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Overview"Long before the United States became a major force in global affairs, Americans believed in their superiority over others due to their inventiveness, productivity, and economic and social well-being. U.S. expansionists assumed a mandate to ""civilize"" non-Western peoples by demanding submission to American technological prowess and design. As an integral part of America's national identity and sense of itself in the world, this civilizing mission provided the rationale to displace the Indians from much of our continent, to build an island empire in the Pacific and Caribbean, and to promote unilateral-at times military-interventionism throughout Asia. In our age of ""smart bombs"" and mobile warfare, technological aptitude remains preeminent in validating America's global mission. Michael Adas brilliantly pursues the history of this mission through America's foreign relations over nearly four centuries from North America to the Philippines, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. The belief that it is our right and destiny to remake foreign societies in our image has endured from the early decades of colonization to our current crusade to implant American-style democracy in the Muslim Middle East. Dominance by Design explores the critical ways in which technological superiority has undergirded the U.S.'s policies of unilateralism, preemption, and interventionism in foreign affairs and raised us from an impoverished frontier nation to a global power. Challenging the long-held assumptions and imperatives that sustain the civilizing mission, Adas gives us an essential guide to America's past and present role in the world as well as cautionary lessons for the future." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Michael AdasPublisher: Harvard University Press Imprint: The Belknap Press Dimensions: Width: 12.90cm , Height: 3.80cm , Length: 20.20cm Weight: 0.476kg ISBN: 9780674032163ISBN 10: 0674032160 Pages: 542 Publication Date: 01 April 2009 Audience: General/trade , Adult education , General , Further / Higher Education Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Awaiting stock  The supplier is currently out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out for you. Table of ContentsReviewsIn the past few years, bookstores have been deluged with books critical of American foreign policy, and specifically condemning he actions of the Bush administration in the Middle East. In Dominance by Design, Michael Adas carries that critical interpretation of American policy into the past, arguing that throughout history the attitudes and actions of Americans toward non-Western peoples have been characterized by condescension, arrogance, and violence...Adas attributes the moral blindness and overweening arrogance of the American people toward non-Western peoples to the powerful technologies they have adopted or developed. -- Daniel R. Headrick Journal of World History 20070301 [This] book is a compelling, well-written indictment of our techno-hubris that should be required reading for this and subsequent presidents as well as historians of U.S. culture, politics, and technology. -- Carolyn De La Pena American Historical Review 20070401 Michael Adas has written an excellent and most timely study of the oft-forgotten role of technology in enabling and then justifying European colonization of North America, the westward expansion of the United States, and ultimately the emergence of the United States as a global power. -- John H. Morrow Technology and Culture 20070401 A compelling, well-written indictment of our 'techno-hubris' that should be required reading for this and subsequent presidents as well as historians of U.S. culture, politics, and technology. - Carolyn De La Pena, American Historical Review An excellent and most timely study of the oft-forgotten role of technology in enabling and then justifying European colonization of North America, the westward expansion of the United States, and ultimately the emergence of the United States as a global power. - John H. Morrow, Technology and Culture Author InformationMichael Adas is the Abraham E. Voorhees Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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