Introduction

More than fifty years have elapsed since Henry Luce penned his famous editorial on the American Century. The editorial, republished in this volume, urged the American people to accept their destiny and use their influence to remake the world according to their own values. Luce lamented that isolationist attachments had kept the United States from its rightful place in world affairs, although he seemed to understand that current events, notably the wars in Europe and Asia, made continued isolation impossible. The issue was whether American involvement in these struggles would lead to permanent engagement with the world. Would the American people reshape the world in their own image, would the twentienth century be the American century, and would historians look favorably on the American contribution? The essays that follow wrestle with these and related questions. Written by political scientists as well as historians, by area specialists as well as Americanists, by conservatives as well as liberals, some of the essays deal with the U.S. role in different parts of the world, others with the politics of foreign policy in the United States, and still others with such topics as change and continuity in American foreign policy, the Americanization of world culture, the nature of the modern American empire, American efforts to make the world safe for democracy, and the tension between democracy and capitalism, isolationism and internationalism, in the record of American diplomacy.