Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World, from it's Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Robert Kagan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 2006

From the author of the immensely influential and best-selling Of Paradise and Power—a major reevaluation of America’s place in the world from the colonial era to the turn of the twentieth century.

Robert Kagan strips away the myth of America’s isolationist tradition and reveals a more complicated reality: that Americans have been increasing their global power and influence steadily for the past four centuries. Even from the time of the Puritans, he reveals, America was no shining “city up on a hill” but an engine of commercial and territorial expansion that drove Native Americans, as well as French, Spanish, Russian, and ultimately even British power, from the North American continent. Even before the birth of the nation, Americans believed they were destined for global leadership. Underlying their ambitions, Kagan argues, was a set of ideas and ideals about the world and human nature. He focuses on the Declaration of Independence as the document that firmly established the American conviction that the inalienable rights of all mankind transcended territorial borders and blood ties. American nationalism, he shows, was always internationalist at its core. He also makes a startling discovery: that the Civil War and the abolition of slavery—the fulfillment of the ideals of the Declaration—were the decisive turning point in the history of American foreign policy as well. Kagan's brilliant and comprehensive reexamination of early American foreign policy makes clear why America, from its very beginning, has been viewed worldwide not only as a wellspring of political, cultural, and social revolution, but as an ambitious and, at times, dangerous nation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. One of America's great myths, says Kagan, is that the U.S. has always been isolationist, only rarely flexing its muscles beyond its borders. Not so: in the first half of a two-volume study of American foreign policy, Washington Post columnist and bestselling author Kagan (Of Paradise and Power) argues that even in the colonial era Americans restlessly pushed westward. At every turn, Kagan shows how a policy of aggressive expansion was inextricably linked with liberal democracy. Political leaders of the early republic developed expansionist policies in part because they worried that if they didn't respond to their clamoring constituents—farmers who wanted access to western land, for example—the people might rebel or secede. Also provocative is Kagan's reading of the Civil War as America's "first experiment in ideological conquest" and nation building in conquered territory. He then follows American expansion through the 19th century, as the U.S. increased its dominance in the western hemisphere and sought, in President Garfield's phrase, to become "the arbiter" of the Pacific. Kagan may overstate the extent to which contemporary Americans imagine U.S. history to be thoroughly isolationist; it's a straw man that this powerfully persuasive, sophisticated book hardly needs. 75,000 first printing. (Oct. 12)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Kagan's last book, Of Paradise and Power (2003), caused a stir by arguing, with eloquence and historical rigor, that Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus. His latest, the first of a two-volume treatise on the history of American foreign policy, is a forceful, sophisticated challenge to the idea that isolationism is America's heritage. From its first stirrings, Kagan argues, America has always been an expansionist power, fueled by desire for land and a perceived need to ensure internal stability by engaging itself abroad. Here, he celebrates the long nineteenth century, which saw America transformed from a vulnerable, spirited underdog to a muscular contender capable of taking down a major European power (Spain). The Civil War was a key turning point, the first expression of an ideological foreign policy aimed at regime change and reconstruction. Premised on a profound exuberance for America as a force of creative destruction--a geopolitical Shiva the Destroyer--and clearly intended to reinvigorate support for aggressive foreign policy in the twenty-first century, this book will surely prompt debate. Kagan's polished and assertive prose likewise resembles a force of nature, and will ensure broad readership. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 527 pages
• Publisher: Alfred A Knopf; 1St Edition edition (October 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375411054
• ISBN-13: 978-0375411052
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.6 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #190,887 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

94 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars robert kagan responds, December 18, 2006

By 

Robert W. Kagan - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World, from it's Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (Hardcover)

Just for the record, I began this book in 1996 and finished 90 percent of it before the Iraq War began. I'm amazed that anyone can imagine I wrote this book in less than two years.

47 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An eminent read, October 24, 2006

By 

Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World, from it's Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (Hardcover)

In this provocative and insightful book the author delves into the history of American foreign policy and proposes the radical suggestion that internationalism is far more in America's historical blood than isolationism. We have been accustomed to think that isolationism, based on Washington's reference to avoiding European alliances, is the national pastime, and it certainly was in certain periods and championed by certain voices. However this book shows that a radical sense of the puritan secular ethic, combined with anti-colonialism led America to challenge the world and that in her history America has always espoused special unique values such as capitalism and democracy. The Civil War is seen as a jumping off place for true American power.

This book is not a minute history of American expansion but concentrates on its major theorists and pushers such as the South's view towards expanding to the tropics under Jefferson Davis, Polk, Blaine and others. However there are major oversights. The role of mapmakers and explorers such as Fremont is ignored and it appears there are no maps in the book which makes reference to foreign policy problematic.

American foreign policy is fascinating and this book helps to dust off the 19th century, which has been viewed as a time of American isolationism and inward ignorance, and reshape our view to see it as a time when American theories were laid down that put the groundwork together for the policies of Wilson and FDR, as well as Reagan, Kennedy and Bush.

A brilliant work, a needed contribution.

Seth J. Frantzman

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars U.S. foreign policy as seen around the globe, January 14, 2007

By 

Jon Hunt "musician, teacher" (Old Greenwich, Ct. USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World, from it's Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (Hardcover)

Robert Kagan's "Dangerous Nation" is a comprehensive and often eye-opening book regarding U.S. foreign policy since pre-Revolutionary War days. Thrusting an arrow into America's notion of "manifest destiny", Kagan sets out, and ultimately succeeds in relating the news that we Americans aren't as noble as we might have thought. Clearly and concisely, the author tells us why.

With a timeline as his narrative outline, Kagan begins with a look at America in its infancy, emphasizing a national tentativeness about foreign entanglements as the country tried to build on the successful outcome of the Revolution. England, France and Spain, of course, formed the triumvirate of foreign powers sometimes allying with the United States but often at odds with us. Kagan is very good at describing the balancing act that the early presidents had to achieve with regard to these European nations.

As much time as the author spends with the Founding Fathers, this really is more of a book about the actions and reactions of the United States in the nineteenth century and with it, two key figures emerge...John Quincy Adams in the early part of the century and James G. Blaine in the latter part. Both Secretaries of State had vision, insight and political knowledge as to the benefits and pitfalls in which the country might find itself. While much of "Dangerous Nation" is not historically new to American history buffs, there are some added, fascinating insights. Kagan spices up a couple of chapters with a comparison of the foreign policy positions of the administrations of Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison... two men who had widely differing views on how aggressive the United States should be in its outlook on the world. That Democrats and Republicans changed hands in the White House four times in four successive national elections (thereby wrenching foreign policy to and fro) is a great side theme.

Kagan ends his first volume (volume two is to be written) with the onset of the Spanish-American War, perhaps, as he puts it, the most popular war in the nation's history. By this time, the United States was already a world power and this was reflected in the nation's attitude toward freeing Cuba from Spain, pushing the frustrated President McKinley (who wanted to stay out of war) into finally taking action.

If history is one of life's great lessons, there are many times in "Dangerous Nation" that one reads about the foreign policy mistakes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that are clearly repeated in America's intervention in Iraq. Overreaching, an effort to establish democracies where they may not be wanted and a will to impose our "goodness" as a nation are just some examples. Robert Kagan has offered a wonderfully thorough book in "Dangerous Nation" and I highly recommend it, especially for its look at how United States foreign policy has been viewed over time from within our own borders and from without.