Diplomatic History

Imperial Standards: Colonial Currencies, Racial Capacities, and Economic Knowledge during the Philippine-American War Recent historical work has illustrated the importance of the Philippine-American War in the twentieth-century formation of American empire. These studies, however, tend to efface important tensions between political and economic forms of imperialism, seeing capital as merely another instrument of sovereign rule. In response, this article illustrates that wartime imperial encounters in the colonial Philippines from 1898 to 1903 troubled the capacity of American empire to hold authority over the disorder caused by a seemingly autonomous capitalist market. Indeed, the market appeared to the military colonial government as a force that could not only limit American authority, but could also upturn racial and labor hierarchies. Tensions over the market surfaced especially in and through: the fiscal policies of the occupying military government, the mundane daily interactions between Americans and local retailers in the cities, suspicions over foreign banks, and the disbursement of wages to soldiers. As a response to this threatening political and economic disorder, one of the first steps of the American colonial state was to employ publically renowned financial expert, Charles Conant, to institute a new Philippine currency system. Racial capacities of colonial subjects—both ethnically Chinese and "native" Filipinos—to understand the truths of the capitalist market and obey colonial authority consequently shaped Conant’s design for a new currency system.

American Asylum: The United States and the Campaign to Transplant the Technical League, 1939-1940 In 1939–1940, internationalists, with the approval of the Roosevelt administration, campaigned to transplant key technical organs of the League of Nations to the United States to aid in postwar planning and prevent fascist forces in Europe from co-opting the institution.

American-Iranian Alliances: International Education, Modernization, and Human Rights during the Pahlavi Era The tension between "modernization" and "rights" defined the relationship between Americans and Iranians from the 1950s through the 1970s. The dynamic interplay between these two transnational currents is best understood through the lens of international education. U.S. policy makers envisaged Western-educated Iranians as the bastion of pro-Americanism required to provide the cultural underpinnings of the Washington–Tehran alliance. But the influx of Iranian students to American campuses globalized U.S. institutions of higher education and, in the process, produced an alternate alliance of Iranian youths and progressive Americans that rejected Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s authoritarian model of development, called for the realization of human rights in Iran, and revealed the contradictions inherent in a U.S. strategy that promoted student exchange while at the same time supporting the shah as an agent of modernization and anti-Communism. Expatriate Foreign Relations: Britain's American Community and Transnational Approaches to the U.S. Civil War This article proposes that U.S. foreign relations in the nineteenth century were structured around the transnational interconnections of American communities overseas. The diplomacy of Britain’s American community during the Civil War refocuses historian’s attention on the offshore institutions and civic life that conditioned American public diplomacy throughout the nineteenth century. Missionaries and Imperial Cult: Politics of the Shinto Shrine Rites Controversy in Colonial Korea State Shinto was established in colonial Korea to assimilate the Korean population. Although the Japanese government declared the Shinto ceremonies as non-religious, patriotic rituals, they consisted of traditional Shinto rites. When the Japanese authorities began forcing attendance at Shinto shrine rites, two American Presbyterian missions in Korea refused to cooperate. Their uncompromising attitude enraged the Japanese authorities, and embarrassed the American diplomatic establishment and accommodative members of the missionary community. As the Shinto shrine issue developed into a public controversy, American diplomats had to protect the national priorities over and against the private interests of missionaries. Sharing the Burden? The American Solution to the Armenian Question, 1918-1920 Drawing on public and private archives in the United States, Britain and Armenia, this article assesses the Anglo-American response to the Armenian Question as an illuminating but neglected window into the United States’ rise to world power, the decline of the British Empire and the origins of the League of Nations. The Armenian Question, relating to the security and independence of the Armenian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, was a humanitarian cause célèbre at the turn of the 20th century. The search for its solution was at the center of an American, and wider international, debate over the world role of the United States. Previous studies have not appreciated the significance of this solution to the larger public debate over the nature and purpose of U.S. power. Above all, whether the United States should join with the British Empire to construct a new global order. By following the public and political debates on a solution to the Armenian Question, this article re-examines the American conflict over its world role after World War One and re-interprets the evolution of ideas on international governance in the early twentieth century. The domestic clash over the legitimate basis for U.S. intervention in global affairs, requiring sanction by international association or unfettered national authority, demanding legislative approval or executive authorization, is addressed. It considers the British and American responses in tandem, explaining why the most prominent international champions of Armenian independence were also the most determined advocates of establishing a reformed international system, underpinned by an Anglo-American alliance. Furthermore, it reveals how Turkish and Armenian leaders influenced the mandate debate, forcing Americans to confront the complexities of pacifying the post-Ottoman Near East. Ultimately, this article reveals how the search for a solution to the Armenian Question became entangled in a wider debate over America’s future world role and the international commitments it was willing to assume.