A Policeman's Lot Is Not a Happy One – at Home and Abroad GOVERNOR EDWARD EYRE AND THE 'JOYS AND SORROWS OF EMPIRE' Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) was a great builder of the British Empire. After a career as a magistrate in Australia, where an occasional lake is...
A PROGRESSIVE HISTORIAN Last week in a discussion of Charles Austin Beard, "isolationist" Progressive historian, I mentioned Beard's influence on a number of younger scholars, among them William Appleman Williams and Murray N. Rothbard. Williams emerged in...
A PROGRESSIVE HISTORIAN Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) was a central figure in the American historical profession in the first half of this century. Born into a substantial Midwestern family in Indiana, he studied at Spiceland Academy, a Quaker institution. He spent...
As noted in a previous column, Southerners have gotten a reputation for belligerence at home and abroad. To combat this unfortunate generalization, I continue my survey of Southerners who have been critics – to some degree or another – of interventionist...
POST NO BELLUMS The Confederate States of America did not last long enough as a going concern to produce a tradition in foreign affairs. The main issue facing the Confederates was self-defense against Mr. Lincoln’s armies. This left little time for debates about...
OLD TIMES THERE ARE NOT FORGOTTEN With due care, it is possible to rent a film set in the American South which is not given over to bewailing endless Evil and Corruption of the sort that logically requires permanent occupation by the Army of the Potomac. These days,...
AN UNCIVIL WAR The controversy over Patrick J. Buchanan’s A Republic, Not an Empire is most remarkable. One could expect a presidential candidate’s critics to use his words against him – “Oh, that mine enemy had written a book.” What is odd is...
I have promised to survey theories of empire. My warrant is simply that empire, where it exists, is burdensome and destructive to the lives and property of real human beings in both the imperial center and its protectorates, allies, and possessions. Keeping empire...
Nonintervention – the notion that the purpose of American foreign policy is the actual defense of the United States themselves – is the essential American perspective on foreign affairs. It is the foreign policy most consistent with the republican and...
Some people like to say that photographs of President George Bush and other high US officials taken while the Berlin Wall was coming down and Eastern Europe liberating itself (with no real heroics and bloodshed from the likes of NATO, thank you) reveal much...
