How Wilson’s religious heritage shaped his response to the Mexican Revolution

“In Wilson’s view, America had a part to play as a divine instrument. To deny the United States an active role in the world was an attempt to deny God’s will.” —from the Introduction

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution mandates that government and religious institutions remain separate and independent of each other. Yet, the influence of religion on American leaders and their political decisions cannot be refuted.Leading Them to the Promised Land is the first book to look at how Presbyterian Covenant Theology affected U.S. president Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy during the Mexican Revolution.

The son of a prominent southern minister, Wilson was a devout Presbyterian. Throughout his life he displayed a strong conviction that covenants, or formal promises made binding by an oath to God, should be the basis for human relationships, including those between government and public organizations. This belief is demonstrated in Wilson’s attempt to bring peaceful order to the world with the 1919 Covenant of the League of Nations.

Through careful investigation of Wilson’s writings and correspondence, along with other contemporary sources, author Mark Benbow shows how Wilson’s religious heritage shaped his worldview, including his assumption that nations should come together in a covenant to form a unitary whole like the United States. As a result, Wilson attempted to nurture a democratic state in revolutionary Mexico when rivals Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa threatened U.S. interests. His efforts demonstrate the difficulty a leader has in reconciling his personal religious beliefs with his nation’s needs.

Leading Them to the Promised Land adds to the growing body of scholarship in international history that examines the connections between religion and diplomacy. It will appeal to readers interested in the history of U.S. foreign relations and the influence of religion on international politics.

Winner of the Peace Society Scott A. Bills Memorial Award

A fresh analysis of Woodrow Wilson’s national security strategy during World War I

“By addressing all sides of the American debate on national security questions, and by showing both the complexity and the nuance that characterized that debate, The Will to Believe fills a major gap in the literature on both World War I and all things ‘Wilsonian.’”
—Mary Ann Heiss, series editor, New Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations Series

In many ways, Woodrow Wilson and the era of World War I cast a deeper shadow over contemporary foreign policy debates than more recent events, such as the Cold War. More so than after World War II, Wilson and his contemporaries engaged in a wide-ranging debate about the fundamental character of American national security in the modern world. The Will to Believe is the first book that examines that debate in full, offering a detailed analysis of how U.S. political leaders and opinion makers conceptualized and pursued national security from 1914 to 1920.

Based on extensive research gleaned from public documents, presidential papers, and periodicals, The Will to Believe departs significantly from existing scholarship, which tends to examine only Wilson or his critics. This is the first study of America’s approach to the war, which examines all major U.S. perspectives from across the political spectrum and analyzes Wilson’s security strategy from the beginning of U.S. neutrality through the end of his presidency. During World War I there was no consensus among Wilson and his contemporaries on such fundamental issues as the nature of the international system, the impact of security policies on domestic freedom, the value of alliances and multinational organizations, and the relationship between democracy and peace. Historian Ross A. Kennedy focuses on how three competing groups—pacifists, liberal internationalists, and Atlanticists—addressed these and other national security issues.

A valuable addition to the New Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations Series

World War II and the Cold War transformed U.S.-Colombian security relations. The republics first partnered to defend the Western Hemisphere during World War II, a wartime affiliation that promoted hemispheric solidarity, inter-American military readiness, and regional stability. After the war, Colombian and U.S. combat units fought together in Korea. A Colombian infantry battalion and frigate joined the U.S.-led United Nations Command in 1951; Colombian soldiers later served with the United Nations Emergency Force during the Suez Conflict (1956–1958). Soon thereafter, Colombian and American authorities began focusing on Colombian internal security problems, particularly issues associated with the domestic political, social, and religious convulsion known as la Violencia (1946–1958). In doing so, the two countries had formed the basis of the modern Colombian-American partnership.

Placing the bilateral relationship in a global context, this military and diplomatic history examines the importance of ideology, material interests, and power in U.S.-Latin American relations. Historian Bradley Coleman demonstrates how the making of the Colombian-American alliance exemplified hemispheric interconnectedness, a condition of ever-growing importance in the twenty-first century.

Employing available Colombian and U.S. archival sources, this book fills a gap in the literature on U.S. relations with less developed countries and provides new research on the origins an development of the U.S–Colombian alliance that will serve as an invaluable resource for scholars of U.S. and Latin American diplomacy.

Essays on Cold War tensions within NATO and the Warsaw Pact

There is no shortage of literature addressing the workings, influence, and importance of NATO and the Warsaw Pact individually or how the two blocs faced off during the decades of the Cold War. However, little has been written about the various intrabloc tensions that plagued both alliances during the Cold War or about how those tensions affected the alliances’ operation. The essays in NATO and the Warsaw Pact seek to address that glaring gap in the historiography by utilizing a wide range of case studies to explore these often-significant tensions, dispelling in the process all thoughts that the alliances always operated smoothly and without internal dissent.

The volume is divided into two parts, one on each alliance. An introductory essay by S. Victor Papacosma spells out the themes addressed in the individual essays and the volume’s coherent historiographical contribution. They include, but are not limited to, military and political matters, the consequences of World War II for the non-Western world, the role of individuals in shaping historical events, and the unintended consequences of policy choices and developments.

The international group of contributors brings to bear considerable policymaking and academic experience. In approaching the Cold War–era alliances from a new angle and in drawing on recently declassified documentation, this volume adds to the literature in recent international history and will be of interest to scholars in such fields as U.S. foreign relations, European diplomatic history, and security and defense studies, among others.

Visit the Parallel History Project on Cooperative Security site for more information and news related to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

A provocative reinterpretation of Civil War–era diplomacy

“Phillip E. Myers’s Caution and Cooperation places Anglo-American relations during the Civil War within the broader context of the whole nineteenth century, arguing convincingly for the lack of any real chance of British intervention on the side of the Confederacy and dating the end-of-the-century Anglo-American rapprochement back about three decades. Based on extensive research in the United States and Great Britain, this major reinterpretation of the transatlantic special relationship is ‘international history’ in its truest sense.”

—Mary Ann Heiss, Editor, New Studies in U.S. Foreign Relations Series

It has long been a mainstay in historical literature that the Civil War had a deleterious effect on Anglo-American relations and that Britain came close to intervention in the conflict. Historians assert that it was only a combination of desperate diplomacy, the Confederacy’s military losses, and Lincoln’s timely issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation that kept the British on the sidelines. Phillip E. Myers seeks to revise this prevailing view by arguing instead that wartime relations between Britain and the United States were marked by caution rather than conflict.

Using a wide array of primary materials from both sides of the Atlantic, Myers traces the sources of potential Anglo-American wartime turmoil as well as the various reasons both sides had for avoiding war. And while he does note the disagreement between Washington and London, he convincingly demonstrates that transatlantic discord was ultimately minor and neither side seriously considered war against the other.

Myers further extends his study into the postwar period to see how that bond strengthened and grew, culminating with the Treaty of Washington in 1871. The Civil War was not, as many have believed for so long, an unpleasant interruption in British-American affairs; instead, it was an event that helped bring the two countries closer together to seal the friendship.

Soundly researched and cogently argued, Caution and Cooperation will surely prompt discussion among Civil War historians, foreign relations scholars, and readers of history.

A comprehensive examination of economic globalization

Focused on the creation and evolution of post-1945 internationalist ideology, The Birth of Development highlights efforts to diffuse the destructive role of the nation-state in world affairs by constructing truly international organizations with global agendas—the World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Health Organization. These organizations, and the men and women who worked for them, pioneered the advancement of the quality of life for all and established an ongoing obligation to promote worldwide economic development. As author Amy Staples reveals, the results of their efforts were mixed.

Grounded in archival research conducted in the archives of the World Bank, Food and Agriculture Organization, and World Health Organization, as well as in other archives in the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, The Birth of Development provides a foundational understanding for many of today’s debates on economic globalization, especially those that involve the World Bank and World Trade Organization. Given the current role of international peacekeepers and multinational aid agencies, this story is timely and makes clear that the issues that confronted early postwar planners and reformers remain in many ways unsolved even today.

The Birth of Development is the only comparative study of these crucial architects of the theory and practice of economic development, and it contributes significantly to the ongoing effort to view the postwar period as more than simply an East-West Cold War. It breaks new ground conceptually and methodologically and will be a welcome addition to the literature in the fields of modern diplomatic history and international relations.