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This course analyzes US foreign policy from independence through World War II. What is striking about these first 180 years of US diplomacy is how relevant many of its debates and crises are to US policy today. Central to the Founding Fathers was the question of the uniqueness, or exceptionalism, of the American experiment. The tension between Jeffersonian idealism and Hamiltonian realism remains the fundamental divide in US foreign policy debates. The intersection between the idea of Manifest Destiny and the institution of slavery opens a window on the powerful influence of racism on the formulation of US policy. The study of US relations with Native Americans and Latin Americans reveals patterns that persist in US relations with weaker states. In the late nineteenth century, the US clash with European imperialism, the conquest of the Philippines, and the opening toward China and Japan lay the foundations for the US global role in the 20th and 21st centuries. Wilsonian idealism continues to inform the present debate, and myths about American “isolationism” between the wars still distort our understanding of the past. <a href="http://bit.ly/1bebp5s" target="_blank">Click here to see evaluations, syllabi, and faculty bios</a>