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I plan to use my paper, tentatively titled “A Nation Alone: The Origins of American Isolationism,” to historiographically trace the development of American isolationism. Discussion of isolationism in popular history regularly focuses on the years leading up to both World War I and World War II as official times of “isolation” and “nonintervention.” I myself have become interested in the topic as I prepare for a comprehensive exam on the First World War, because it played such a major role in the trajectory of American involvement. Literature relating to isolationism in this regard often presents the bare facts, including little analysis. However, isolationist ideas hardly came from out of the blue as these works would suggest. Like all political ideas, cultural norms and social shifts likely informed them. In short, isolationism needs to be placed within its historical context, to determine exactly how and why it developed.
I plan to use this paper to look for that broader context, by examining the ways in which historians have viewed isolationism as a political and social force. By focusing on this context rather than simply looking at positive or negative perceptions of isolationism, I hope to discover whether the historic portrayal of isolationism has changed at all since its inception. My major research questions at this moment are: Is there a discernible shift in historians’ conceptions of the major forces shaping isolationism? and, does this shift parallel or diverge from advances in historical theory and methodology? I hope to develop more as my research continues.
While I have not done enough secondary source reading to provide specific sources that would be valuable to the further academic analysis of American isolationism, I do have general ideas. Because broader context (social, political, etc.) is a focus of my research, I believe newspaper and media sources, as well as personal letters or journals would be a valuable and unique set of sources. Politically driven ideas tend to be analyzed through government or legal documents, but tracing the popularity of isolationism and isolationist ideas in the writings of ordinary Americans could provide a wholly new perspective on the subject. CSUF has a fairly extensive collection of archived microfilm news articles, which would make a great starting point. Relevant personal writings may be more difficult to come by, at least in regards to the limited time frame (19th Century) of this paper. However, if I were to expand my research to cover the beginning of the 20th century and the lead-up to American involvement in WWI, I could easily mine letters at Chapman University’s Center for American War Letters for expressions of isolationist ideas and rhetoric.