Research Catalog

Title

American empire : Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization / Neil Smith.

Author

Smith, Neil.

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, [2003], ©2003.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

xxvii, 557 pages, 6 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps; 24 cm.

Summary

• "The story unfolds through a decisive account of the career of Isaiah Bowman (1878-1950), the most famous American geographer of the twentieth century. For nearly four decades Bowman operated around the vortex of state power, working to bring an American order to the global landscape. An explorer on the famous Machu Picchu expedition of 1911 who came to be known first as "Woodrow Wilson's geographer," and later as Franklin D.
• Roosevelt's, Bowman was present at the creation of U.S. liberal foreign policy.".
• "A quarter-century later, Bowman was at the center of Roosevelt's State Department, concerned with the disposition of Germany and heightened U.S. access to European colonies; he was described by Dean Acheson as a key "architect of the United Nations." In that period he was a leader in American science, served as president of Johns Hopkins University, and became an early and vociferous cold warrior.
• A complicated, contradictory, and at times controversial figure who was very much in the public eye, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.".
• "Bowman's career as a geographer in an era when the value of geography was deeply questioned provides a unique window into the contradictory uses of geographical knowledge in the construction of the American Empire. Smith's historical excavation reveals, in broad strokes yet with lively detail, that today's American-inspired globalization springs not from the 1980s but from two earlier moments in 1919 and 1945, both of which ended in failure.
• By recharting the geography of this history, Smith brings the politics - and the limits - of contemporary globalization sharply into focus."--BOOK JACKET.

Series Statement

California studies in critical human geography ; 9

Uniform Title

California studies in critical human geography ; 9.

Alternative Title

Roosevelt's geographer and the prelude to globalization

Subject

• Bowman, Isaiah, 1878-1950
• Geographers > United States > Biography
• Geography > United States > History > 20th century
• Globalization > History > 20th century

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. [465]-537) and index.

Contents

• 1. The Lost Geography of the American Century -- Pt. 1. From Exploration to Enterprise: Geography on the Cusp of Empire -- 2. 1898 and the Making of a Practical Man -- 3. "Conditional Conquest": Geography, Labor, and Exploration in South America -- 4. The Search for Geographical Order: The American Geographical Society -- Pt. II. The Rise of Foreign Policy Liberalism: The Great War and the New World -- 5. The Inquiry: Geography and a "Scientific Peace" -- 6. A Last Hurrah for Old World Geographies: Fixing Space at the Paris Peace Conference -- 7. "Revolutionarily Yours": The New World, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Making of Liberal Foreign Policy -- Pt. III. The Empire at Home: Science and Politics -- 8. "The Geography of Internal Affairs": Pioneer Settlement as National Economic Development -- 9. The Kantian University: Science and Nation Building at Johns Hopkins -- Pt. IV. The American Lebensraum --
• 10. Geopolitics: The Reassertion of Old World Geographies -- 11. Silence and Refusal: Refugees, Race, and Economic Development -- 12. Settling Affairs with the Old World: Dismembering Germany? -- 13. Toward Development: Shaking Loose the Colonies -- 14. Frustrated Globalism, Compromise Geographies: Designing the United Nations -- Pt. V. The Bitter End -- 15. Defeat from the Jaws of Victory -- 16. Geographical Solicitude, Vital Anomaly.

ISBN

0520230272 (acid-free paper)

LCCN

2002011192

OCLC

• ocm50279906
• SCSB-4336104

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries