Last updated 09/07/24: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website: https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Senator Arthur Vandenberg wrote of Pearl Harbor that ‘Isolationism for any realist ended on that day’. For two decades after Pearl Harbor this judgement was generally accepted both by statesmen and by scholars in America. Pre-World War II isolationism, it was felt, had been a policy of blindness which culminated in disaster. In the post-war period, it was generally agreed, America learned from the mistakes of her pre-war isolationism and helped to keep peace and defend her interests by pursuing an internationalist policy of the containment of Communism.
1 Vandenberg, Arthur H. Jr, ed., The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1952), p. 1.Google Scholar
2 Fulbright, J. William, The Arrogance of Power (London: Jonathan Cape, 1967), p. 4Google Scholar; Newsweek, 23 12 1968, p. 19.Google Scholar
3 Cole, Wayne S., Review of Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 45 (06, 1958), 162Google Scholar. Cf. also, for example, Langer, William L. and Gleason, Everett S., The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–40 (2 vols.; New York: Harper, 1952)Google Scholar, Drummond, Donald F., The Passing of American Neutrality, 1937–41 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1955)Google Scholar. Exceptions to this trend were Beard, Charles A., American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932–40 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946)Google Scholar and Tansill, Charles C., Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933–41 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952)Google Scholar. The bitter and immoderate attacks on Roosevelt's foreign policy in these studies, however, caused them to fail to win acceptance by historians.
4 Jonas, Manfred, Isolationism in America, 1935–41 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966), p. viii.Google Scholar
5 Johnson, Hiram, b. 1866Google Scholar; Governor of California 1910–16; senator from California 1916–45; died 6 August 1945. Johnson's papers, lodged in the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, were closed for twenty years after his death, and opened in 1966. Of particular value are his ‘diary letters’, letters written from Washington to his son in California throughout his long Senate career. These letters provide a fascinating commentary on American political affairs from World War I to World War II. The diary letters are to be published on microfiche by the University of California Press within the next few years, with commentary on each letter by Professor Robert E. Burke of the University of Washington.
6 Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 20 10 1939, p. 631Google Scholar; Johnson, to Manchester Boddy, 18 05 1940Google Scholar, Johnson Papers.
7 Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 20 10 1939, p. 631.Google Scholar
8 Congressional Record, 74 Cong., 1 Sess., 16 01 1935, p. 498.Google Scholar
9 Johnson's correspondence is very full on the crises in Europe in the late 1930s and especially 1939–41, but he rarely refers to developments in the Far East.
10 Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 9 June 1940, Johnson Papers.
11 Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 8 November 1940, Johnson Papers.
12 Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 21 April 1939, Johnson Papers.
13 New York Times, 24 06 1941.Google Scholar
14 Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 1 Sess., 2 03 1939, p. 2131.Google Scholar
15 U.S., Congress, Senate, To Promote the Defense of the United States, Hearings before the Committee on Foreign Relations, on S.Res. 275, 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 1941, p. 315.Google Scholar
16 New York Times, 11 01 1941Google Scholar; Johnson to Hirsm W. Johnson Jr, 10 August 1941, Johnson Papers.
17 Billington, Ray, ‘The Origins of Middle Western Isolationism’, Political Science Quarterly, 40 (March 1945), 44–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carleton, William G., ‘Isolationism and the Middle West’, Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 33 (12 1946), 377–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Lubell, Samuel, ‘Who Votes Isolationist and Why’, Harper's Magazine, 202 (04 1951), 29–36Google Scholar; Deconde, Alexander, ‘On Twentieth Century Isolationism’, in Isolation and Security, ed. Deconde, Alexander (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1957), pp. 13–17.Google Scholar
19 Cole, Wayne S., America First (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 70–4Google Scholar; Goldman, Eric, Rendezvous with Destiny (New York: Knopf, 1952), pp. 290–7.Google Scholar
20 Baker, Ray Stannard, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, vol. vi: Facing War, (New York: Doubleday, 1940), p. 506.Google Scholar
21 Grassmuck, George L., Sectional Biases in Congress on Foreign Policy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1951), p. 159.Google Scholar
22 Smuckler, Ralph, ‘The Region of Isolationism’, American Political Science Quarterly, 47 (06 1953), 395.Google Scholar
23 Lubell, , ‘Who Votes Isolationist and Why’, pp. 29–36Google Scholar; Idem, The Future of American Politics (2nd ed., rev.; London: Hamish Hamilton, 1952).Google Scholar
24 Smuckler, , ‘Region of Isolationism’, pp. 400–1Google Scholar; Jonas, , Isolationism in America, pp. 19–21.Google Scholar
25 Grassmuck, , Sectional Biases in Congress on Foreign Policy, p. 14.Google Scholar
26 Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 10 April 1932, Johnson Papers.
27 Congressional Record, 77 Cong., 1 Sess., 5 11 1941, pp. 8514–15.Google Scholar
28 Johnson to C. K. McClatchey, 24 April 1919; Johnson to Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 22 May 1919, Johnson Papers.
29 Cole, Wayne S., Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Policy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), pp. 6–13Google Scholar; Bailey, Thomas A., The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 134–9Google Scholar; Miller, Robert M., American Protestantism and Social Issues, 1919–39 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 317–44.Google Scholar
30 Johnson to Mrs Hiram W. Johnson Jr, 3 August 1918, Johnson Papers.
31 Lubell, , The Future of American Politics, pp. 76, 77.Google Scholar
32 Fulbright, J. William, ‘Myths, and Realities’, in Davids, Jules, ed., Documents on American Foreign Relations, 1964 (New York: Harper, 1965), pp. 20–30.Google Scholar
33 New York Times, 29 04 1919.Google Scholar
34 Congressional Record, 76 Cong., 2 Sess., 20 10 1939, p. 628Google Scholar; Los Angeles Times, 2 09 1939Google Scholar. Newsreel clippings from the 1930s in the Bancroft Library capture the tone and flavour of Johnson's speeches very well.
35 Jonas, , Isolationism in America, pp. 284–6.Google Scholar
