Here is a link to my FNP presentation:
Category Archives: SISOlson18
RPP #9
I met with Professor Martin on Wednesday, December 5th. Our meeting lasted about half an hour. We spoke about how my research project had developed, specifically on the issue of case selection and historiography. I described the major criteria for the cases, including some of the controls I was introducing, and how this pointed toward examining two rising and ruling power dynamics from Spain and Portugal in the 15th century, and Sweden and Denmark in the 16th century. Professor Martin then anticipated my next point of discussion and, accordingly, we spoke about the availability of sources and differences in international norms on these rather dated cases. Professor Martin suggested that I investigate the Fashoda incident of 1898 within the context of France-United Kingdom relations and colonial competition in the African continent. This case is particularly interesting since it seems to fit the Thucydidean dynamic yet was not analyzed by Graham Allison and the Belfer Center and includes less powerful third parties, the importance of which has been emphasized by scholars like Yang Yuan.[1]
At this moment, I intend on doing a small-N most similar case comparison. While I am still whittling down contestants for the second case, I am heavily leaning toward the First Sino-Japanese war. The case, which is very similar to that of the Fashoda incident (save the DV), is ideal for several reasons: it is from the same time frame as the Fashoda incident, which controls for a difference in historical norms and loops in a case from East Asia. Since, ultimately, this whole question of Thucydides’ Trap is most relevant within the context of a rising China, examining a case from East Asia will allow me to see how cultural or regional norms from East Asia might be a contributing variable in the determination to go to war. Professor Martin and I also spoke about the use of primary and secondary sources when doing historical inquiry in IR research. He and I both agreed on the richness that primary sources provide. Primary sources will be in far greater abundance for the more recent cases, which pushes me even further toward picking them. Furthermore, it is more likely that primary sources from these cases will have been translated into English (although I can also read a fair bit of French and Chinese as well).
I am not planning on interacting with any human subjects or participants, so I will not need to file for approval with the IRB. I believe the only planning I really need to keep in mind for 306 and over the summer is to collect as many primary sources on these new cases as possible and, if needed, get decent translations of said sources. I might also investigate more of the Marxist literature on this subject since these cases are heavily ensconced in the imperialist tradition. While Marxism might be a bit dated, I might find some utility in their work on what Lenin described as “the highest stage of capitalism”.
[1] Yuan refers to this phenomenon as the “Churchill Trap”. See, Yang Yuan. “Escape both the ‘Thucydides Trap’ and the ‘Churchill Trap’: Finding a Third Type of Great Power Relations under the Bipolar System”, The Chinese Journal of International Politics 11, no. 2, (1 June 2018), 193–235.
Park Research Post 8
Within the realm of interpretivism, I am interested in studying the elite’s discourses on Anglo-American relations at the end of the 19th century because I want to understand the radical change and generation of an Anglo-American identity. With this, I want to help my reader understand how a newly constructed identity of Anglo-Saxon supremacy helped redefine Anglo-American relations but converged toward a racist ideology.
I decided upon Anglo-American relations at the end of the 19th century since the two parties went under a rather significant change (from fighting two wars in quick succession to becoming close allies) over the course of 150 years. I focused on qualitative primary sources of those who I saw as being intellectually or culturally significant within Britain and the US at the time of Anglo-American rapprochement. Instead of drawing upon more presidential sources and speeches (as I had done for previous research posts), I branched toward elites with influence, but not direct political power.
The first source I read was by the well-known Scottish-American business magnate, Andrew Carnegie. His 1893 piece, The Reunion of Britain and America: A Look Ahead, promoted what he described as “a race confederation” between the United Kingdom and the United States.[1] Initially, he cited documents before and during the early stages of the American war for independence, attempting to show British loyalism among the disgruntled states and the eventual founding fathers.[2] The selection of texts seems to simplify the complexity of American national identity in order to promote Carnegie’s vision of an Anglo-Saxon “race confederation”. Within the text, there is a great deal of emphasis on the racial continuity between the two states, stating that “In race—and there is a great deal in race—the American remains three-fourths purely British…” and that “substantially all of the remainder, though not strictly British, is yet Germanic”.[3] These overt statements of race and blood construct a very specific and exclusive definition of an American. It excludes those from non-Germanic ancestry and millions of African-Americans, all of whom were legally American. Despite this, Carnegie later praises the action President Lincoln took thirty years prior in signing the Emancipation Proclamation. This suggests he is fully aware of the racial composition of the country but simply does not count them within this larger Anglo-American identity. Further analysis would include other American sources to examine the similarity and dissimilarity within the discourse of Anglo-American rapprochement.
Next, I examined a piece written by leading British jurist and legal scholar, Albert Venn Dicey. His 1897 essay, A Common Citizenship for the English Race, also spoke of a “reunion of English people”.[4] Dicey proposed a form of common citizenship or “isopolity” between Americans and Brits.[5] The concept of isopolity itself is interesting since I have only ever seen it when describing classical societies like Rome and the city-states of Ancient Greece. This, while subtle, seems to indicate a certain braggadocio and belief in their own superiority. However, the political aspect of isopolity differs from Carnegie’s view of Anglo-American reunion, which is more focused on the creation of a uniform identity. Despite this, Dicey also relies heavily on this language of racial superiority, describing the “English race”, its “common nationality” and a responsibility to “permanently secure the peace of a large portion of the world”.[6] However, most of the essay explains how such a reunion would be legally feasible and relies heavily upon the legal codes of each country to effectively argue this.
If I were to continue with this methodology, I would focus more on this language of racial purity and how this continued or changed up leading into the United State’s involvement in World War I and II. This exploration into the racist side of Anglo-American relations can reveal domestic insecurities, the concentration of power within the Anglo-Saxon population, and the elites who stood to gain the most from Anglo-American unity.
[1] Andrew Carnegie. “The Reunion of Britain and America: A Look Ahead.” LSE Selected Pamphlets, (January 1, 1893), 12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/60214531?origin=api.
[2] Ibid, 4-6.
[3] Ibid, 9.
[4] Albert Venn Dicey. “A Common Citizenship for the English Race.” The Contemporary Review 71, (January 1, 1897), 475. http://search.proquest.com/docview/1294664064/.
[5] Ibid, 457.
[6] Ibid, 465-467.