SHAFR/H-Diplo Conference Report (Report #1)

2004 Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR)
Conference, University of Texas at Austin and the LBJ Library

Panel 1:  Crossing Disciplines and Borders: Interdisciplinarity and
International History

Chair: Mary Ann Heiss, Kent State University

"What Historians of Foreign Relations and the Borderlands Might Learn
from One Another"
Benjamin Johnson, Southern Methodist University

"Remembering Where We Came From: Collective Memory and International
History"
Brian C. Etheridge, Louisiana Tech University

"Purchasing Power: Consumerism and Foreign Relations Historiography"
Christopher Endy, California State University, Los Angeles

Commentary:  Kimberly A. Alidio, University of Texas at Austin
Mary Ann Heiss
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SHAFR/H-DIPLO Commentary by George Fujii <gfujii@umail.ucsb.edu>, UCSB

Panel 1 focused on discussing how and what foreign relations historians
could learn from and teach historians working in other subfields,
specifically, borderlands history, collective memory, and the history
of consumerism.

Benjamin Johnson, an assistant professor at Southern Methodist
University, opened the panel with a discussion of foreign relations and
borderlands history [1].  Johnson, a borderlands historian and
self-described outsider to foreign relations history, remarked that
being at SHAFR reminded himself of Admiral James Stockdale's
performance in the 1992 vice-presidential debates:  Who am I?  What am
I doing here? [2].  Johnson argued that historians in these two
subfields could benefit from borrowing certain basic concepts from one
another.  Specifically, borderlands historians could work on
reincorporating the actions and power of the state while foreign
relations historians could use borderlands approaches to widen their
cast of actors.

Johnson then moved to illustrate his points by drawing upon his own
work, which studied a series of raids by Mexicans in southern Texas
that occurred in the summer of 1915, during the Mexican
Revolution.  This apparent effort to form a free territory out of
several US-controlled territories including Texas was initially
successful but led to a bloody counterinsurgency and a policy of racial
segregation.  A long term effect of this insurrection, Johnson argued,
was a shift by many Mexican Americans away from armed conflict and
towards politics and civil rights law, with the foundation of
organization such as LULAC (the League of United Latin American
Citizens) [3].

Johnson noted that this insurrection had implications for foreign
relations history, one of which would be to contextualize US reception
of the Zimmerman Telegram.  Curiously, however, Johnson remarked that
when he worked on this project he never thought that foreign relations
history would have implications for this study.  Why then this apparent
gap between these two subfields?

The answer to this question lay in part, according to Johnson, in a
divide in the origins of these two fields, with borderlands history
emerging from the history of the US West and of Mexico, while foreign
relations history developed out of what Johnson termed classical
political history.  Johnson added that, based on his own experience as
a graduate student at Yale University, foreign relations historians
tended to work in different circles than did other historians.  In
addition differences in the backgrounds of historians in the two
subfields also impeded contact between them.  Although both disciplines
shared a common goal of internationalizing history (as in Michael
Hogan's 2003 SHAFR presidential address [4]), such a goal in of itself
might not be enough, Johnson argued.

Johnson then turned to address his earlier point that borderlands
historians needed to bring the state back in.  Reports of the death of
nationalism and of the nation-state by Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kaplan,
Samuel Huntington, and others, are premature, according to
Johnson.  Although borderlands scholars have largely fled the state,
neither the state nor nationalism has fled from reality.  He noted that
in his own work a foreign relations history approach would help to
answer questions such as why the US military did not engage in the same
sort of atrocities committed by local militias (posses) and the Texas
Rangers during their counterinsurgency.

Finally, Johnson remarked on lessons for foreign relations historians
from borderlands historians.  After reviewing recent foreign relations
history literature in preparation for this talk, Johnson stated that he
now had a higher respect for the field's willingness to reach out to
other disciplines, citing the work of Emily Rosenberg and Michael Hogan
as examples.  He argued that foreign relations historians could work on
dealing with the importance of non-state actors and forms of sub-nation
identity.  Borderlands history could also be of use in studies of the
importance of the history of the American empire, of the rise of the
United States as a continental power.

Brian C. Etheridge, an assistant professor at Louisiana Tech
University, then discussed collective memory, which he argued should
not be the exclusive domain of cultural history.  Foreign relations
historians, according to Etheridge, were beginning to incorporate
collective memory in their own works, citing work on the Munich analogy
and the Vietnam syndrome as examples.  He cited Robert Schulzinger,
Rosenberg, and Robert McMahon as examples of foreign relations
historians who had incorporated a collective memory approach to their
work.  Etheridge noted, though, that works by foreign relations
historians incorporating collective memory may be lacking in
international history and perhaps still too close to cultural
history.  He quoted an Akira Iriye speech that most cultural memory
work is national in scope.  Etheridge argued that this state of affair
might be the result of how Benedict Anderson conceived of his work (on
nationalism) [5].

Etheridge then turned to his own work on US interest groups and the
"German question," which incorporated research on both US domestic
groups and the government of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG or
West Germany).  He argued that two different conceptions of postwar
German existed.  The first, articulated by the FRG and US German
groups, sought to convince Americans that Germans were "dependable
democrats," while the second view, held by leftists and the Society for
the Prevention of WWII sought to maintain a World War narrative that
focused on German actions prior to and during the war.  These memory
activists struggled over US collective memory, a battle with Cold War
implications that the Adenauer government recognized.  US German groups
and the FRG, Etheridge argued, successfully created a new Cold War
narrative of Germany as a critical ally in the Cold War, a narrative
facilitated by the Berlin Crisis and the concept of totalitarianism.

Therefore, collective memory is a useful framework for foreign
relations history and, Etheridge argued, the "fetish" of international
historians for archival research could benefit cultural memory
history's relative lack of archival scholarship.

The third and final presenter, Christopher Endy, an assistant professor
at California State University, Los Angeles, discussed intersections
between consumerism and foreign relations.  The history of consumerism,
according to Endy, is in the midst of a revival.  He called for SHAFR
members to go further in their dealings with consumerism, an effort
already undertaking by Kristin Hoganson, Melanie McAlister, and
others.  A focus on consumerism brought foreign relations historians
several benefits, first, a more decentralized view of power away from
states and large corporations, and second, a move towards discussion of
transnational networks.

Consumer historians have shown that Washington is closer to Madison
Avenue than previously thought, Endy argued, adding that studying
American consumption (beyond raw materials) added a new dimension to
the emphasis of the earlier New Left revisionist historians on US
production.  In addition, advertising executives like other business
leaders shuffled in and out of government positions.

One issue that this subfield had faced, Endy remarked was that
consumerism had been seen as a "women's issue," a characterization that
had tended to reduce scholarly interest on this topic.  Consumerism,
however, did have a number of implications for foreign relations
history.  One example Endy cited was a concern within some governmental
circles that US propaganda efforts were too consumerist in approach, in
that they were too polite and too focused on not offending the
customer.  Another example was how US negotiators used the carrot of
access to American markets in exchange for military base rights during
US-Japanese negotiations.  Endy then spoke briefly about his own work
on "consumer diplomacy," (a conscious parallel to the earlier "dollar
diplomacy") a post-WWII state cooperation with private actors to use
private leisure for state aid by attempting a rapid revival of
post-WWII overseas travel [6].

Endy argued that scholarship on consumerism had uncovered a number of
important points about consumers.  First, identity emerged on the
consumer level, as in the case of British soap ads that discussed
"cleansing and uplifting non-civilized whites."  Also, US style
consumerism was not necessarily inevitable and demand cannot be taken
for granted.  In addition, consumer practices are not simply imposed
from above, as consumption is a network linking producers and
buyers.  As goods transited through these networks they acquired
symbolic meanings.

Historians of consumerism, then, offered examples to foreign relations
historians of how influence can flow in reverse (not top
down).  Conversely, foreign relations historians might help to expand
US scholarship on consumerism towards a wider international framework
or perspective, as Endy remarked that consumer practices had
similarities between different nations.  Finally, histories of
consumerism offer a more sophisticated concept of power for foreign
relations historians to work with.

Kimberly Alidio began by referencing Michael Hogan's call in his 2003
SHAFR presidential address for a need to internationalize SHAFR
participation.  She then remarked that these three presenters had
reaffirmed the importance, in different contexts, of the nation-state,
and of interdisciplinarity.  After noting possible intersections
between her own work and the field of Asian American scholarship to
foreign relations history, Alidio pondered whether some utility
remained in maintaining disciplinary boundaries.

Mary Ann Heiss then offered a few additional works on the three papers,
beginning with a comment on Benjamin Johnson's remark about his
experience of social and political bifurcation while at Yale.  Heiss
noted that at bottom a field is composed of people.  Personal contact
and interaction, and not simply reading works from other fields, is key
and more needs to occur within disciplines, according to Heiss.  Brian
Etheridge's work, like Johnson's, offered a model for
"cross-pollinization," in this case a consideration of collective
memory internationally and transnational.  Finally, Christopher Endy
highlighted, according to Heiss, the power of non-consumption.  Heiss
remarked on her own experiences in Iran of receiving the repeated
question, once someone learned she was an American, of "When will the
US embargo end?"  She added that one could lead a consumer to a product
but one could not make them buy it.  Heiss concluded that all three
papers were prescriptive in tone, offered their own scholarship as
models, and discussed a need to move beyond (a still-important) state.

Audience questions raised a number of issues including the risk of turning
the state into a monolithic entity when de-emphasizing it as well as a
discussion of
the issues involved in incorporating these three approaches into graduate
school education.  Several panelists spoke of the benefits of having
graduate advisors who were themselves interested in exploring
interdisciplinary methods.

Therefore, in addition to offering first-hand accounts of how to do
interdisciplinary history, this panel also served to highlight the
extent to which foreign relations historians are already working on
incorporating insights and techniques from other subfields.


George Fujii
University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB)

Notes:

[1] According to Johnson, the following essay is close to a canonical
statement of what borderlands history is:  Jeremy Adelman and Stephen
Aron, "From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the
Peoples in Between in North American History" (Forum Essay), _American
Historical Review_ June 1999:  814-841.

In an indication of the increasing influence of borderlands history,
James Brooks's _Captives and Cousins:  Slavery, Kinship, and Community
in the Southwest Borderlands_ (Chapel Hill, NC:  The University of
North Carolina Press, 2002) won in 2003 the Bancroft and Francis
Parkman Prizes and the OAH's Frederick Jackson Turner Award.

[2] An interview by Jim Lehrer of PBS with Admiral Stockdale
referencing this now infamous remark can be found at
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/debatingourdestiny/interviews/stockdale.html,
accessed 4 July 2004.

[3] Benjamin Johnson, _Revolution In Texas - How a Forgotten Rebellion
and its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans_ (New Haven,
Conn.:  Yale University Press, 2003).

[4] Michael J. Hogan, "The 'New Big Thing':  The Future of Diplomatic
History in a Global Age" (2003 SHAFR Presidential Address), _Diplomatic
History_ Vol. 28 No. 1 (January 2004):  1-21.

[5] See Benedict Anderson _Imagined Communities:  Reflections on the
Origin and Spread of Nationalism_ (London:  Verso, 1983).

[6] Christopher Endy, _Cold War Holidays:  American Tourism in France_
(Chapel Hill, NC:  The University of North Carolina Press, 2004).

For a complete listing of all sessions at SHAFR 2004, the conference
program may be viewed at http://www.utexas.edu/cola/shafr/program/.

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Copyright (c) 2004 by H-Diplo, all rights reserved.  For any proposed
use, contact the H-Diplo Editors at h-diplo@h-net.msu.edu or the
H-Diplo article discussion coordinator, George Fujii, at
gfujii@umail.ucsb.edu.
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