HIS431: History of U.S. Foreign Relations

Final: Take-Home Paper

Choose one of the following topics and write a 5-10 page essay in response. Use any sources from the course material that are relevant to your thesis, including at least four of the primary documents.

The final is due by December 14^th at 12:00 noon.

1 The Progressive Era of Roosevelt and Wilson saw a paradoxical relationship between the policies and principles that guided U.S. relations with the rest of the world and relations at home with big business and labor (especially immigrant and non-Anglo workers). Discuss this paradox in terms of Barbarian Virtues and Spreading the American Dream. (Remember that, despite a basic similarity in the nature of this paradox, Roosevelt and Wilson took very different approaches in significant ways.)

2 How did non-official actors affect the nature of U.S. relations with other nations in the first half of the 20^th Century? How did business and commercial interests become inextricably linked with the practical projection of U.S. influence abroad? In what ways did these extra-governmental interests conflict and/or coincide with governmental goals?

3 Why did F.D.R. declare the Good Neighbor policy? To which U.S. diplomatic traditions was this policy connected? Was this the expression of a new set of goals, new practical realities, a new strategy… or was it in line with policies of the past?