The roots of American globalization can be found in the War of 1898. Then, as today, the United States actively engaged in globalizing its economic order, itspolitical institutions, and its values. Thomas Schoonover argues that this drive to expand political and cultural reach -- the quest for wealth, missionary fulfillment, security, power, and prestige -- was inherited by the United States from Europe, especially Spain and Great Britain. Uncle Sam's War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization is a pathbreaking work of history that examines U.S. growth from its early nationhood to its first major military conflict on the world stage, also known as the Spanish-American War. As the new nation's military, industrial, and economic strength developed, the United States created policies designed to protect itself from challenges beyond its borders. According to Schoonover, a surge in U.S. activity in the Gulf-Caribbean and in Central America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was catalyzed by the same avarice and competitiveness that motivated the European adventurers to seek a route to Asia centuries earlier. Addressing the basic chronology and themes of the first century of the nation's expansion, Schoonover locates the origins of the U.S. goal of globalization. U.S. involvement in the War of 1898 reflects many of the fundamental patterns in our national history -- exploration and discovery, labor exploitation, violence, racism, class conflict, and concern for security -- that many believe shaped America's course in the twentieth and twenty-first century.

About the Author
Thomas Schoonover, Sagrera Professor of History at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is the author of a number of books. He lives in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Reviews
Schoonover's brief, provocative interpretation of U.S. foreign relations based on forty years of research will challenge all who read it.... Essential. - Choice; ""His concise history of the United States' early imperial maneuvering is scarcely comforting and should play a role in ongoing debates about current actions."" - Publishers Weekly; ""Schoonover's sobering and thought-provoking study shows why and how the American hunger for wealth, material, labor, and markets and attempts at empire building were sparked by the Spanish-American War of 1898 and continue unabated to this day."" - Military Heritage; ""A masterful job of pulling together long-forgotten threads of mid-nineteenth-century history to explain why 'Mr. Hearst's war' against Spain was, eighty years of history to the contrary, actually our first global war."" - John D. Stempel, Patterson School of Diplomacy, University of Kentucky



Book Information
ISBN 9780813191225
Author Thomas D. Schoonover
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint The University Press of Kentucky
Publisher The University Press of Kentucky