Latest / Comps List Radio / Episode 6: William A Williams "Tragedy of American Diplomacy," 1959 with Grant Madsen

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Episode 6: William A Williams "Tragedy of American Diplomacy," 1959 with Grant Madsen · Comps List Radio

• Robert Ferguson: Hello and welcome to another exciting episode of Consulist Radio. This is a very special episode as ⁓ we have Dr. Grant Madsen from Brigham Young University pinch hitting for Marie Totten. This voice in your ears is Robert Ferguson at Arizona State University in the Center for American Institutions, your regular host. But again, we are being joined by Dr. Grant Madsen today from Brigham Young. And ⁓ so we've had to do a little bit of a reshuffling. I think in the last episode, I said we were going to do John Hope Franklin this week. But we wanted to wait till Marie could be back for that. And so we've decided to do a different book and ⁓ one that I think fits neatly with ⁓ some of the work, some of the research that Dr. Madsen has done. And so this should be a really exciting, should be a really good episode. And Dr. Graham Madsen, for those who don't know, is also the chief editor at H-Pool. So we're bringing in the heavy hitters for this. ⁓ Grant, This is obviously a dream come true. Ever since I heard your first episode a couple of months ago. It's your life. It's your lifelong dream, huh? Marie can't be here in her usual spot, but I think it's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm excited to be part of this. Yeah, yeah, we've had some fun in the past and we're definitely excited to I'm really excited to talk about this book with you. We've kind of been, you know, kind of hinting with each other over some texts and some emails over the last week. So I'm glad we can actually start sticking our teeth into it. We've decided. Yeah, we've decided to do William Appleman Williams's tragedy of American diplomacy. which is a classic in the diplomatic history field. For those who do diplomatic history, this is probably still going to be on your comps lists, I imagine. But if you're not doing diplomatic history or American foreign relations history, then this might not have been on your comps list. So it's probably a good one to walk through. ⁓ So ⁓ grant. Did you, I'm assuming you read this book in grad school? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And by the way, I want to add one thing because, you know, I think the last thing you and Marie talked about, the last book you and Marie talked about was Lewis Hart, right? And I think that in some ways this fits really neatly because, ⁓ you know, it is very much, this book, think we're going to talk about it, I'm sure, very much of its moment. It's hard to imagine this book getting written any other time than like the late 50s, maybe early 60s. And is written in that sort of style of, know, consensus. This is the essence of America, you know, that would be popular in the 1950s. But it's sort of like the bizarro version, right? The other side of the coin, the dark, what is shadow or... know, reflect darkly. ⁓ It's like the inverse of the story Hart is telling, but but can tell that immediately because it can stick in on the one hand. I'm sorry, I'm getting ahead of it. I know. But on the one hand, it's affirming the Hartian story of the liberal America that has good and empty freedom and and democracy and apple pie and all that stuff. But as soon as that vision leaves American shores, it becomes inverted. and become this art opposite. so anyway, so I think I know that you had some, know, John Hope Franklin would have been great also, but I think this still fits within kind of the unfolding of works that we've been talking about. ⁓ yes, so I don't know that it was, I think that it would have been, it was on my reading list in part because ⁓ like a lot of people of my generation, ⁓ I started ⁓ around the time of the trans sort of the internationalization of American history. So I was doing a lot of catch up to figure out what, you know, what at least diplomatic historians have been talking about for a long time. And that meant I went to what were the classics, right? They started, you know, from the very beginning. So this is one of the first things I read along with some of the other classics in diplomatic history. anyway, so yeah, this is perfect. I'm excited to talk about this. Yeah, me too. Rick, can maybe can you tell people a little about your own research? Yeah, so I'm a political historian, obviously, you know, that's what brings us to this web page and and the network. But ⁓ I've done a lot of work in sort of mid 20th century international finance and economic history. So ⁓ I spent a lot of time trying to just understand ⁓ what happens to American policy when it leads to shores of the country. So very much like William Appleby Williams. My own work has tended to focus on, you know, I'm also writing after the policy history or political development turn in political history. So I tend to be more focused on institutions and particularly, at least the work I've done specifically in political history is focused on the military and the way policy gets made in the military, which, you know, but in areas you wouldn't expect the military to make policy. So in occupations where You have military leaders figuring out tax collection and garbage collection and post offices, but also making a lot of economic policy. so basically how did they develop policy? How did they develop policy expertise? Right. And this is be a great time to plug your book. ⁓ yeah. So Sovereign Soldiers, that's the name of the book. yes, if anybody, yeah, it's, if this is, you know, this framework is of interest, ⁓ I'm also happy to. email and talk about the, you know, how, you know, basically this idea of American institutions functioning semi-independently outside of the bounds of the actual political United States, right? So, you know, this idea that we have military bases all around the world, have commitments, have occupations, you know, constantly ongoing, it seems like. So that, you know, it's a... You kind of want to think about like, how do we think about American governing institutions when they're disconnected from the actual American state in important ways? It's my geographic with most of all. So there's a phrase I like to use in the book called the external state. The idea of a state that's outside the boundaries of the United States. Yeah, thanks. That wasn't my intention, but Rob, you're good to me. I appreciate you letting me plug the book. Well, it's a great book. I read it over the Christmas holidays ⁓ this year. and I really enjoyed it. So and I paid full Amazon rack rates. I want to make sure you get all like three cents of your royalty. Thanks. Yeah. No, I just paid taxes. And so, ⁓ you know, I gave the government back, you know, some of some fraction of a penny based on your birth. OK, so you know, we were on a panel last year ⁓ at the Policy History Conference on the and part and we don't need to get into the incidents of the panel. But one of the things that came up is one of the participants of the panel. ⁓ He recently wrote an article called like Tragedy Revisited, Tragedy Again about William Appleman Williams. And we don't need to go into his perspective on it necessarily. But what is it about this book? Is that Ryan? What is it about this book? It's still with us Yeah, right. So, think it's a good question and I actually would trust your perspective in some ways more than mine because You're a little closer to comps lists. You probably took your cut. don't know. When did you take your comprehensive exam? I 2022 2021 2022 something a little more familiar to you in some ways. I think that um, uh, I think that it's a I would answer by saying it it feels certain functions that are very useful to the whole enterprise we're involved in, right? ⁓ So for one, it's kind of the original early heterodox position within diplomatic history. mean, the field hadn't been around all that long and had functioned around a kind of consensus about the origins of the Cold War and the intentions of American foreign policy. And so You know, the first entrant always gets a little bit more play than everybody who follows. And so ⁓ he kind of pioneered the whole idea of thinking about American foreign policy, not as triumph, but not as the noble expression of a free loving democratic people, but as tragedy, as a betrayal of those very ideals. But then the other thing is the framework he chose, the framework of empire. ⁓ He had to, of course, change the meaning of that term a little bit in order to use it. And so he kind of ⁓ pushed the whole notion of empire to, it doesn't have to be sort of a formal system of colonies with an imperial office within the central government. It can function in other ways as an open door empire, as he kind of explains it. But that whole framework of empire has caught on and has been remarkably flexible. So that I think that diplomatic history, I would say most diplomatic historians today function within a notion of empire. It may not be identical to what ⁓ William Appleman Williams articulated, but is certainly inspired by it, right? Because implicit in the notion of empire is a kind of power differential, has expressed through foreign policy. and the way one country can, in a sense, impose its will on other countries in the international ⁓ scheme. And ⁓ that idea has been remarkably resilient. In fact, my sense is, so neither of us are diplomatic historians, but at least understanding the literature as we do, I think we both would agree that's the dominant paradigm for anybody working in the field now. Yeah, I mean, think it has to be. It means basically various forms of empire. And of course, as you mentioned, I mean, the definition gets slipperier and slipperier and slipperier as you dig into it. Right. And and and and in some cases, it's just downright abstract. But it's still, I think, a framework that's applied. And Williams himself, actually, and, I didn't I only picked this up this time reading through it. He actually references Robinson and Gallagher's informal empire article. Interesting. Yeah. which would have been brand new at the time when he wrote this. so Williams is sort of, and he's very, he's explicitly building on Robinson and Gallagher. You can see that influence. Now Robinson and Gallagher were not, at least not explicitly talking about the United States. They were talking about Great Britain in the latter part of the 19th century. But ⁓ he's clearly, you know, picked up on and adapting that frame. Yeah, right. And I think, I mean, this is why I talked before, right? Like this book had probably only been written when it was. ⁓ You know, some of the innocence he attributes to the United States, or at least the self perception in the United States. mean, to me, felt, it almost has felt very autobiographical, right? This feels like his own kind of, I mean, it's almost a cliche, but the fact that he was born in Iowa, like fits perfectly with the almost cliched version of what it means to be. kind of a white intellectual who grew up in farm country in the Midwest in the, know, whatever, the middle of the 20th century. so, and as an innocent, I think he has that same kind of wonder and doubt that I think probably a lot of people felt. When they looked around, they're like, okay, the United States is in a sense, if not the hegemon in the 50s, but certainly, ⁓ not the dominant world power, a dominant world power, right? In a bipolar system, it's at least one of the poles, right? And trying to make sense of what to do with that power. ⁓ I know we're going to talk more about this, I always get this very sort of ⁓ mainline Protestant guilt that sort of seeps through the book. where, you know, I'm not sure, I don't think Williams was particularly religious, but you almost sense that kind of Calvinist old school, again, it's a cliched way of thinking of it, Midwestern kind of, like, is it, you know, like guilt about success? It's of, you know, sort of, I don't know, I read between all the lines, it seems like. Sure, I have to go. ⁓ I sort of jump in, I'd have to go back and check here because I actually I read it, but I didn't actually make a note of it. ⁓ But he actually does at one point attribute American like the dream of American foreign policy or like what people think it is to a Calvinist. And yeah, it was either Calvinist or Presbyterian. I don't remember exactly what he said, but ⁓ but it was definitely in that ⁓ in that same vein. So that's very interesting. ⁓ that you think that, mean, I, I, I do think that you're, you're right. There's this, know, he grew up, he went, you know, there's probably a good time to introduce some of his biography born in Iowa, went to the Naval college, served in world war II was a line officer was wounded in world war II. But as I just mentioned to, to grant before we jumped on the recording here, ⁓ was not wounded in battle. He was just wounded. He kind of terrible sustained a terrible back injury, ⁓ while sailing through difficult seas. ⁓ But I mean, you know, in many ways he. I mean, almost certainly joined the Navy out of an incredible sense of patriotism. You know, and that's one of the things that I think separates Williams from later radicals is Williams never loses his patriotism. I think that's right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think that's one of the criticisms. But but I think that's. But. I think that also reflects again the 1950s, early 60s, right? There's no Vietnam War yet, right? But even after the, you he lives through the Vietnam War and he never- No, you're right about that. He never loses that patriotism. Yeah, I think that's right. it's interesting, and again on the reread, ⁓ you know, especially in the, at the very end of the book where he kind of talks about the utility of nuclear weapons and stuff. He's still, you know, he can be sympathetic to Marxism, which again seems like particularly brave, you know, right here, sort of on the, in the Twilight of McCarthyism, but still very brave. ⁓ But I, but he's not a Marxist, right? ⁓ I mean, he's, he's really a progressive in a lot of ways. He's like, it's like, I mean, I think his sort of intellectual hero is essentially Charles Peirce, where ⁓ he wants to be an economic determinist, but not a Marxist. ⁓ And I think you're right. And I think that allows him the space to still be patriotic in a certain sense. I mean, I'm being very armchair psychologist in this, a kind of Calvinist full of regret and doubt. but never giving up on the ideal way. Yeah, I think that's right. And, you know, beard was the same. Yeah, that's probably right. Yeah. You know, beard. Nobody tried to tear down American shibboleths like beard did. Wearing American symbols and and and like the actual like and sacred cows. Nobody went after them hard with a beard. Yet for the time and yet. He remained patriotic. Yeah, right. Right. Which is, mean, I don't know, I feel like we're, I mean, we're kind of venturing into, ⁓ I'm trying to think of who would say this the best, but I'm thinking of like Brian Ballo, but I'm sure there are other scholars. But the idea that the progressive era is in a lot of ways trying to do that, right? It's trying to Americanize European radicalism and And so Beard is tearing down the heroes of the American past, but in the name of American ideals, right? And in the name of equality, freedom, but also a kind of ethical content, a kind of American virtue that is sober, thoughtful, but caring, you know? ⁓ like the, some, and like kind of open, to what, well, actually, I think the word would be just friendly, kind of friendly radicalism that wants to wants to gain converts rather than mount the barricades in the bloody revolution. Yeah, maybe maybe in America is not exceptional, but it should be. Yeah, right. Right. Yeah. And that's again, one of the criticisms of this book is that a little Apple and William sort of remains American except for in the Right. Yeah, I think that's right. Yeah. OK, so we've talked enough. ⁓ He. He does, you know, not only is Charles Beard progressive, you know, you can he taught at Wisconsin, you know, he got his PhD at Wisconsin. mean, he's very clearly trying to take the mantle of Frederick Jackson Turner and but apply it overseas. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. that economic determinants, as they were right. Right. And, you know, ⁓ I remember him being economic determinist when I read it. I don't know he's as economically determinist this reread as I remember him being. But ⁓ one of the things that I've always appreciated about Williams, whether it was in this book or in fact, it's even clearer in some of his later work, is that he's one of the Wisconsin school. ⁓ which I don't necessarily consider myself part of or, but I've always respected it. And one of the things I've always really respected about it is that it treats foreign affairs as if it's an entirely American national project. Right. It doesn't just look at boggy bottom. Yeah. Right. Right. As some of the, you know, if you're at Harvard or if you're Yale and you're studying it, it's easy to think that it's the foreign offices. You know, it's the State Department and foreign offices ⁓ talking with each other. And that's what foreign affairs is. Well, you know, maybe the Pentagon and later, you know, but wherever the War Department and Defense Department or the Pentagon. ⁓ But. When with William Appleman Williams, he's looking at foreign affairs as a Midwestern. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yeah, and as a kind of a, think, and I think what you're about to say is, which, which, you know, I mean, it's a weird slippage, right? On the one hand, he speaks of, what did once tell her say? He's, he can still talk about America as a her, you know, he could, you know, or as a she, like he can give a pronoun to the whole nation. ⁓ But, but also in a weird way sees himself as an outsider to it, but as an American, right? He's an American who's an outsider. but an outsider of exactly what you're describing. And I think that this might be, again, I'm being an armchair psychologist, but it feels like this is why he left Wisconsin ultimately, is to get further from the East Coast. So that's why he went out to Oregon, right? was to get further away from Foggy Bottom and the East Coast institutions. I mean, and you could add to what you're talking about, basically Harvard and Yale. I mean, he's thinking about like, getting further away from people like Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and like that kind of tight, ⁓ interlocking ⁓ sort of high elite academic institutions working hand in glove with ⁓ foreign affairs but also government at all levels. ⁓ It's sort of like the, again, kind of the cliched version of 1960s policy making. Sure. ⁓ You know, Andrew base of it wrote a piece on Williams and is very inspired by Williams from very conservative scholar, but inspired by Williams. And he argued that, you know, that he that basically what you're saying is that he fled Wisconsin to get further from the East Coast, further from elites. And that like when he was in Corvallis, he spent most of his free time in pools. And the idea being like to because he felt most comfortable among the working class. Yeah, right. Right. And, you know, and but anyway, so the but the other thing that I really like about the Midwesternness of his approach and I think there's some limitations to it. But one of the things I appreciate is you get a very different sense. Of these events when viewed through the lens of like congressmen from Nebraska. Yeah. Or senators from Wisconsin. ⁓ than you do if you're just dealing with State Department physicians. Yeah, right, exactly. And of course, the standard take, especially in this period, is that isolationism came from the Midwest. Cosmopolitanism, I I guess that's probably still case today. You know, the coasts are always cosmopolitan, and the center entry is more isolationist. And that's another way to articulate the same point, right? That he's a little bit of an outsider, not privy to the workings, but in a sense, the moral conscience. of those who are making the policy. Right. But one of the things that comes through Williams that I've never seen through any other scholar, but I really think that Williams has it right, is that I think people assume William Jennings Bryan was kind of a peacenik isolationist and he was not. He just ran against imperialism in 1900. Oh, right. But he was never he was never anti expansionist. And, you know, when Williams writes about Bryan, he's a jingoist. Huh. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. Which is, just, anyway, it's not just in tragedy, that's in some of his other works as well, but it's, ⁓ but anyway, ⁓ we've talked long enough about the, about Williams as a, about Williams, we psychoanalyze them, which I always love doing. The argument of the book. Yeah, this is, well, this is why I like talking about people who are dead, because I could psychoanalyze them. We should let our dozen listeners know what's actually going to come up on their comprehensive exam. ⁓ Right, right. OK, so all right, Grant, what do you what do you think the argument of the book is? Yeah, so when I I actually will teach at least ⁓ the introduction and I go back to the early the sixty one or fifty nine. Can't remember what one of the first editions or second editions of the book he added to the introduction later in seventy two where he kind of takes a victory lap. and ⁓ rewrites the introduction to talk all about Cuba as his case in point. But in the original, he gets right to it. And the three arguments that I have to say I still love, I think they're really great. ⁓ So first, he basically says that Americans have a kind of a warm, generous humanitarian impulse. our motivation is to help other people around the world. That's our impulse. ⁓ But we simultaneously support the principle of self-determination. We think that people should have the same sort of rights to democratic expression that we enjoy. ⁓ But then we also think that in order to do that, we have to sort of remake their world to look a little bit like ours. They will only get better if they embrace that kind of liberal democratic, but especially capitalist world that we inhabit, because that's the pathway to, ⁓ that's the gift that we can give them. So in a sense, we're evangelical, right? We are proselyting. We want to help people, but we want to help them by, in a sense, converting them to a particular worldview, belt on Xiao, as he would say, that looks on a lot like us, right? And so, and that what happens very quickly is that principle two and principle three get in common, right? The idea that people should on their own, like people should have self- should self-determine, people should make their own way in life, comes in conflict with our sense of, but as long as they choose our way, right? And so the famous expression, this would be Woodrow Wilson, who I can't remember what country authorized the invasion of, instead of democratic institutions and then went back because they had elected the wrong people and ⁓ said, you know, I gave them democracy, now I'm going to tell them how to vote right, essentially. And I'm screwing up the quote in the story, I apologize. But that basic idea of You know, we're going to, and anyway, so for my students, for undergrads, this ⁓ is a great framework for understanding a lot of the conflicts that the United States has been in since World War II, right? And why we kind of get pulled into situations more recent, you most recently Iraq and Afghanistan, where, ⁓ you know, the ideals are laid out. We're going to spread democracy. We're going to allow for freedom. We're going to protect individual rights. get stuck there for a longer and longer period of time because the countries don't embrace these things in the way we kind of want them to. Now, okay, all of that I have to say I really like. Where the problems come are when he sort of introduces the economic determinism that follows and says, it's a key component in this third part, this idea of they have to look like us, is that means they have to be part of an open door free trade, today we would call it globalizing economy. All nations now have to embrace the free flow of goods and capital across borders. It's part of this American need to, and in his view, ⁓ solve the problem that the United States had of ⁓ insufficient consumption. and overproduction. We need someplace for our surplus goods to buy those up and then also provide us raw materials. And that's where the kind of imperial vision makes a little more sense because that's how a lot of imperial systems worked, right? It's the metropole manufacture goods, ⁓ the periphery provided raw materials and there's kind of pre-flow. And with that came an assumption that the United States was always in the power position. ⁓ almost regardless of who it dealt with because the United States economy was the biggest. And so as long as there was an imbalance between the bigger trade partner and the weaker trade partner, that this imbalance meant that in a way the US was imposing it. It was actually in a position to get caught in this tragedy again and again, ⁓ thinking that it was doing a favor to nations, but then insisting that they adopt, you know, essentially ⁓ the free flow of goods and so on, and make their economies look like the American economy, which creates a backlash, which creates tensions and is ultimately unstated. in a nod, in a sense, to Lenin, that then will require the American military to show up and force as a kind gunboat diplomacy, the continued open door free trade, whatever, despite the resentment of the people of the British. Right. So ⁓ that's kind of the analysis in a nutshell. And ⁓ of course, this lends itself really nicely. So my understanding is that when the book first came out, it wasn't really taken particularly seriously. But as the Vietnam War got off the ground, decolonization progressed, as newly freed countries in Africa and elsewhere in the world, did not immediately embrace capitalism. so that what followed was increasing American ⁓ belligerence towards countries that didn't just fall in line. This analysis started to look really prescient and appealing. so ⁓ it was sort of like events to made a bestseller out of the book. Yeah, I think it turned into prophecy. Yeah, I don't know whether that was exactly what Williams intended, but it felt like it turned into prophecy. Right. Right. By 1971 or two, when he rewrote his introduction, he could take a victory lap. He could say, this is a great framework for understanding Cuba, which fit the pattern probably as well as any particular international experience in the United States where the United States did sort of dominate Cuban politics after the Spanish-American War. mostly in the interest of, know, mostly in commercial interests, which did create a revolutionary backlash, which eventually broadcast sort of out. And then eventually necessitated the Bay of Pigs, right? A military response that was supposed to reopen this market and so on. Yeah. And I mean, I think this is the thing that ends up, you know, well, there's a couple things. First of all, again, I think it was initially ignored in my sense is that first of all, maybe the world wasn't ready for it. I don't know. But also it's a Midwestern scholar talking about foreign diplomatic history and stepping all over the people on the East Coast that thought they had a monopoly on this. so by taking this more economic determinist perspective, which the East Coast at the time was like, ⁓ know, dismissed out of hand. But there was also this sort of, I think, ⁓ arrogant. Anti, you know, who are you from the hinterland? telling me my job kind of thing. ⁓ yeah, believe that's true. And the thing is that I think Williams's framework works really well where it works and it doesn't work so well where doesn't. Yeah, so I don't know, is this the point where we talk about the criticism? Well, mean, maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here, I mean, I'm kind of, unfiltered me is that that's where I'm going. ⁓ I want to stop on a couple of things first before we get there. I really do want to talk about what he means by the open door. Yeah, right. Because this is the key, like to so much of William Apple Williams. He has a very specific conception of what the open door means. And as you mentioned, it's like a belt of. Yeah, to him. Right. Yeah, it's not just economic policy. But elaborate so elaborate what you're thinking. Yeah. So yeah. Well, I mean, so one of the one of the problems that you have when you analyze Williams is that with with the with the term the open door is that the open door has a specific legalistic meaning. It actually meant something in international. And I don't know if John, if Hay and Bents it. I don't know. I don't know that it does because it's used a lot. pretty quickly and so my sense is that it may have been used already and Hay just kind of co-opted it but I'm not an expert on the 1890s so I don't know. it does but what to so in the real world the open door is more than the open door notes. Williams agrees he thinks it's a lot more than the open door notes but he thinks it reflects this bigger notion of informal empire. where it's and that it's this. We need to be able to access every market in the world. Right. We aren't necessarily going to administer something as a colony. But just because we're not administering it as a colony doesn't mean we shouldn't have full market access to it. Yeah, right. Yeah. No, I think that's right. It's it's yeah, I don't know. Yeah. Belt on sound or paradigm or ideology. I'm not sure quite. the right way to describe it, but you're absolutely right. It's not legalistic or narrow. It's a whole framework for understanding the global order. And you're right. And it's imperialistic in the sense that it's imposition. It's an empire, lots of diplomatic historians like today, it's an empire of imposition. It is imposed upon other countries. And so, know, what the name, Who's the Admiral that opened up Japan to American trade? know, I'm a drug, yeah. Commodore Perry. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, I mean, that's what he's talking about. The paradigm not only says this is a legalistic thing, it is a moral right. And whereas in the kind of legalistic sense, more of an agreement between imperial powers. Right. Right. In the sense that it's like, listen, the open door means that our call, you know, if we if we are using the open door model and let's say, you know, and it's the British Empire, the British Empire would say everybody can trade in this colony as we trade in this column. Yeah. Right. Whereas Williams thinks it's not just among imperial powers, it's the whole world. Yeah. Right. that should be open to American trade and everybody should be permitted to trade equally according to Williams. So the notion of like you if you want to put if you want to impose a tariff, you can't impose a tariff because we want national treaty. We want the we want the full open door over your over your supposedly sovereign, self-determined country. Yeah, right. I don't actually know that the history supports that notion as well as Williams would like it to. Well, okay, so yes. All right, so now we want to pivot to the criticisms. Sure. Yeah, so, ⁓ yeah, so the, I think the obvious criticism is that the whole basis of this, of his framework is that the United States needed trade because it had surplus. Its industrial power produced more than its domestic markets could consume. And so the only way to keep this going was to find outlets for the market. And this of course, fits, I think a framework that comes again from Turner, where the idea is unless the country is always expanding, in some ways it will start to decay. So unless industry is constantly finding new markets or expanding in some ways, then it will turn on itself. And this is, I mean, pretty obviously a hangover from the Great Depression, where, I mean, especially still in the 1950s, the framework was still, well, we underconsume. We didn't have enough consumption to buy up all of our national products. know, early New Deal way of framing the Great Depression. so, so that he's kind of taking that and saying, that's again, this ideological, this is underpinning the ideology of expansion and open door and so on. All right, so with that in mind, how do you make sense of the fact that by the 1970s, it's sort of the moment at which his analysis was probably the most appreciated. It was already starting to be wrong because the United States started to import more than it exported, right? Like I am not sure the United States has been a net exporter in my entire lifetime. And so as a result, the question is, well, then how does the analysis work when it's other nations, and then again, particularly nations on the periphery, Middle Eastern oil producers or China, you know, that are in essence, you know, I mean, ⁓ selling their surpluses to a United States market that is voracious. They can consume without limit. And of course, the fact that this is sustained in large part by foreign countries then taking their surplus capital and dropping it back in the United States in order to sustain this kind of unrestrained consumerism. So basically the simple way lot of scholars have treated it is Williams assumed a producer as United States, that by the time his book had caught on was no longer true, we were a consumer nation. the whole relationship that he describes, the whole logic of the relationship is now reversed. I mean, China would be especially difficult to fit within the Alpam and Williams framework, right? It was a nation that was essentially The exactly the legalist that you are talking about the British Empire. I the whole idea like open door like in the British Empire is like you said, equal trade amongst imperial power. But now China is a sovereign nation and has become incredibly powerful precisely by pursuing its own open door policy with the United States to park its surplus goods and become wealthy from something like that. And has exactly the framework that you'd say Appleman Williams wants to describe. ⁓ You know, it also would see, I think we can, or I'm positing things. I don't know how things work in China exactly, but my sense is that China also has this anxiety of being hemmed in and needing to its markets open in order to survive. Right? That this is part of its term. So I don't know, what does that mean? What does it mean if China is a better example of the William Appleman Williams thesis to the United States today? I don't know. But ⁓ that would be a criticism of, I think, one of the core criticisms. Yeah, and this is where I there's a lot that Williams broadly gets right and that there's a lot of stuff he narrowly gets wrong here. And I don't want this to turn into to to crapping on William Apple and Williams. I mean, I'll be honest. I I consider myself in some ways following in his footsteps. OK, you know, I don't. ⁓ So I don't. you know, want to dismiss everything that he has to say and just get in here to criticize to criticize him because I don't respect him. I very much respect him. And. But. He one of the one of the things that he really gets right, I think it, you know, I'm sure it was written before, but I don't know, you know, what the first half of the book almost is him basically showing why HIPAA the liberal rhetoric was largely, there was a lot of hypocrisy in the liberal rhetoric and that it was a mask for economic interests. Yeah. And I mean, so again, you read this, I read this and I go, well, duh. Right. But, know, in the 1950s, that might've been, you know, for him, that was clearly like a really, you know, he talked about Calvinist guilt. Like that's this kind of this moment where he realized, there's something else going on here. And I thought we were just, you know, you know, ⁓ what's the Superman? Well, but I can't remember, you know, something about the American way, right. And American way, right. Truth, justice of the American way. And there's something else going on here. And so, I mean, that part of, you know, he ⁓ he also Again, he is stuck on this notion of overproduction being the major contradiction in capitalism, which owes a lot to Marxist theory, particularly Lenin, but Rosa Luxemburg. That's ⁓ a major tenet of Marxist theory is that capitalism breeds overproduction, which creates the crisis of capitalism. so Williams is sort of adopting that and saying, well, they're going to solve the crisis of capitalism through expansion. Right. Which I mean, Luxembourg kind of says happens. But what's different is that Luxembourg says that ⁓ this will when you you need you need terror incognita, you know, or you need like you need fully ⁓ traditional states. can't have you know, you can't have industrialized states where it's out with Williams. So probably that's a case. Yeah, right. And again, I think he's homegrown. Right. Like he's obviously aware of Marxism in those arguments. I think he's probably closer to the people he quotes, right? Like he's thinking, you know, he's thinking, he's not, cause I don't think he, right, I don't know. This is a quite, actually this is a, so this is another common criticism. I'm not sure where I stand on it, but you know, there isn't a whole lot of, he can sound Marxist in the way it feels like structural. It's like history is proceeding by the logic. of the material based kind of thing. it doesn't seem quite as, I don't know what's the word didactic as like a kind of a very unreconstructed Marxist, to put it. Or even deer. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. So, I mean, he does seem to hold out hope that it might be otherwise. Well, I think that's the real, I think that is the really important distinction. between Williams and the Marxists is that Williams really does hope that he's like, we can solve this. We as individual Americans can actually solve this. Right. Whereas the Marxists say, of course you can. Yes, you can through violent revolution and overthrowing capitalism. But Williams does, you know, he believes that you can ⁓ that if the American just decided to be happier with less. Right. Right. If the American individual just decided like, we're going to be happier with less, we're going to let the rest of the world do what they want to do. And we can maintain our freedoms. We're probably going to be a little poor, but that's okay. There's nothing there. You know, we'll come up with some new way of making, know, he he's kind of the spiritual individual. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think that's right. Yeah. And again, it's so easy for me to armchair, psychologize him in this way, because it feels ⁓ again, very Very like Midwestern Protestant, know, like salt of the earth, get by on less, know, penny saved is a penny earned. You don't need to be consumerist and you don't need to have so much of that. so I agree with you. Yeah, I think I think that's what comes through. so, ⁓ you know, but that leads. But there's always room for a rebirth. Great. There's always room for a conversion and a re- ⁓ to the values you know to be true in your heart kind of thing. can be born again and it does not require revolution. It just requires people to be a little better towards this. Right? And we're lingering on his Protestantism a lot here again, and we might be treating him as more Protestant than he actually was, but I think there's a lot of that in here. Yeah, I hope it isn't being up there, but at least for me, ⁓ It helps me make a lot of sense of the particular position he occupies because I think that for the next generation of scholars to adopt him, they jettison all of that, right? ⁓ You know, the revisionists of the 60s and 70s take him to task for being almost naive and not understanding that he was exactly right. about the essence of ⁓ American foreign policy and was just alluded to think it could be anything other than that. Once tainted by capitalism, it's destined. So like the Colcos or some of the other folks would be just like, it's always been corporate capitalism dominating everything since the early 20th century, late 19th century, something like that. And ⁓ could not be otherwise, had to be that way. It's it the power is just too overwhelming. You know, so ⁓ So yeah, and then ⁓ but ⁓ in the interest of going back to how we started why we still read him is but but Maybe because he was not so dogmatic in that way it You know his notion of imperialism could survive in its 21st century guys because it's still very flexible, right? I think people read him now or people who work within Empire Now, I capitalism just gets folded into culture. ⁓ I mean, I suppose there's a way you could read contemporary sort of culture as a Weltanschau, right? Once again, a way of looking at the world that while he didn't talk about things like race and gender, ⁓ it's easier for scholars working in the field today to say, yeah, but that was also part of the Weltanschau that he was trying to say. And it is also imperial. Right? Like in the same way he meant it's imperial because it insists that others feel like us. It's it's a framework for making sense of the world and ordering the world. And and so it's you know, that flexibility is is exactly what's allowed him to remain relevant in a way that I don't think people read the Holocaust or the other revisionists ⁓ as critical to contemporary debates on him. I mean, probably the only one that's still read it, but he might even be. in the coma vision is of walrus uh yeah maybe so i don't know if he fits in that that's a good question i don't know where he fits to he's he seems to come to his genealogy i think is a little different i don't think very different very different but he you know he's in the sense of um but you know uh no i think but in the sense of this this of a of a systematic structural critique of um But Wallerstein is very explicitly neo-Marxist. And William Appleman Williams, don't think would have ever seen himself that way. Right. I think that's right. And I even think his, I mean, I don't know. Someone would know better than me, but I don't think that his students are necessarily, ⁓ I think they also are kind of flexible in the way that he was, right? I don't know. Response in school is pretty heterodox. Or it's not. And the heterodox isn't the right word. Well, maybe it is the right word. ⁓ Diverse. You know, you've got it's sort of the. ⁓ It's the union of the old right and the new left. It's where the old right and the new left meet. Yeah, I think that's right. And so and that's, think what's so interesting about especially, you know, the the less radical revisionist historians is that you can legitimately ask yourself, is this guy old right or new left? And you don't. And the answer is, I don't know. Sorry, did that come through on the a little bit, but that's okay. That's just fun that that just made my point that just emphasized my point My ringtone is the theme song from Brooklyn 99. I'm sorry about that. All right but okay, I You mentioned that there was a Roundtable recently done ⁓ in passport, which is one of the publications of the Shaffer Society for historians of American foreign relations ⁓ What was the general tenor of that? So first off, let me say I said recently because I'm a lot older than you. ⁓ It was the 50th anniversary, so it's already like 2009 or I might have run in 2010, but it was to celebrate the 50th anniversary. The way that I look at it is like, it pre or post financial crash? If it's post financial crash, it's recent. OK, so then yes, that it's recent, but fairly. So the tenant, it's very interesting. So ⁓ people might know this, but apparently, if I'm not mistaken, ⁓ in one class, so one class that William Appleman Williams taught at Wisconsin, he had three TAs, and they were Lloyd Gardner, Walter LeFaber, and Thomas MacCormack, right? So these who became, had heavyweights in the field, and they were all, I think they were all in the same class, and all the TAs. who were like trying to explain to their undergrads, know, this is what Bill Williams is trying to explain to you. ⁓ anyway, they also participated and then told, it was so, it was a, I ⁓ think there were 16 or 18 scholars that weighed in, including the three, probably three most famous students. And then a wide range of scholars writing from different bandages. I think that the consensus, consensus is everybody agrees with what we've talked about. They all kind of said, there's no way around the fact there's a hugely influential book, despite the fact that it has a lot of problems. For example, there are no footnotes. ⁓ It tends to ignore the things we talked about, any variation in, what's the word we're talking about, any dissension within the ranks of American policymaking, any sort of division of opinion, in fact, any agency at all. The country just kind of seems to march along according to the logic of the open door. without much thought or consideration. And it tends to kind of jump around from example to example, it's not exactly a typical chronology and so on. So it's the kind of history that I think they all agreed nobody can get away with writing today very easily, right? It's maybe a senior scholar as their sort of magnum opus, but not a junior scholar who's just gotten tenure, right? Something along those lines. Okay, and then, but the big thing that kind of comes out is the the bigger shift that's happened within diplomatic history. ⁓ that is that diplomatic historians are much more attuned to things like class, race, gender, ⁓ are much more attuned to pushback. ⁓ then just so that it's not quite a one-sided, ⁓ when the United States what sneezes the world catches over, be appraised. So it might capture that where it's like, everyone sort of does the bidding of the... So that we distinguish between empire and hegemony in a way that Williams doesn't quite, where it's not just American will that imposes itself everywhere. There's always, so influenced by post structuralism, there's always going to be fissures and cleavages in power and that kind of stuff. So I would say respectful, the tone was always respectful, but the younger scholars saying, I'm not sure it's as relevant. for me ⁓ as it would be for senior scholars. But thanks for the notion of empire. That's something along those lines. That's my long-winded summary. So long and thanks for the notion of empire. All right, exactly. then some very pointed critiques. So a lot of what I said about how the economic analysis hasn't really panned out. Elizabeth Cobbs-Hoffman basically says, you know, the analysis, the economic analysis is just fundamentally wrong. just, almost everything about it doesn't understand the way global economies work, doesn't understand the way power is implicated in global economies, something along those lines. And then some other criticisms really, and you would expect this, right, along the lines of the whole style feels reminiscent of even if Uh, Appleman Williams was not part of the elite establishment. He still writes like an elite establishment guy, you know, it's just, it's a very sort of kind of, you know, a style that fits kind of patriarchal white man's style, essentially. So, uh, so those would be some of the criticisms they came up in. It's, I mean, it's a fascinating read. It's not often you get, you know, a book that's worthy of like, basically all the who's who of a field all weighing in, you know, one after the other. Yeah. I mean, it's again, it's still. It's still it. It still has weight, you know, in a way that I mean, again, I like we just did Lewis Hart's. I don't know that Lewis Hart's has weight or at least if he does, it's not direct. Yeah, right. And it's and it's different because. ⁓ I will say you're okay. So I agree with you. It feels to me, Sarah, if we can jump back to hopefully people are listening to these in sequence. yeah, listen to the Lewis Hart. It's a great episode. ⁓ But as I was listening to you and Marie talk, I mean, I was thinking about this question. Why is Hart still relevant? And I think Hart's is mostly brought up in order to, ⁓ differentiate contemporary views of political history from the consensus historians at Hartz in particular, right? To say that Hartz is kind of, again, this sort of ⁓ style that we can't write anymore. The nation is in essence this, I as a scholar have discerned its essence and I'm going to explain it to you. That whole approach, know, Williams is writing within it, but... But the liberal view, the liberal essence that Hart's articulated ⁓ is now a foil. Whereas the imperial essence that ⁓ Appleman Williams articulated, like we've talked about already, is still useful if not in all of its detail, but at least in its flexibility, the way it can capture a lot of American foreign policy ⁓ in this kind more informal less structured, less legalistic, imperial sense. Yeah. mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's I think that's fair. You know, it's I mean, I think that both of these books are of their moments and make for either great foils or great pioneers. I mean, I guess how you want to it. OK. Well, and one last thing, but part of my point is one thing I was going to say. is if you think Williams has written in an elitist 1950s style, you haven't read Hart's. Yeah, that's probably true. He's he's left that way. I'm sure that Hart's. Yeah, for sure. It probably felt very democratic the way that Williams was writing it in in the 1950s. Oh, it's really funny. Yeah, I think that's true. And it's it's interesting. It is an interesting way in which style follows ⁓ not just the increasing complexity of the discipline, but also the politics of the discipline, right? So today, I think it's harder to get away with the kind of grandiose claims he makes, ⁓ partly because ⁓ disciplinarily, ⁓ to steal from John Louis Gaddis, ⁓ we have more splitters than lumpers. It's just harder to be a lumper. ⁓ And because there are so many splitters ready to jump on you if you are, the splitting itself is a kind of a political move, right? The idea of we don't want to leave all any voices out and particularly voices that are not represented in, you know, a foggy bottom and the halls of Harvard College, you know? Yeah. And yet I think Williams would say, listen, I'm adding voices that are currently being missed. Yeah, that's true. Right. Which is fair. Right. He was he was. Offering the counterpoint. Yeah, for sure. Well, he said anyway. I can sit here and talk about William Appleman Williams all day and tragedy of American diplomacy all day. I would, you know, in fact, I just I actually even though it was terribly reviewed, I actually think his later book Roots of the American Empire's superior. Interesting. That one does have footnotes. And you can tell, like, he was clearly, like, he was clearly being criticized for tragedy, and even contours of American history, right? Like, where there's fewer footnotes, and you could tell he was, like, sensitive to that. And, like, in roots, it just, like... I think, cause I know your work a little bit. ⁓ I think I can guess why you like it better. Because ⁓ is this the book where he says, ⁓ ironically, given everything we have just said, ⁓ the Eastern elites weren't just pursuing their Eastern elite interests that the open door policy originally came from his fellow Midwestern farmers who were the ones that were most concerned about having the ability to export their surplus crop, you know, having survived or the depression or maybe even before that, I don't know. that where he articulates that vision most clearly? Yeah, and he's talking the later 19th century. Yeah, okay. Where it basically he says that the original open door advocates were actually the people who became the populace. ⁓ interesting. Okay. Right. And he says that and but you know what he doesn't get to, which happens in the book, but 1900, the book kind of ends before 1900. But in 1900 is the switch to basically the United States, more people living in cities and in the countryside and the American urban market becomes big enough to basically satisfy American wheat farmers. That kind of that goes away. Yeah, interesting. Yeah. So but again, a way of maybe part of why he's not a a Marxist, right? Because you you can't, it's hard to sustain the Marxist story when it's Midwestern farmers leading the imperial crusade, the imperial capital crusade. Right. And, know, and again, and of course, you know, you're gonna, isn't that cool? One thing that he does do is he always refers them as farm business. He never refers them as farmers or always farm businessmen. Yeah, right. Which I, which I like, I appreciate that. ⁓ but he, it is very clear. Farmers are capital. Yeah, right. Right. True. At the founding of the country, right? That was why you were Jefferson could be ⁓ pro markets, but anti, ⁓ you know, Alexander Hamilton and industry, right? Because exporting a lot of and other stuff. Anyway, But anyway, yes, I mean, you you I this isn't going to come up with my research, but there's definitely I. I look more for solving the farm surplus problem by by expanding overseas. ⁓ Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, I mean, I definitely I got to say I was inspired, you know, to some degree by by although I was not really inspired by Williams when I read him as an undergraduate, I dismissed him immediately. ⁓ And it was only when I was digging in the primary sources as a master's and then PhD student. that I'm coming up with this, you know, this stuff that I'm seeing and I'm trying to make sense of it. And I walk out of the archives one day and I went, Was he right? Was he right? Yeah. Yeah, right. We've all had that moment where 15 years later, I'm just having sitting in the cold rain outside, you know, The archives in North care you at you know in Chapel Hill, North Carolina having this moment where I'm like, ⁓ no ⁓ no Yeah, yeah, it's true. That's funny Yeah, ⁓ well art and when your book comes out, I'll look for William Appleman Williams Yeah, he'll be cited. I'm sure but ⁓ anyway any final thoughts for me? I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much for letting me join you. I thought there's a lot of fun. Hope it's of use to ⁓ Our dozen listeners and yeah, well, hopefully be two dozen pretty soon I Don't know what I think they'll be disappointed they were coming expecting Marie that might drive the numbers down I know Well, of course they will but at the same time, you know, it's this is this has been good and we'll be we're back on with Marie Hopefully next week All right Thanks for pinch hitting. That was great. We'll talk soon.