Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction: “A City upon a Hill”
- PART ONE THE ORIGINS OF THE SECURITY ETHOS, 1688–1919
- PART TWO INTERNATIONALISM AND CONTAINMENT, 1919–1973
- PART THREE THE AGE OF STRATEGIC GLOBALISM, 1973–2001
- PART FOUR THE BUSH DOCTRINE
- Conclusion: The Security Ethos and Civic Virtue
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Introduction: “A City upon a Hill”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction: “A City upon a Hill”
- PART ONE THE ORIGINS OF THE SECURITY ETHOS, 1688–1919
- PART TWO INTERNATIONALISM AND CONTAINMENT, 1919–1973
- PART THREE THE AGE OF STRATEGIC GLOBALISM, 1973–2001
- PART FOUR THE BUSH DOCTRINE
- Conclusion: The Security Ethos and Civic Virtue
- Select Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
We now have just cause to destroy [the Indians] by all means possible.
John Smith, 1622The West has been a constructive force of the highest significance in our life.
Frederick Jackson Turner, 1896“We shall be as a city upon a hill,” Puritan leader John Winthrop told his fellow voyagers aboard the Arbella in 1630 as they were preparing to land on the Massachusetts shore. Winthrop and the other Puritan saints believed that the civilized, or European, world was holding its collective breath to see whether their godly venture would succeed. What is noteworthy is that Winthrop did not concoct his prediction out of nothing. Europeans had for years persuaded themselves that the Americas truly might be a special, if not utopian, place. Although experience altered that exotic perception of the New World, the conviction that the land across the Atlantic Ocean was a promising locale for exploration and development never really disappeared.
Winthrop's words would later come to be seen, particularly during the twentieth century, as a declaration of exceptionalism that set England's American colonies apart from the old European world. As historian Jack P. Greene observes, “The concept of American exceptionalism with its positive connotations was present at the very creation of America.” In America, there would be freedom from the culture of corruption and from tyranny endemic to the English political system and religious establishment.
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- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009