s Gambit: The New Nuclear Orthodoxy of Strategic Stability Read: Chapters 14 – 20 in Kaplan; Introduction and Part I of Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble; Thomas Schelling, Arms & Influence, selections. Watch: Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb Week 7 T | Thirteen Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis in History and Memory Th | “The World Breathed Easier:” The Triumph of Nuclear Internationalism Read: Part II of Naftali; Chapters 1 & 2 of Gavin, Nuclear Statecraft Listen: JFK’s American University Speech Browse: “The Making of the Limited Test Ban Treaty,” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB94/], and “Cuban Missile Revelations: Kennedy’s Secret Approach to Castro,” The National Security Archives: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB395/]; “Cuban Missile Crisis Day by Day: From the Pentagon’s ‘Sensitive Records,’” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB398/]; “The Soviet Cuban Missile Crisis: Castro, Mikoyan, Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Missiles of November, The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB393/] Due: Research Paper Prospectuses Week 8 T | Order or Apartheid?: The Making of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime Th | Nixon, Kissinger, Strategic Arms Talks, Anti-Ballistic Missiles, and Détente Read: Finish Naftali; Gavin, Chapters 3 – 5; “Text of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons;” Nina Tannenwald, “Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo;” “Israel’s Nuclear Weapons,” http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/farr.htm Hunt - 4 Browse: “The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program,” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB38/] and “Israel Crosses the Threshold,” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB189/index.htm]; “The Impulse towards a Safer World: 40th Anniversary of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” The National Security Archive: [www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb253/index.htm] Watch: “Interview with George Bunn,” http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/wpna-ffebb0interview-with-george-bunn-1986 Week 9 T | Meltdowns: The Lessons of Three Missile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima Th | Smiling Buddha: India’s “Peaceful” Test and the Crisis of the Global Nuclear Order Read: Alexievich, Voices of Chernobyl, selections. “Indian Explodes a “Peaceful” Nuclear Device,” in George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb. Watch: Zero Hour: Disaster at Chernobyl (Discovery Channel) (2004) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNvmShXD0vw Week 10 T | Star Wars: Reagan and the Strategic Defense Initiative Th | “A Livable World:” The Nuclear Freeze Movement and the Theory of Nuclear Winter Read: Finish Kaplan; James Mann, The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, “selections.” Browse: The 1983 War Scare: Parts I – III, The National Security Archive: http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB426/ Week 11 T | “Future Generations Will Not Forgive Us:” Reagan and Gorbachev at Reykjavik Th | When Ukraine, Belorussia, and Kazakhstan Became Nuclear Powers Overnight Read: Begin Khan; Jonathan R. Hunt and Paul H. Walker, “The Legacy of Reykjavik and the Future of Nuclear Disarmament,” Bulletin of Atomic Scientists (2011). Browse: “The Reykjavik File,” The National Security Archive: [http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB203/] Week 12 T | The New Brinksmanship: India and Pakistani Go Nuclear Th | Thanksgiving Read: Finish Khan; Begin El Baradei, The Age of Deception; George Perkovich, “Nuclear Proliferation,” Foreign Policy (1998); “The Bombs that Roared” in Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb. Week 13 T | The Hinge: September 11th, the “Axis of Evil,” and the Case for Invading Iraq Th | Hard Cases: Iran and North Korea Eye the Bomb Read: El Baradei, The Age of Deception. Hunt - 5 Watch: “Decade after Iraq WMD Speech at UN, Ex-Powell Aide Lawrence Wilkerson Debates Author Norman Soloman: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDnMopHZWzI]; “Dealing with North Korea’s Nuclear Program – Siegfried S. Hecker:” [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_xkI2Eukac] Week 14 T | Prague and Teheran: Nuclear Paradoxes in the Obama Administration Th | “The Center Cannot Hold:” Managing the Atom in the 21st-Century Read: Finish Gavin; McCarthy, The Road (optional essay prompt); 2010 U.S. Nuclear Employment Guidance. Watch: President Obama’s Prague Speech ! *** Term Paper due on final class day Hunt - 6 Seminar Coming Together, or Coming Apart?: Colonialism, Decolonization, and Neocolonialism in the 20th Century Professor Jonathan R. Hunt jrhunt@stanford.edu Spring 2013 Lectures: TTh 2:00-3:30 AM Office Hours: Monday 3:30-5:00 p.m. or by appointment The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination. -- Che Guevara (1964) Address to the UN General Assembly I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West ... Out of place everywhere, at home nowhere. – Jawaharlal Nehru (1954) Conversation with US Ambassador Chester Bowles Course Objectives This is an upper-division and master’s level course on the relationship between the “West” and the “Rest” during the long 20th-century. Thinkers have variably categorized these two groups of states as metropole and colonies; “Western” and “Asiatic,” developed and underdeveloped, North and South. Every week, we will read one book and one article that together speak to a similar theme, concept, or historical process on the broader subject of the European (and American) encounter with the “Third World.” The course will investigate historical debates on the nature of and transitions between imperialism, decolonization, and neo-colonialism through scholarly, polemical, and fictional works. The fundamental question at issue is whether, from the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 to the Great Recession of 2008, the world has developed toward equity, justice, and homogeneity, or if, instead, the fault lines that divide humanity have changed only in their depth, quality, and location. Readings John Darwin, Britain, Egypt, and the Middle East (1980) Adam Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa (1998) Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (2007) Shashi Tharoor, Nehru: The Invention of India (2012) Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (2009) Graham Greene, The Quiet American (1955) Frantz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (1963) Carol Anderson, Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955 (2003) Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa (2002) Nick Cullather, The Hungry World (2010) Ryan M. Irwin, Gordian Knot: Apartheid and the Unmaking of the Liberal World Order (2012) Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (2011) Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents (2003) Kishore Mahbubani, The Great Convergence: Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World (2013) A Crucial Note on Reading This class is structured like a graduate history course with a correspondingly heavy reading load. Please do not read every page assigned for this course. Use your common sense (and feel free to ask me) about how to organize and prioritize your reading. I suggest that you begin with the relevant articles, search out reviews in scholarly journals and well-reputed periodicals, and discuss the readings with your fellow classmates. Extracting information from a book in an expedient fashion is an invaluable tool. Learn to read concentrically. Books are designed to frame the avalanche of data they contain. Focus on introductions and conclusions (of the book, the chapters, and the sub-chapters), they tend to be the most important sections. Also, use the index and table of contents to find the pages that interest you the most, or about which you know the least. One cardinal goal of this course is for you to learn to be an active and purposeful reader. Requirements & Grading There are three basic requirements for the course: 1. One in class presentation. The student, or group of students, will assess the principle arguments of that week’s readings in a ten-minute presentation at the beginning of class. The student(s) will distribute at least three discussion questions via e-mail by the previous Saturday at 6:00 pm and assist the professor in leading discussion. 2. Two book reviews. Each student will write a formal, scholarly review of the assigned texts of from 800 to 1000 words for two class meetings (one must be for the class at which the student presents). These reviews should be modeled on reviews found in journals such as the American Historical Review, International History Review, or Diplomatic History. They should be presented in hard copy in double-spaced type and a standard font (Courier, Times New Roman, Baskerville, Cambria, Calibri). 3. One final paper. This paper (5,000 maximum words, or 20 pages) will make use of a combination of primary and secondary sources to analyze and answer a question of the students’ choice. I must approve the paper topic in an individual meeting with the student in the fifth and sixth weeks of the semester. This paper is due on the date of the final exam by 5:00 p.m. at my office or office mailbox. The papers should be in hard copy with double-spaced type, in an aforementioned normal font, a bibliography, and cover sheet. To earn top marks, all work must be clearly written, well organized, contain a central thesis, supporting evidence, and cogent interpretation. The final papers should also demonstrate a mastery of the course materials and the debates, concepts, and subjects discussed in class. Students should ensure that their writing is clear, concise, and compelling. William Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, is a useful reference material and style guide. Use it. All word counts and time limits are to be followed diligently. Students are expected to participate in classroom discussion. It is imperative that students complete the readings on the dates indicated (keeping in mind that understanding, not Hunt - 2 completion is the object). Attendance and participation in all classes is required and will have a bearing on the final grade. Grades will be computed in the following manner: Books Reviews: 25% Participation and Presentation: 25% Final Paper: 50% Class Policies Attendance will be taken at each class meeting. Any unexcused absences exceeding two will result in the subtraction of 5 points from the student’s final grade. Academic dishonesty policies will accord with the rules of the university and will be strictly enforced. Plagiarism and other acts of academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. In addition, students are expected to follow these rules: 1. Do not arrive early late nor leave early. 2. Cells phones must be turned off and put away. 3. Computers are allowed in class but 3 points will be deducted from your final grade if you are caught doing anything other than taking notes. 4. Late papers will be penalized 10% per day late and will not be accepted after the 5th day. 5. Lecture notes and outlines will not be posted. 6. The instructor will make appropriate accommodations for students with special needs registered at the university. 7. If for any family or medical reasons a student finds its necessary to miss an examination, the student must contact me before the exam and obtain my consent to take a make-up exam at a time and place of my choosing. Class Schedule Week 1 Course Introduction • Patrick Wolf, “Imperialism and History: A Century of Theory from Marx to Postcolonialism,” American Historical Review 102 (1997) Week 2 The Nature of European Imperialism • Hochschild • Frederick Cooper, “Conflict and Connection: Rethinking Colonial African History,” The American Historical Review, 99(5) (Dec., 1994): 1516-1545. Week 3 European Expansion in the Late 19th-Century • Darwin • John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” The Economic History Review, 6(1) (1953): 1-15. • A. G. Hopkins, “The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt, 1882,” The Journal of African History, 27(2): 363-391. Hunt - 3 Week 4 ** Research Topic Due The First World War and the Meaning of Wilsonianism • Manela • R. J. Vincent, “Race in International Relations,” International Affairs, 58(4): 658-670 & “Western Conceptions of a Universal Moral Order,” British Journal of International Studies, 4(1) (April 1978): 20-46 • Benedict Anderson, The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, Southeast Asia, and the World (2001), selections. Week 5 One-on-one meetings re papers Imperialism between the Wars • Mazower • John Darwin, “Imperialism in Decline? Tendencies in British Imperial Policy between the Wars,” The Historical Journal, 23(3) (1980): 657-679. Week 6 More meetings The Second World War: The United State’s Ambivalence toward Empire, Civil Rights, and Human Rights • Anderson • Manu Bhagavan, “A New Hope: India, the United Nations and the Making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Modern Asian Studies, 44(2) (March 2010): 311-347. • Adam Etinson, “Review of The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History by Samuel Moyn,” Human Rights Quarterly, 34(1) (February 2012): 294-299. Week 7 Midnight’s Children: The Decolonization and Partition of India • Tharoor • Carola Dietze, “Toward a History on Equal Terms: A Discussion of “Provincializing Europe,” and Dipesh Chakrabarty, “In Defense of “Provincializing Europe:” A Response to Carola Dietze,” History & Theory, 47(1) (February 2008): 69-96. Week 8 The End of Empire and the Cold War in the Third World • Fanon • Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Decolonization,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (1994) • Matthew Connelly, “Rethinking the Cold War and Decolonization: The Grand Strategy of the Algerian War for Independence,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 33(2) (May 2001): 221-245. Week 9 Vietnam, the Cold War, and the Question of American Imperialism • Greene • Westad, The Global Cold War, chapters 1 and 2 (electronic reserve) • Mark Philip Bradley, “Becoming “Van Minh:” Civilizational Discourse and Visions of the Self in Twentieth-Century Vietnam,” Journal of World History, 15(1) (March 2004): 65-83. Hunt - 4 Week 10 The Third World, the Non-Aligned Movement, and Global Identity Politics • Prashad • Robert Rakove, Kennedy, Johnson, and the Non-Aligned Movement (2012), selections. Week 11 Controlling Progress: Modernization as Ideology, Bodies and Nature as Contested Spaces • Cullather • Matthew Connelly, “Population Control is History: New Perspectives on the International Campaign to Limit Population Growth,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45(1) (January 2003): 122-147 • David Kinkela, DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide that Changed the World (2011), selections. Week 12 Che!: Third World Revolutionaries, Dependency, and Neocolonialism • Gleijeses • Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (1993), 70-94 • Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy, Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (1966), selections. Week 13 American Imperialism?: Race, Human Rights, and American Capitalism • Irwin • A. G. Hopkins, “Capitalism, Nationalism and the New American Empire,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 35(1) (March 2007), pp. 95117. • Niall Ferguson, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire (2005), selections. Week 14 Winning China, Losing the War? Capitalism with a Socialist Face • Vogel • Joshua Cooper Ramo, The Beijing Consensus (Foreign Policy Centre, 2004) • Arif Dirlik, Beijing Consensus: Beijing “Gongshi.” Who Recognizes Whom and to What End (2005) Week 15 The Collapse or Convergence of Liberalism through Globalization? • Stiglitz • Mahbubani *** Research Paper due on the Final Exam Date Hunt - 5