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    Manifest Destiny and American Foreign Policy (PP Presentation)

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    Bojan Savic
    This document discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in which he advocates for American intellectual independence. Emerson calls on American scholars to no longer rely on the "sere remains of foreign harvests" but to cultivate their own thinking and create works that will sing of American events and actions. He envisions the rise of a new age of poetry and literature led by the American scholar. The document then examines the concept of "Manifest Destiny" and how it was used to justify American expansionism and exceptionalism. It traces the origins and interpretations of Manifest Destiny over time and discusses how the idea has manifested in areas like westward expansion, foreign policy, and critiques of

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    Manifest Destiny and American Foreign Policy (PP Presentation)

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    Bojan Savic
    32 views18 pages
    This document discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in which he advocates for American intellectual independence. Emerson calls on American scholars to no longer rely on the "sere remains of foreign harvests" but to cultivate their own thinking and create works that will sing of American events and actions. He envisions the rise of a new age of poetry and literature led by the American scholar. The document then examines the concept of "Manifest Destiny" and how it was used to justify American expansionism and exceptionalism. It traces the origins and interpretations of Manifest Destiny over time and discusses how the idea has manifested in areas like westward expansion, foreign policy, and critiques of

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    This document discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in which he advocates for American intellectual independence. Emerson calls on American scholars to no longer rely on the "sere remains of foreign harvests" but to cultivate their own thinking and create works that will sing of American events and actions. He envisions the rise of a new age of poetry and literature led by the American scholar. The document then examines the concept of "Manifest Destiny" and how it was used to justify American expansionism and exceptionalism. It traces the origins and interpretations of Manifest Destiny over time and discusses how the idea has manifested in areas like westward expansion, foreign policy, and critiques of

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    32 views18 pages

    Manifest Destiny and American Foreign Policy (PP Presentation)

    Uploaded by

    Bojan Savic
    This document discusses Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1837 address to the Phi Beta Kappa Society in which he advocates for American intellectual independence. Emerson calls on American scholars to no longer rely on the "sere remains of foreign harvests" but to cultivate their own thinking and create works that will sing of American events and actions. He envisions the rise of a new age of poetry and literature led by the American scholar. The document then examines the concept of "Manifest Destiny" and how it was used to justify American expansionism and exceptionalism. It traces the origins and interpretations of Manifest Destiny over time and discusses how the idea has manifested in areas like westward expansion, foreign policy, and critiques of

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    of 18

    Recovering (the Meaning of)

    Manifest Destiny

    Bojan Savić, PhD


    University of Kent – BSIS
    The American Scholar and
    Intellectual Declaration of Independence
    • Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Address to the Phi
    Beta Kappa Society, Cambridge, August 31,
    1837
    • Individualism, freedom, transcendentalism

    • The cultivation of the Man Thinking, Duties of


    the American Scholar
    Why the American Scholar?
    “Mr. President and Gentlemen,

    I greet you on the re-commencement of our literary year. Our anniversary is one of hope, and,
    perhaps, not enough of labor. We do not meet for games of strength or skill, for the recitation
    of histories, tragedies, and odes, like the ancient Greeks; for parliaments of love and poesy, like
    the Troubadours; nor for the advancement of science, like our cotemporaries in the British and
    European capitals. Thus far, our holiday has been simply a friendly sign of the survival of the
    love of letters amongst a people too busy to give to letters any more. As such, it is precious as
    the sign of an indestructible instinct. Perhaps the time is already come, when it ought to be,
    and will be, something else; when the sluggard intellect of this continent will look from under
    its iron lids, and fill the postponed expectation of the world with something better than the
    exertions of mechanical skill. Our day of dependence, our long apprenticeship to the learning of
    other lands, draws to a close. The millions, that around us are rushing into life, cannot always
    be fed on the sere remains of foreign harvests. Events, actions arise, that must be sung, that
    will sing themselves. Who can doubt, that poetry will revive and lead in a new age, as the star
    in the constellation Harp, which now flames in our zenith, astronomers announce, shall one day
    be the pole-star for a thousand years?”
    “The scholar is that man who must take up into himself all the
    ability of the time, all the contributions of the past, all the hopes of
    the future. He must be an university of knowledges. If there be one
    lesson more than another, which should pierce his ear, it is, The
    world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature
    […]
    it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and
    Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched might of man
    belongs, by all motives, by all prophecy, by all preparation, to the
    American Scholar. We have listened too long to the courtly muses
    of Europe. […] We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our
    own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall
    be no longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for sensual indulgence.
    […] A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each
    believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all
    men.”
    Reagan’s Recovery of the Discourse

    A Time for Choosing

    Morning in America
    Destiny Woven with Space, 1636
    “Shining City Upon a Hill”
    Trajectory of the “City” Allegory

    "You are the light of the world. A city that is set


    on a hill cannot be hidden."
    (Matthew 5:14, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount)

    -> John Winthrop (1630, Arbella)


    -> JFK, January 1961
    -> Reagan (1980 and later)
    American Destiny to Save
    The New Colossus (by Emma Lazarus, 1883, 1903)

    Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,


    With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
    Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
    A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
    Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
    Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
    Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
    The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
    “Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
    With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
    Destiny to Save, Jefferson, and Ever Since:
    Empire of Liberty
    Progress, the Frontier, and the Star of Empire:
    (John Gast, American Progress, 1872)
    John O’Sullivan’s “Manifest Destiny”

    • Morning Star, December 1845

    “[T]he right of our manifest destiny to


    overspread and possess the whole continent
    which has given us for the development of the
    great experiment of liberty and federated self
    government”.
    Two Axes of Differentiation to Follow

    • Sacred/secular Manifest Destiny

    • Isolationist/Interventionist

    • Classical source: Rome, Athens (thalassocracy)


    • Religious sources: Exodus, Genesis, Psalms (Old
    Testament). Why was America “chosen”?
    • The tension of “translatio imperii”
    WHY THESE SOURCES? HOW WERE THEY RECONCILED?
    Adams, Franklin, Jefferson and
    the Great Seal (Reconciliation of Symbols)
    Manifest Destiny as
    Westward Expansion
    • “Westward the course of empire takes its way” (Bishop
    Berkeley, 18th century)
    – J.Q. Adams (course -> “star”)
    – Aryans -> Goths -> Anglo-Saxons -> Americans
    (-> return to Asia in 1899?)
    • “Rectangular grids” of real estate as spatial expressions
    • The farmer: entrepreneurial, individualist, frontier
    hero, explorer, virile, endowed with common sense
    (representations of contemporary US troops and Peace
    Corps)
    Rejections/Reformulations of Destiny

    • See: The Channings (pp. 49-51)

    • American Renaissance, Manifest Destiny,


    abolitionism, racism (e.g. pp. 54-56, 86-90)
    • Falling into the World (1890s onwards) and
    (the corruption of) American identity?
    • Late critique (p. 103)
    Manifest Destiny and its Resilience
    in American Foreign Policy
    • The Truman Doctrine and Cold War
    “containment”

    • “Domino effect”

    • MAD

    • Empire of Evil
    Questions to Ponder
    • Irony of puritanical Wilson thrusting America into global politics
    (isolationism/interventionism)
    • Stephanson’s critique of Manifest Destiny and American
    exceptionalism (and expansion): vantage point? (critique of
    liberal capitalism and enlightenment roots)
    • Where is manifest destiny in 2018?
    • How are we to understand Manifest Destiny from
    – Liberal
    – Realist
    – Social constructivist
    – Critical theory/Gramscian or Marxist and
    – Critical theory/feminist perspectives?

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