Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
7 - East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Authors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- “The American Century”
- 1 Making the World Safe for Democracy in the American Century
- 2 “Empire by Invitation” in the American Century
- 3 America and the Twentieth Century: Continuity and Change
- 4 The Idea of the National Interest
- 5 The Tension between Democracy and Capitalism during the American Century
- 6 The American Century: From Sarajevo to Sarajevo
- 7 East Asia in Henry Luce's “American Century”
- 8 The American Century and the Third World
- 9 Race from Power: U.S. Foreign Policy and the General Crisis of “White Supremacy”
- 10 Immigrants and Frontiersmen: Two Traditions in American Foreign Policy
- 11 Partisan Politics and Foreign Policy in the American Century
- 12 Philanthropy and Diplomacy in the American Century
- 13 A Century of NGOs
- 14 Consuming Women: Images of Americanization in the “American Century”
- 15 The Empire of the Fun, or Talkin' Soviet Union Blues: The Sound of Freedom and U.S. Cultural Hegemony in Europe
- 16 American Empire and Cultural Imperialism: A View from the Receiving End
- Index
Summary
Though most often remembered as a catch phrase, “The American Century” stands as one of the purest distillations of that twentieth-century vision of the world transformed in the American image. The notion of an American Century articulated by Henry Robinson Luce in a February 1941 Life editorial offers an inviting point of departure to reflect on a turbulent century of U.S. engagement in East Asia and to sketch some of the defining features of U.S.-East Asian relations over the past century. This essay begins with a brief treatment of the ideological impulse that shaped Luce's – and arguably the dominant American – approach to the region. It continues by tracing the travails that his crusade encountered there and by identifying the main sources of those travails. It concludes by suggesting alternatives to Luce as the prophet of the American project in Asia.
The Luce vision
When Luce addressed his countrymen in 1941, he did so as a therapist disturbed by national malaise. He found them “unhappy,” “nervous,” “gloomy,” and “apathetic.” To calm their “foreboding” about the future, he prescribed emulation of the moral certitude and commitment displayed by the British. Their decision to stand up to Hitler, Luce announced, had banished national “nervousness” and even “all the neuroses of modern life.” Luce traced his own country's malaise back to the rejection of the internationalist path on which Woodrow Wilson had embarked in 1919.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Ambiguous LegacyU.S. Foreign Relations in the 'American Century', pp. 232 - 278Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999