Book Reviews American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920-1933. By
JOAN HOFF WILSON. (Lex- ington: University Press of Kentucky, 1971. xvii + 339p.; notes, bibliography, and in- dex. $12.50.) Since 1929 the preoccupation of historians with the role and ideology of business in American life has been intense. Studies of the Gilded Age, such as those by Matthew Josephson and Charles Beard, looked upon businessmen as "robber barons" in domestic affairs. During the isolationist decade capi- talists became those "merchants of death" --munition makers and greedy bankers put- ting profit above human life--who led the United States into the First World War. From 1945 to the present Edward Kirkland, Allan Nevins, and Robert Wiebe along with other historians have broadened the scope of inquiry in domestic affairs to discover that business people had "dreams and thought" beyond profit, were entrepreneurial giants and reformers seeking order in the economy to increase the material well being of all. With respect to foreign relations, New Left historians now stress the role of businessmen in making the Open Door Policy the decisive one of the twentieth century and the pro- ducer of the Cold War. Other writers such as Joseph Brandes and Herbert Feis, in his Diplomacy of the Dollar, have focused their attention primarily on foreign economic ad- venturism during the 1920's. With her book, American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920-1933, Joan Hoff Wil- son must be given a respectable place among significant scholars in the field of business history. While her account is less witty, ur- bane, and authoritative than the monograph by Feis, it is broader in scope and analysis then his. In her introduction Mrs. Wilson indicates the purpose and scope of her study in these words: "There has been a tendency either to exaggerate or to underestimate the role played by the business community in the formation of foreign policy between |
1920 and 1933. This study, therefore, ex- amines the attitudes and actions of individ- ual businessmen, industries, and business or trade organizations to determine the extent to which government officials were subjected to pressure from the various segments of the business community, and the degree to which they responded" (p. xi). Thereupon follows a clear overview of the general business views and foreign policy trends of 1920. Successive chapters deal perceptively with the diversified and chang- ing attitudes of business leaders toward dis- armament and the peace movement, com- mercial foreign policy, foreign loan suspen- sion, war debts, reparations, open and closed doors. Throughout her book the author re- fuses to take sides in the "legend of isola- tionism" in the 1920's debate. In perhaps her most valuable intellectual contribution, Professor Wilson concludes that official American foreign policy was neither isola- tionist nor internationalist, but was an "in- dependent internationalism." This she de- fines as an "unstable assortment of unilateral and collective diplomatic actions" and "not a foreign policy but... a pragmatic method for coordinating foreign affairs" (p. xvi). No monolithic businessman stereotype is given. There were, for example, "business isolationists" and "business
internationalists" in the public discussions of international or- ganization, peace, and disarmament. The author, too, sees no conspiracy on the part of the State and Commerce Departments to allow oil and other industrial magnates to conduct foreign relations in the contracts they made. Yet, the Federal Government in its policy of hands off private business, save for minimal rules easily circumvented or not enforced, led essentially to this result. Also affirmed is the existence of government of- ficials and business leaders who believed in the principle of the Open Door as the way to peace among nations. In actual experi- ence, however, the United States demanded open doors where other nations were highly |