![]() ![]() The cheering of more than 300,000 people for both sides of the war on Times Square on 5 August 1914 illustrated the division of the general public, as well as that between Democrats and Republicans, and the president and his advisers. The public’s strong distaste for European wars and the ethnic composition of his own country made it clear that in 1914 for America ‘maintaining neutrality was not simply a matter of diplomacy’ (p. Wilson, knowing that any rash decision could seriously provoke the large and influential German-American as well as the pro-British population, heeded Washington’s farewell address for as long as possible. ![]() (2) The attention paid to these two camps in no way lessens the merits of his argumentation, because Floyd makes a strong case that in the end Colonel House, Bryan and Lansing represented both political alternatives relevant to Woodrow Wilson – Bryan being the only real neutral and outspoken pacifist and furthest away from the President’s ears, too.Īt the start of the First World War the American public seemed evenly divided along the belligerents’ lines. While Ross Kennedy studies the influence of three major political factions on Wilson’s foreign policy in Will to Believe, Floyd drops the Atlanticists and focuses on the clash between Wilson’s liberal internationalism and William Jennings Bryan pacifism. Yet his work adds cultural and political perspectives which enrich Abandoning American Neutrality and make it far more than a simple economic-oriented analysis of the first war years. Floyd thereby engages an extensive debate between older scholars who reduce the history of the First World War to simple economics and war profits and historians who analyze the war in a framework of collective security and the spread of democracy.įloyd’s work challenges the reader to reevaluate the economic aspects of the First World War, which have been explored by Richard Hofstadter (1), and his argument leaves no doubt that economic interests lay at the core of Wilson’s decision to enter the war on the side of the Allies and against the Central Powers. Without a long introduction Floyd states the divisive issue at the core of Wilson’s foreign policy that emerged with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914: Wilson’s idealism, portrayed in his notes to the belligerents, clashed with his pragmatic desire to protect American economic interests. In light of the centennial anniversary, Floyd has written a book that focuses on a very narrow and specific aspect of the First World War but at the same time delivers a broad international and legal history of this catastrophic event. In a concise prose his study delivers a new perspective on Woodrow Wilson’s decision-making process at this crucial juncture, and he challenges older assumptions about America’s role and interests during these eventful years and delivers an original contribution whether the United States went to war out of moral reasons, collective security or economic interest. Ryan Floyd’s Abandoning American Neutrality should be considered required reading about America’s entry into the First World War. ![]()
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