US and the World: Rise of a Superpower (HIST30065)

This subject examines the relationship between the United States and the world from the Spanish-American War in 1898 to September 11, 2001. It explores how the United States went from being a third-rate global power with a small military that was notionally wedded to non-interventionism and isolationism at the turn of the twentieth century to being a global superpower with vast military, economic, and cultural reach by the century’s end. Throughout the course we consider whether the United States should be considered an “empire” by examining different facets of American power, including politics, jazz, high culture, Hollywood, consumerism, capitalism, technology, media, sport, and militarism. We cover key events including colonisation and Native dispossession; how the United States was shaped by war from the world wars to Vietnam; the Cold War; CIA interventions in Latin America and the Middle East; economic expansionism; immigration and nativism.

The course emphasises the wide range of people that have influenced US relations with the world from presidents and diplomats to bankers and artists as well as the role of ordinary people including immigrants, activists, and radicals in exile have played. In accounting for the rise of a global superpower, we also trace how US engagement with the world has shaped American vulnerabilities, both real and perceived.