In a work of sweeping scope and luminous detail, Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War II American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime.

Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter and its Anglo-American vision of "war and peace aims." In attempting to globalize what U.S. planners heralded as domestic New Deal ideas about security, the ideology of the Atlantic Charter-buttressed by FDR's "Four Freedoms" and the legacies of World War I-redefined human rights and America's vision for the world.

Three sets of international negotiations brought the Atlantic Charter blueprint to life-Bretton Woods, the United Nations, and the Nuremberg trials. These new institutions set up mechanisms to stabilize the international economy, promote collective security, and implement new thinking about international justice. The design of these institutions served as a concrete articulation of U.S. national interests, even as they emphasized the importance of working with allies to achieve common goals. The American architects of these charters were attempting to redefine the idea of security in the international sphere. To varying degrees, these institutions and the debates surrounding them set the foundations for the world we know today.

By analyzing the interaction of ideas, individuals, and institutions that transformed American foreign policy-and Americans' view of themselves-Borgwardt illuminates the broader history of modern human rights, trade and the global economy, collective security, and international law. This book captures a lost vision of the American role in the world.

Borgwardt's meticulously researched study shows how a few war-inspired phrases from Churchill and Roosevelt metamorphosed into moral principles that transformed overseas empire and domestic racism from facts of life into scandals demanding attention. Every reader of U.S. history and international relations will have to confront the evidence presented in this learned, surprising, and indispensable book, which demonstrates the profound--and unanticipated--consequences of the ideas of security, justice, and human rights in shaping power politics in the postwar world. -- James T. Kloppenberg, author of The Virtues of Liberalism When Roosevelt and Churchill met in Placentia Bay in 1941 and signed the Atlantic Charter, they created the momentum that led to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the human rights revolution. This book is a surpassingly readable and reliable study of this founding moment. It is also an inspiring evocation of consummate leadership and political vision. -- Michael Ignatieff, author of The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror Elizabeth Borgwardt's splendid book does much more than remind us of a different American outlook on world affairs. It brilliantly explores the origins of that international outlook in the domestic politics and state-building of New Deal America. In the postwar world, every country's national security would hinge on international human rights and the establishment of secure political and economic institutions. -- William E. Forbath, author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement An ambitious, original, and innovative work that argues for the 1940s as a transformative period in international relations, when American public opinion shifted to support a new internationalism. This was not simply the work of liberal, reforming elites but a sea change in the way Americans thought about their place in the world. -- Kenneth Cmiel, author of Democratic Eloquence If you want to understand the origin of modern international rights, read this book. It powerfully and vividly recreates the moment when American leaders contributed the confident experimentalism and legal pragmatism of the New Deal to the challenge of securing a world where all people can live free from fear and want. Borgwardt persuasively demonstrates how ideas shape institutions, aspirations, and world history, and how they bridge the gap between devastating violence and hopes for justice and peace. Now, when the legacies of these institutions are so much under global challenge--and even repudiated at times by American leadership--A New Deal for the World reminds us that this dynamic interaction among words, institutions, and contexts has ripple effects that last long beyond founding moments. -- Martha Minow, author of Between Vengeance and Forgiveness A superb, instructive, and even gripping treatment of America's role in the development of human rights. Too often, the United States is portrayed as a kind of obstacle to movements for human rights worldwide. Borgwardt sets the record straight, with illuminating and sometimes moving detail. -- Cass R. Sunstein, author of Why Societies Need Dissent

About the Author
Elizabeth (Kopelman) Borgwardt is Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis.

Reviews
Borgwardt's meticulously researched study shows how a few war-inspired phrases from Churchill and Roosevelt metamorphosed into moral principles that transformed overseas empire and domestic racism from facts of life into scandals demanding attention. Every reader of U.S. history and international relations will have to confront the evidence presented in this learned, surprising, and indispensable book, which demonstrates the profound--and unanticipated--consequences of the ideas of security, justice, and human rights in shaping power politics in the postwar world. -- James T. Kloppenberg, author of The Virtues of Liberalism
When Roosevelt and Churchill met in Placentia Bay in 1941 and signed the Atlantic Charter, they created the momentum that led to the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the human rights revolution. This book is a surpassingly readable and reliable study of this founding moment. It is also an inspiring evocation of consummate leadership and political vision. -- Michael Ignatieff, author of The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror
Elizabeth Borgwardt's splendid book does much more than remind us of a different American outlook on world affairs. It brilliantly explores the origins of that international outlook in the domestic politics and state-building of New Deal America. In the postwar world, every country's national security would hinge on international human rights and the establishment of secure political and economic institutions. -- William E. Forbath, author of Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement
An ambitious, original, and innovative work that argues for the 1940s as a transformative period in international relations, when American public opinion shifted to support a new internationalism. This was not simply the work of liberal, reforming elites but a sea change in the way Americans thought about their place in the world. -- Kenneth Cmiel, author of Democratic Eloquence
If you want to understand the origin of modern international rights, read this book. It powerfully and vividly recreates the moment when American leaders contributed the confident experimentalism and legal pragmatism of the New Deal to the challenge of securing a world where all people can live free from fear and want. Borgwardt persuasively demonstrates how ideas shape institutions, aspirations, and world history, and how they bridge the gap between devastating violence and hopes for justice and peace. Now, when the legacies of these institutions are so much under global challenge--and even repudiated at times by American leadership--A New Deal for the World reminds us that this dynamic interaction among words, institutions, and contexts has ripple effects that last long beyond founding moments. -- Martha Minow, author of Between Vengeance and Forgiveness
A superb, instructive, and even gripping treatment of America's role in the development of human rights. Too often, the United States is portrayed as a kind of obstacle to movements for human rights worldwide. Borgwardt sets the record straight, with illuminating and sometimes moving detail. -- Cass R. Sunstein, author of Why Societies Need Dissent
Elizabeth Borgwardt's fascinating book shows how Roosevelt's administration projected the lessons of the New Deal onto a global stage by linking individual security (realized though domestic social welfare programmes) with international security (realized by halting aggression and maintaining peace)... Borgwardt skilfully conveys the light and shade of American politics during the years bracketed between the Atlantic conference and the opening of the Nuremberg trial... Whatever the future may hold, A New Deal for the World stands as a valuable and perceptive account of a unique period of American ascendancy, when a combination of pragmatism and idealism inspired the nation to play a decisive role in the history of human rights. -- Kirsten Sellars * International Affairs *
In August 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met off the coast of Newfoundland to discuss the course of World War II and their ideas for the postwar world. This meeting serves as the departure point for Elizabeth Borgwardt's absorbing and passionately argued study...[A New Deal for the World] provides a fascinating chronicle of how diplomatic interactions shaped human rights law, and it challenges its readers to think further about this history's broader significance. -- Jason Scott Smith * Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History *
This is an extraordinarily well-written volume, and Borgwardt should be commended for her enormous contribution to the literature on U.S. diplomatic history and international human rights. -- Simon Payaslian * Journal of American History *
This beautifully written book sheds new light on the founding moments of post-war international society...[An] excellent and important book. -- Alex Bellamy * Political Studies Review *
Demonstrates Borgwardt's familiarity with a wide range of academic disciplines-including political philosophy, international relations, and economics...The strength of her argument is in presenting an official, "top-down" version of the contributions of American foreign policy to the modern international human-rights regime. -- Debra DeLaet * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
This is a first-rate work of history. Borgwardt has done extensive research in both Britain and the United States, and her bibliography and references to published materials are staggering...[It] should stand out in contrast to a litany of catastrophes and a smarter-than-they-were dismissal...this rich account of the achievements of some of the greatest minor utopians in the century is just such a work. -- John Milton Cooper * American Historical Review *


Awards
Winner of Merle Curti Award 2006. Joint winner of Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize 2006. Nominated for National Book Awards 2005 and Lionel Gelber Prize 2006 and Ellis W. Hawley Prize 2006 and Bancroft Prize 2006 and Arthur Ross Book Award 2006 and Myrna F. Bernath Book Award 2006 and Mark Lynton History Prize 2006 and Edgar S. Furniss Book Award 2005 and Francis Parkman Prize 2006 and Littleton-Griswold Prize 2006 and William Nelson Cromwell Book Prize 2006 and John H. Dunning Prize 2007.



Book Information
ISBN 9780674025363
Author Elizabeth Borgwardt
Format Paperback
Page Count 480
Imprint The Belknap Press
Publisher Harvard University Press