History of International Politics

The course will focus on international relations between the US and the UK during the XX century, through an in-depth analysis of the part played by the leading American and British ambassadors of that time. The first part of the course will focus on the origins of US international development between the XIX and the XX centuries, up to the Second World War and will specifically study the role and the diplomatic experience of Walter Hines Page, Joseph P. Kennedy, John Gilbert Winant and W. Averal Harriman, for the United States, and Julian Pauncefote, Edward Grey, Lord Lothian and Lord Halifax for the United Kingdom. Considering the political biographies of those actors, and through an in-depth analysis of the historiographical debate and available primary sources, the course will critically discuss the following: American imperialism, its characteristics and implications on relations between the Old and the New worlds; the legacies of the First World War on relations between the US and the UK; British and American behaviour with regards to authoritarianism and totalitarianism in Europe and in the Pacific; how much personalities mattered in international politics between the 1920s and the 1940s.
The second part of the course will consider relations between the US and the UK during the Cold war years and the first decade of the post-bipolar era, with specific attention to the role of the British and American diplomats of that time. In particular, we will analyse, among others, the diplomatic experience of US ambassadors Lewis Williams Douglas, Winthrop Aldrich, David K.E. Bruce, Walter H. Annenberg and John J. Lewis and UK ambassadors Lord Inverchapel, Rogers Makins, Harold Caccia, David Ormsby Gore, Patrick Dean, John Freeman, Lord Cromer and Nicolas Henderson. Considering the political biography of those actors, and through an in depth analysis of the historiographical debate and the available primary sources, this part of the course will critically discuss the following: political, economic and cultural cooperation between NATO members; how much the post-war Labour Party in Great Britain mattered in forging British post-war policy and British-American relations; the moments of strength and weakness in the special relationship; British and American policies towards other countries and regions such as China, the Middle East and, in more general terms, the newly independent States; the special relationship in the years of Dwight Eisenhower, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan; the evolution of the special relationship after the end of the Cold War, with particular attention to the new conflicts of the post-bipolar era, such as the Gulf and the Kosovo wars.