Pub Date : 2020-05-29DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.813
M. G. Hanna
Historians of colonial British North America have largely relegated piracy to the marginalia of the broad historical narrative from settlement to revolution. However, piracy and unregulated privateering played a pivotal role in the development of every English community along the eastern seaboard from the Carolinas to New England. Although many pirates originated in the British North American colonies and represented a diverse social spectrum, they were not supported and protected in these port communities by some underclass or proto-proletariat but by the highest echelons of colonial society, especially by colonial governors, merchants, and even ministers. Sea marauding in its multiple forms helped shape the economic, legal, political, religious, and cultural worlds of colonial America. The illicit market that brought longed-for bullion, slaves, and luxury goods integrated British North American communities with the Caribbean, West Africa, and the Pacific and Indian Oceans throughout the 17th century. Attempts to curb the support of sea marauding at the turn of the 18th century exposed sometimes violent divisions between local merchant interests and royal officials currying favor back in England, leading to debates over the protection of English liberties across the Atlantic. When the North American colonies finally closed their ports to English pirates during the years following the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), it sparked a brief yet dramatic turn of events where English marauders preyed upon the shipping belonging to their former “nests.” During the 18th century, colonial communities began to actively support a more regulated form of privateering against agreed upon enemies that would become a hallmark of patriot maritime warfare during the American Revolution.
研究英属北美殖民地的历史学家,在从殖民到革命的广泛历史叙述中,大都把海盗问题放在次要地位。然而,海盗和不受管制的私掠行为在东海岸从卡罗来纳到新英格兰的每个英国社区的发展中发挥了关键作用。尽管许多海盗起源于英属北美殖民地,代表着多元化的社会阶层,但在这些港口社区中,他们并没有得到一些下层阶级或原始无产阶级的支持和保护,而是受到殖民地社会最高层的支持和保护,特别是殖民地的总督、商人甚至部长。多种形式的海上掠夺帮助塑造了殖民时期美国的经济、法律、政治、宗教和文化世界。整个17世纪,非法市场带来了人们渴望的金条、奴隶和奢侈品,将英属北美社区与加勒比海、西非、太平洋和印度洋融为一体。在18世纪之交,为了遏制对海上掠夺的支持,当地商人利益集团和英国王室官员之间有时会出现激烈的分歧,从而引发了关于如何保护英国在大西洋彼岸自由的争论。在《乌得勒支条约》(Treaty of Utrecht, 1713)签订后的几年里,北美殖民地最终对英国海盗关闭了港口,这引发了一场短暂但戏剧性的事件转折,英国掠夺者掠夺了属于他们以前“巢穴”的船只。在18世纪,殖民地社区开始积极支持一种更规范的私掠形式,以对抗商定的敌人,这将成为美国革命期间爱国者海战的标志。
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Pub Date : 2020-03-31DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.410
Steven Stoll
During the Holocene, the present geological epoch, an increasing portion of humans began to manipulate the reproduction of plants and animals in a series of environmental practices known as agriculture. No other ecological relationship sustains as many humans as farming; no other has transformed the landscape to the same extent. The domestication of plants by American Indians followed the end of the last glacial maximum (the Ice Age). About eight thousand years ago, the first domesticated maize and squash arrived from central Mexico, spreading to every region and as far north as the subarctic boreal forest. The incursion of Europeans into North America set off widespread deforestation, soil depletion, and the spread of settlement, followed by the introduction of industrial machines and chemicals. A series of institutions sponsored publically funded research into fertilizers and insecticides. By the late 19th century, writers and activists criticized the technological transformation of farming as destructive to the environment and rural society. During the 20th century, wind erosion contributed to the depopulation of much of the Great Plains. Vast projects in environmental engineering transformed deserts into highly productive regions of intensive fruit and vegetable production. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, access to land remained limited to whites, with American Indians, African Americans, Latinas/os, Chinese, and peoples of other ethnicities attempting to gain farms or hold on to the land they owned. Two broad periods describe the history of agriculture and the environment in that portion of North America that became the United States. In the first, the environment dominated, forcing humans to adapt during the end of thousands of years of extreme climate variability. In the second, institutional and technological change became more significant, though the environment remained a constant factor against which American agriculture took shape. A related historical pattern within this shift was the capitalist transformation of the United States. For thousands of years, households sustained themselves and exchanged some of what they produced for money. But during the 19th century among a majority of American farmers, commodities took over the entire purpose of agriculture, transforming environments to reflect commercial opportunity.
{"title":"Agriculture and the Environment","authors":"Steven Stoll","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.410","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.410","url":null,"abstract":"During the Holocene, the present geological epoch, an increasing portion of humans began to manipulate the reproduction of plants and animals in a series of environmental practices known as agriculture. No other ecological relationship sustains as many humans as farming; no other has transformed the landscape to the same extent. The domestication of plants by American Indians followed the end of the last glacial maximum (the Ice Age). About eight thousand years ago, the first domesticated maize and squash arrived from central Mexico, spreading to every region and as far north as the subarctic boreal forest. The incursion of Europeans into North America set off widespread deforestation, soil depletion, and the spread of settlement, followed by the introduction of industrial machines and chemicals. A series of institutions sponsored publically funded research into fertilizers and insecticides. By the late 19th century, writers and activists criticized the technological transformation of farming as destructive to the environment and rural society. During the 20th century, wind erosion contributed to the depopulation of much of the Great Plains. Vast projects in environmental engineering transformed deserts into highly productive regions of intensive fruit and vegetable production. Throughout much of the 19th and 20th centuries, access to land remained limited to whites, with American Indians, African Americans, Latinas/os, Chinese, and peoples of other ethnicities attempting to gain farms or hold on to the land they owned.\u0000 Two broad periods describe the history of agriculture and the environment in that portion of North America that became the United States. In the first, the environment dominated, forcing humans to adapt during the end of thousands of years of extreme climate variability. In the second, institutional and technological change became more significant, though the environment remained a constant factor against which American agriculture took shape. A related historical pattern within this shift was the capitalist transformation of the United States. For thousands of years, households sustained themselves and exchanged some of what they produced for money. But during the 19th century among a majority of American farmers, commodities took over the entire purpose of agriculture, transforming environments to reflect commercial opportunity.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129488619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-03-31DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.505
K. Brownell
Hollywood has always been political. Since its early days, it has intersected with national, state, and local politics. As a new entertainment industry attempting to gain a footing in a society of which it sat firmly on the outskirts, the Jewish industry leaders worked hard to advance the merits of their industry to a Christian political establishment. At the local and state level, film producers faced threats of censorship and potential regulation of more democratic spaces they provided for immigrants and working class patrons in theaters. As Hollywood gained economic and cultural influence, the political establishment took note, attempting to shape silver screen productions and deploy Hollywood’s publicity innovations for its own purposes. Over the course of the 20th century, industry leaders forged political connections with politicians from both parties to promote their economic interests, and politically motivated actors, directors, writers, and producers across the ideological spectrum used their entertainment skills to advance ideas and messages on and off the silver screen. At times this collaboration generated enthusiasm for its ability to bring new citizens into the electoral process. At other times, however, it created intense criticism and fears abounded that entertainment would undermine the democratic process with a focus on style over substance. As Hollywood personalities entered the political realm—for personal, professional, and political gain—the industry slowly reshaped American political life, bringing entertainment, glamor, and emotion to the political process and transforming how Americans communicate with their elected officials and, indeed, how they view their political leaders.
{"title":"Hollywood Politics","authors":"K. Brownell","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.505","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.505","url":null,"abstract":"Hollywood has always been political. Since its early days, it has intersected with national, state, and local politics. As a new entertainment industry attempting to gain a footing in a society of which it sat firmly on the outskirts, the Jewish industry leaders worked hard to advance the merits of their industry to a Christian political establishment. At the local and state level, film producers faced threats of censorship and potential regulation of more democratic spaces they provided for immigrants and working class patrons in theaters. As Hollywood gained economic and cultural influence, the political establishment took note, attempting to shape silver screen productions and deploy Hollywood’s publicity innovations for its own purposes. Over the course of the 20th century, industry leaders forged political connections with politicians from both parties to promote their economic interests, and politically motivated actors, directors, writers, and producers across the ideological spectrum used their entertainment skills to advance ideas and messages on and off the silver screen. At times this collaboration generated enthusiasm for its ability to bring new citizens into the electoral process. At other times, however, it created intense criticism and fears abounded that entertainment would undermine the democratic process with a focus on style over substance. As Hollywood personalities entered the political realm—for personal, professional, and political gain—the industry slowly reshaped American political life, bringing entertainment, glamor, and emotion to the political process and transforming how Americans communicate with their elected officials and, indeed, how they view their political leaders.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"301 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133970691","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-30DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.765
W. F. Brundage
Rapid and far-reaching environmental, economic, and social transformations marked the New South (1880–1910). Substantial industrialization and urbanization followed the expansion of rail networks across the region, and produced unprecedented changes in daily life for both urban and rural residents. White southern elites embraced these innovations and worked to ensure that state governments evolved in order to advance them. One of their most significant endeavors was the institutionalization of white supremacy in virtually every facet of public life. Black and white voluntary organizations complemented, and sometimes contested, the emerging economic and social order in the New South. Similarly, while many contemporary representations of the region in national culture trivialized the scale and costs of the changes underway, some artists offered revelatory portraits of a region consumed by upheaval.
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Pub Date : 2020-01-30DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.806
Malcolm Byrne
Iran-Contra was a major political scandal in the late 1980s that nearly derailed a popular president and left American society deeply divided about its significance. Although the affair was initially portrayed as a rogue operation run by overzealous White House aides, subsequent evidence showed that the president himself was its driving force with the knowledge of his most senior advisers. Iran-Contra was a foreign policy scandal, but it also gave rise to a significant confrontation between the executive and legislative branches with constitutional implications for their respective roles, especially in foreign policy. The affair exposed significant limits on the ability of all three branches to ferret out and redress official wrongdoing. And the entire episode, a major congressional investigation concluded, was characterized by a remarkable degree of dishonesty and deception, reaching to the highest levels of government. For all these reasons, and in the absence of a clear legal or ethical conclusion (in contrast to Watergate), Iran-Contra left a scar on the American body politic that further eroded the public’s faith in government.
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Pub Date : 2019-11-22DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.734
Andrew J Gawthorpe
From 1965 to 1973, the United States attempted to prevent the absorption of the non-Communist state of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnam as part of its Cold War strategy of containment. In doing so, the United States had to battle both the North Vietnamese military and guerrillas indigenous to South Vietnam. The Johnson administration entered the war without a well-thought-out strategy for victory, and the United States quickly became bogged down in a bloody stalemate. A major Communist assault in 1968 known as the Tet Offensive convinced US leaders of the need to seek a negotiated solution. This task fell to the Nixon administration, which carried on peace talks while simultaneously seeking ways to escalate the conflict and force North Vietnam to make concessions. Eventually it was Washington that made major concessions, allowing North Vietnam to keep its forces in the South and leaving South Vietnam in an untenable position. US troops left in 1973 and Hanoi successfully invaded the South in 1975. The two Vietnams were formally unified in 1976. The war devastated much of Vietnam and came at a huge cost to the United States in terms of lives, resources, and political division at home. It gave birth to the largest mass movement against a war in US history, motivated by opposition both to conscription and to the damage that protesters perceived the war was doing to the United States. It also raised persistent questions about the wisdom of both military intervention and nation-building as tools of US foreign policy. The war has remained a touchstone for national debate and partisan division even as the United States and Vietnam moved to normalize diplomatic relations with the end of the Cold War.
{"title":"The Vietnam War","authors":"Andrew J Gawthorpe","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.734","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.734","url":null,"abstract":"From 1965 to 1973, the United States attempted to prevent the absorption of the non-Communist state of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnam as part of its Cold War strategy of containment. In doing so, the United States had to battle both the North Vietnamese military and guerrillas indigenous to South Vietnam. The Johnson administration entered the war without a well-thought-out strategy for victory, and the United States quickly became bogged down in a bloody stalemate. A major Communist assault in 1968 known as the Tet Offensive convinced US leaders of the need to seek a negotiated solution. This task fell to the Nixon administration, which carried on peace talks while simultaneously seeking ways to escalate the conflict and force North Vietnam to make concessions. Eventually it was Washington that made major concessions, allowing North Vietnam to keep its forces in the South and leaving South Vietnam in an untenable position. US troops left in 1973 and Hanoi successfully invaded the South in 1975. The two Vietnams were formally unified in 1976.\u0000 The war devastated much of Vietnam and came at a huge cost to the United States in terms of lives, resources, and political division at home. It gave birth to the largest mass movement against a war in US history, motivated by opposition both to conscription and to the damage that protesters perceived the war was doing to the United States. It also raised persistent questions about the wisdom of both military intervention and nation-building as tools of US foreign policy. The war has remained a touchstone for national debate and partisan division even as the United States and Vietnam moved to normalize diplomatic relations with the end of the Cold War.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"141 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132995490","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.423
W. Gamber
Two images dominated popular portrayals of American women in the 1950s. One was the fictional June Cleaver, the female lead character in the popular television program, “Leave It to Beaver,” which portrayed Cleaver as the stereotypical happy American housewife, the exemplar of postwar American domesticity. The other was Cleaver’s alleged real-life opposite, described in Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) as miserable, bored, isolated, addicted to tranquilizers, and trapped in look-alike suburban tract houses, which Friedan termed “comfortable concentration camps.” Both stereotypes ignore significant proportions of the postwar female population, both offer simplistic and partial views of domesticity, but both reveal the depth of the influence that lay behind the idea of domesticity, real or fictional. Aided and abetted by psychology, social science theory, advertising, popular media, government policy, law, and discriminatory private sector practices, domesticity was both a myth and a powerful ideology that shaped the trajectories of women’s lives.
在20世纪50年代,有两种形象主导了美国女性的流行形象。一个是虚构的琼·克利弗(June Cleaver),她是热门电视节目《把它交给海狸》(Leave It to Beaver)中的女主角,该剧把克利弗描绘成一个典型的快乐的美国家庭主妇,是战后美国家庭生活的典范。另一个则是克利弗在现实生活中所谓的对立面,在贝蒂·弗里丹(Betty Friedan)的《女性的奥秘》(1963)中,她被描述为痛苦、无聊、孤立、沉迷于镇静剂,被困在看似相似的郊区房屋里,弗里丹称之为“舒适的集中营”。这两种刻板印象都忽略了战后女性人口的很大比例,都对家庭生活提供了简单化和片面的看法,但都揭示了家庭生活观念背后的深刻影响,无论是真实的还是虚构的。在心理学、社会科学理论、广告、大众媒体、政府政策、法律和私营部门歧视性做法的帮助和教唆下,家庭生活既是一个神话,也是一种强大的意识形态,塑造了女性的生活轨迹。
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Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.1093/ACREFORE/9780199329175.013.503
Patrick Hagopian
The meaning of the Vietnam War has enduringly divided Americans in the postwar period. In part because the political splits opened up by the war made it an awkward topic for conversation, Vietnam veterans felt a barrier of silence separating them from their fellow citizens. The situation of returning veterans in the war’s waning years serves as a baseline against which to measure subsequent attempts at their social reintegration. Veterans, as embodiments of the experience of the war, became vehicles through which American society could assimilate its troubled and troubling memories. By the 1980s, greater public understanding of the difficulties of veterans’ homecoming experiences—particularly after the recognition in 1980 of the psychiatric condition, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—helped accelerate the efforts to recognize the service and sacrifices of Americans who fought in Vietnam through the creation of memorials. Because the homecoming experience was seen as crucial to the difficulties which a substantial minority suffered, the concept emerged that the nation needed to embrace its veterans in order to help restore their well-being. Characteristic ways of talking about the veterans’ experiences coalesced into truisms and parables: the nation and its veterans needed to “reconcile” and “heal”; America must “never again” send young men to fight a war unless the government goes all-out for victory; protesters spat on the veterans and called them “baby killers” when they returned from Vietnam. Strategists debated what the proper “lessons” of the Vietnam War were and how they should be applied to other military interventions. After the prevalent “overwhelming force” doctrine was discarded in 2003 in the invasion of Iraq, new “lessons” emerged from the Vietnam War: first came the concept of “rapid decisive operations,” and then counterinsurgency came back into vogue. In these interrelated dimensions, American society and politics shaped the memory of the Vietnam War.
{"title":"The Vietnam War in American Memory","authors":"Patrick Hagopian","doi":"10.1093/ACREFORE/9780199329175.013.503","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/ACREFORE/9780199329175.013.503","url":null,"abstract":"The meaning of the Vietnam War has enduringly divided Americans in the postwar period. In part because the political splits opened up by the war made it an awkward topic for conversation, Vietnam veterans felt a barrier of silence separating them from their fellow citizens. The situation of returning veterans in the war’s waning years serves as a baseline against which to measure subsequent attempts at their social reintegration. Veterans, as embodiments of the experience of the war, became vehicles through which American society could assimilate its troubled and troubling memories.\u0000 By the 1980s, greater public understanding of the difficulties of veterans’ homecoming experiences—particularly after the recognition in 1980 of the psychiatric condition, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)—helped accelerate the efforts to recognize the service and sacrifices of Americans who fought in Vietnam through the creation of memorials. Because the homecoming experience was seen as crucial to the difficulties which a substantial minority suffered, the concept emerged that the nation needed to embrace its veterans in order to help restore their well-being.\u0000 Characteristic ways of talking about the veterans’ experiences coalesced into truisms and parables: the nation and its veterans needed to “reconcile” and “heal”; America must “never again” send young men to fight a war unless the government goes all-out for victory; protesters spat on the veterans and called them “baby killers” when they returned from Vietnam.\u0000 Strategists debated what the proper “lessons” of the Vietnam War were and how they should be applied to other military interventions. After the prevalent “overwhelming force” doctrine was discarded in 2003 in the invasion of Iraq, new “lessons” emerged from the Vietnam War: first came the concept of “rapid decisive operations,” and then counterinsurgency came back into vogue. In these interrelated dimensions, American society and politics shaped the memory of the Vietnam War.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125605834","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.629
J. Ernest
Slave narratives emerged in the 18th century to testify to the inhumanity of the practice of slavery. Often autobiographical accounts, but sometimes written by others or dictated to an amanuensis who took dictation, these accounts were celebrated in the United States as a powerful new genre, and they became associated primarily with slavery in the United States. Published both before and after the abolition of slavery, the narratives were never devoted solely to the abolition of slavery. Rather, they were attempts to represent the experiences, and argue for the authority, of those who experienced first-hand the ideological contradictions and the racial oppression fundamental to the maintenance of the system of slavery. These were stories deeply relevant long after the legal end of slavery—but the slave narratives were for many years either overlooked or decidedly dismissed as reliable historical sources, and they were not recognized as valuable literary documents for even longer. Eventually, historians and literary scholars alike began to embrace this genre of writing and recognized as well that it was a genre defined less by form than by purpose. Although often associated with book-length autobiographies by such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, or Booker T. Washington, the genre of slave narratives has come to include virtually any testimony of the enslaved, related in whatever form. What has come to matter, in the end, is precisely the authority of the enslaved that early writers struggled to establish.
{"title":"Slave Narratives","authors":"J. Ernest","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.629","url":null,"abstract":"Slave narratives emerged in the 18th century to testify to the inhumanity of the practice of slavery. Often autobiographical accounts, but sometimes written by others or dictated to an amanuensis who took dictation, these accounts were celebrated in the United States as a powerful new genre, and they became associated primarily with slavery in the United States. Published both before and after the abolition of slavery, the narratives were never devoted solely to the abolition of slavery. Rather, they were attempts to represent the experiences, and argue for the authority, of those who experienced first-hand the ideological contradictions and the racial oppression fundamental to the maintenance of the system of slavery. These were stories deeply relevant long after the legal end of slavery—but the slave narratives were for many years either overlooked or decidedly dismissed as reliable historical sources, and they were not recognized as valuable literary documents for even longer. Eventually, historians and literary scholars alike began to embrace this genre of writing and recognized as well that it was a genre defined less by form than by purpose. Although often associated with book-length autobiographies by such prominent figures as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, or Booker T. Washington, the genre of slave narratives has come to include virtually any testimony of the enslaved, related in whatever form. What has come to matter, in the end, is precisely the authority of the enslaved that early writers struggled to establish.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133884205","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2019-10-30DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.725
Martin S. Flaherty
Foreign relations under the US Constitution starts with the paradox, also seen in domestic matters, of relatively scant text providing guidance for the exercise of vast power. Founding understandings, structural inference, and ongoing constitutional custom and precedent have filled in much, though hardly all, of the framework over the course of two hundred years. As a result, two basic questions frame the relationship between the Constitution and US foreign policy: (1) which parts of the US government, alone or in combination, properly exercise authority in the making of foreign policy; and (2) once made, what is the status of the nation’s international legal obligations in the US domestic legal system. The making of American foreign policy is framed by the Constitution’s commitment to separation of powers. Congress, the president, and the courts are all allocated discrete yet significant foreign affairs authority. Determining the exact borders and overlaps in areas such as the use of military force, emergency measures, and treaty termination continues to generate controversy. The status of international law in the US legal system in the first instance turns on whether resulting obligations derive from agreements or custom. The United States enters into international agreements in three ways: treaties, congressional-executive agreements, and sole executive agreements. Complex doctrine deals with the domestic applicability of treaties in particular. US courts primarily apply customary international law in two basic ways. They can exercise a version of their common lawmaking authority to fashion rules of decision based on international custom. They also apply customary international law when incorporated into domestic law by statute.
{"title":"The Constitution of the United States and Foreign Relations","authors":"Martin S. Flaherty","doi":"10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.725","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.725","url":null,"abstract":"Foreign relations under the US Constitution starts with the paradox, also seen in domestic matters, of relatively scant text providing guidance for the exercise of vast power. Founding understandings, structural inference, and ongoing constitutional custom and precedent have filled in much, though hardly all, of the framework over the course of two hundred years. As a result, two basic questions frame the relationship between the Constitution and US foreign policy: (1) which parts of the US government, alone or in combination, properly exercise authority in the making of foreign policy; and (2) once made, what is the status of the nation’s international legal obligations in the US domestic legal system.\u0000 The making of American foreign policy is framed by the Constitution’s commitment to separation of powers. Congress, the president, and the courts are all allocated discrete yet significant foreign affairs authority. Determining the exact borders and overlaps in areas such as the use of military force, emergency measures, and treaty termination continues to generate controversy. The status of international law in the US legal system in the first instance turns on whether resulting obligations derive from agreements or custom. The United States enters into international agreements in three ways: treaties, congressional-executive agreements, and sole executive agreements. Complex doctrine deals with the domestic applicability of treaties in particular. US courts primarily apply customary international law in two basic ways. They can exercise a version of their common lawmaking authority to fashion rules of decision based on international custom. They also apply customary international law when incorporated into domestic law by statute.","PeriodicalId":105482,"journal":{"name":"Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History","volume":"75 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-10-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127343226","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}