Indigenous Nations and US Foreign Relations

Author(s):  
Jon Parmenter

The United States has engaged with Indigenous nations on a government-to-government basis via federal treaties representing substantial international commitments since the origins of the republic. The first treaties sent to the Senate for ratification under the Constitution of 1789 were treaties with Indigenous nations. Treaties with Indigenous nations provided the means by which approximately one billion acres of land entered the national domain of the United States prior to 1900, at an average price of seventy-five cents per acre – the United States confiscated or claimed another billion acres of Indigenous land without compensation. Despite subsequent efforts of American federal authorities to alter these arrangements, the weight of evidence indicates that the relationship remains primarily one of a nation-to-nation association. Integration of the history of federal relations with Indigenous nations with American foreign relations history sheds important new light on the fundamental linkages between these seemingly distinct state practices from the beginnings of the American republic.

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 261-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
JAY SEXTON

In the past decade, ‘internationalizing’ or ‘globalizing’ American history has become the mantra of the historical profession. This essay reviews this new body of literature that situates American history within a global framework, searches for connections between the United States and the rest of the world, and explores how American practices and culture have been exported. The ‘globalizing’ project, it shall be argued, has helped historians move beyond the limiting concept of American exceptionalism, whilst providing new explanations for the distinct and, at times, unique, history of the United States. It has also shed new light on the history of American foreign relations. Though historians need to balance the international with the national and better apply transnational methods to the study of the nineteenth century, the global perspective has already added a new texture to our understanding of American history.


Author(s):  
Erik Mathisen

The Civil War marked a turning point not only in the history of the republic, but the history of citizenship in the United States as well. But there is more to this moment than might appear on the surface. What this book stakes out are a new set of questions about what it meant to be a citizen, how Americans thought about it, and just how much the rapid development of two warring nation-states brought the relationship between citizens and states into such sharp relief. By placing ideas about obligation at the center of a history of citizenship during the Civil War era, The Loyal Republic charts new ground.


1975 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Conway

The mission of Myron C. Taylor, personal representative of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman to Pope Pius XII, remains a strange anomaly in the history of the foreign relations of the United States. Ever since 1867, when an act of Congress terminated diplomatic relations between the republic and the world's oldest diplomatic entity, the United States had been unrepresented at the Vatican City. The short-lived attempt to reconstitute some form of permanent and effective diplomatic presence was born in controversy and lasted only from 1940 to 1950 during the incumbency of the single appointee. When on Taylor's resignation President Truman attempted to appoint a popular second world war general to the post, the outcry in the United States was so heated that the nomination had to be withdrawn and the venture abandoned. What went wrong? Was the storm of protest merely a result of religious bigotry on the part of American Protestantism? Or had Taylor's conduct of his mission been such as to evoke these outraged feelings? Certain episodes of the diplomatic negotiations between the United States and the Vatican have already been published, for example, the polite exchange of courtesies collected and introduced by Taylor himself, Wartime Correspondence between President Roosevelt and Pope Pius XII. Some more controversial matters, such as the question of the advisability of bombing Rome, were outlined from the American point of view in the Foreign Relations of the United States. Not until the Vatican's recent decision to publish some of its papers from the pontificate of Pius XII, or more particularly until the opening of Taylor's own papers in 1973, has it been possible to study in more detail the curious entanglement of theological, diplomatic and political considerations which governed the United States' relations with the Vatican, and encompassed Taylor's mission from beginning to end.


Author(s):  
Jean Galbraith

Over its constitutional history, the United States has developed multiple ways of joining, implementing, and terminating treaties and other international commitments. This chapter provides an overview of the law governing these pathways and considers the extent to which comparative law has influenced them or could do so in the future. Focusing in particular on the making of international commitments, the chapter describes how, over time, the United States came to develop alternatives to the process set out in the U.S. Constitution’s Treaty Clause, which requires the approval of two-thirds of the Senate. These alternatives arose partly from reasons of administrative efficiency and partly from presidential interest in making important international commitments in situations where two-thirds of the Senate would be unobtainable. These alternatives have had the effect of considerably increasing the president’s constitutional power to make international commitments. Nonetheless, considerable constraints remain on presidential power in this context, with some of these constraints stemming from constitutional law and others from statutory, administrative, and international law. With respect to comparative law, the chapter observes that U.S. practice historically has been largely but not entirely self-contained. Looking ahead, comparative practice is unlikely to affect U.S. constitutional law with respect to international agreements, but it might hold insights for legislative or administrative reforms.


2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinxiu Jin

The relationship among China, the United States and North Korea has already been a focus of international politics. From June 19 to 20, North Korea leader Kim Jong-un ended his third visit to China within 100 days. This is also his three consecutive visits to China since he took office in December 2011. The high density and frequency are not only rare in the history of China-DPRK relations, but also seem to be unique in the history of international relations, indicating that China-DPRK relations are welcoming new era. This paper selects the New York Times’ report on China-DPRK relations as an example, which is based on an attitudinal perspective of the appraisal theory to analyze American attitudes toward China. Attitudes are positive and negative, explicit and implicit. Whether the attitude is good or not depends on the linguistic meaning of expressing attitude. The meaning of language is positive, and the attitude of expression is positive; the meaning of language is negative, and the attitude of expression is negative. The study found that most of the attitude resources are affect (which are always negative affect), which are mainly realized through such means as lexical, syntactical and rhetorical strategies implicitly or explicitly. All these negative evaluations not only help construct a discourse mode for building the bad image of China but also are not good to China-DPRK relations. The United States wants to tarnish image of China and destroy the relationship between China and North Korea by its political news discourse.


2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (03) ◽  
pp. 491-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin L. Einhorn

The history of slavery cannot be separated from the history of business in the United States, especially in the context of the relationship between public power and individual property rights. This essay suggests that the American devotion to “sacred” property rights stemsmore from the vulnerability of slaveholding elites than to a political heritage of protection for the “common man.”


Author(s):  
Brian Neve

This chapter revisits and explores the production history of director King Vidor’s independently made movie, Our Daily Bread (1934), its ideological and aesthetic motifs, and its exhibition and reception in the United States and beyond, not least its apparent failure at the box office. It further considers the relationship between the film and contemporary advocacy of cooperative activity as a response to the Great Depression, notably by the California Cooperative League, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, and Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California campaign for the state governorship. It also assesses the movie in relation to Vidor’s own cooperative vision through its emphasis on individuals and community as a solution to the Great Depression and the significant absence of the state in this agency.


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