assp rt The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations P Volume 40, Issue 3, January 2010 Inside... A Roundtable Discussion of J.C.A. Stagg’s Borderlines in Borderlands­­­­ An Overview of the Peace History Society Teaching Humanitarian Intervention in the Classroom Taking American History Overseas ..and much more! Passport The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Editorial Office: Mershon Center for International Security Studies 1501 Neil Avenue Columbus OH 43201 [email protected] 614-292-1681 (phone) 614-292-2407 (fax) Executive Director Peter L. Hahn, The Ohio State University Editor Mitchell Lerner, The Ohio State University-Newark Production Editor Julie Rojewski, Michigan State University Editorial Assistant Matt Yates, The Ohio State University Cover Photo “Portrait of James Madison by James Vanderlyn.” Courtesy of The Montpelier Foundation. Editorial Advisory Board and Terms of Appointment: W. Taylor Fain, University of North Carolina—Wilmington (2008-2010) Elizabeth Kelly Gray, Towson University (2009-2011) Robert Brigham, Vassar College (2010-2012) Passport is published three times per year (April, September, January), by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, and is distributed to all members of the Society. Submissions should be sent to the attention of the editor, and are acceptable in all formats, although electronic copy by email to [email protected] is preferred. Submis- sions should follow the guidelines articulated in the Chicago Manual of Style. Manuscripts accepted for publication will be edited to conform to Passport style, space limitations, and other requirements. The author is responsible for accuracy and for obtaining all permissions necessary for publication. Manuscripts will not be returned. Interested advertisers can find relevant information on the web at: http://www.shafr.org/newsletter/passportrates.htm, or can contact the editor. The opinions expressed in Passport do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SHAFR or of The Ohio State University. The editors of Passport wish to acknowledge the generous support of The Ohio State University, The Ohio State University—Newark, and the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. © 2010 SHAFR Page 2 Passport January 2010 Passport The Newsletter of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Volume 40, Number 3, January 2010 In This Issue 4 Thoughts From SHAFR President Andrew Rotter 5 A Roundtable Discussion of J.C.A. Stagg’s Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776-1821 J.M. Opal, David Dzurec, Brian DeLay, and J.C.A. Stagg 14 Taking History Overseas Douglas Karsner, Ron Eisenman, and David Koistinen 25 A Classroom Simulation on Humanitarian Intervention Philip Nash 28 The Background and Activities of the Peace History Society Lawrence S. Wittner 34 Frances Bolton and Africa: 1955-58 Andy DeRoche 38 The Diplomatic Pouch 59 In Memoriam: Saki R. Dockrill 60 In Memoriam: Eduard M. Mark 61 In Memoriam: Ernest R. May Passport January 2010 Page 3 Thoughts From SHAFR President Andrew Rotter am honored to serve as president order to prevent them. We offer space to of SHAFR, and I am happy to witnesses of violence, recording and thus report that the organization is honoring their testimony. We expose to the in Igood shape. Despite losses to our light of day the perpetrators of violence, endowment—a phrase that every the reckless makers of war, the genocidal administrator of everything has uttered regimes and the agents of quotidian sometime in the past year—we remain cruelties that must never be allowed in a strong position financially, able to to seem ordinary. “How can you read fund our prizes and travel and research that stuff?” asks my wife. Peering over fellowships for members, support another my copy of Stuart Miller’s “Benevolent summer institute, and shoulder the costs Assimilation,” John Dower’s War without associated with our own conference and Mercy, or Samantha Power’s “A Problem our activities at the AHA and OAH. We from Hell,” I answer, “Someone has to.” continue to get out the word on these As I read and teach these and other, and other initiatives, to internationalize similar books, and as I reflect on the and diversify our membership and material I use in my writing, I try to our scholarship, to reach out to other adhere to a few simple rules concerning organizations in and outside the my awkward relationship to violence. discipline, and to find sustenance in the work we share, First, I keep in mind what many have written: that especially the essays published in Diplomatic History and violence, especially mass violence, cannot be grasped nor the papers presented at the SHAFR meeting each June. morally dispensed with using mere words. “It is stronger For all this I thank my predecessors (Richard Immerman, than me,” wrote the French historian Alain Forest on his Tom Schwartz, and Frank Costigliola), SHAFR meeting visit to Cambodia’s dreadful Tuol Sleng prison in 1982, program chairs (last year Paul Kramer, now Anne Foster “and there’s no chance of thinking or writing about it. and Naoko Shibusawa), DH editors Bob Schulzinger I pull my head instinctively down into my shoulders.” and Tom Zeiler, and Executive Director Peter Hahn, who (Forest, with Françoise Corrèze, would write about it, as makes it all work. so many with pulled down heads have needed to do.) Although past presidential columns in Passport have Second, I try not to succumb to the banality or mystique explored issues to be taken up, problems to be faced, and of violence. I allow violence its irony and dark humor, the workings of the organization itself, I would like to but I remind myself often that the frequency with which discuss something else altogether, something prompted by people inflict violence on others does not make it ordinary, encounters with colleagues and current events. Asked by normal, or acceptable. Finally, I work to prevent myself new acquaintances what I teach and write about, I often and my students from becoming inured to violence. I find myself saying that I do war and violence, broadly check in with students in the Vietnam War and atomic defined—the sorry results of diplomatic failure. I teach bomb courses to make sure they are not turning numb to a two-semester survey of U.S. foreign relations, with the what they are reading and seeing, although in some cases inevitable lowlights of Indian removal, war with Mexico, I am too late; a lifetime of playing video games can make war with Spain and the Philippines, war in Europe and a person pretty cold. And if I find myself unmoved by Asia and messy interventions in Latin America. I teach a accounts of violence, I stop reading or writing or watching course on the Vietnam War; I have done seminars on the and try to reconnect to my human, reasonably decent self. Cold War, the atomic bomb, and the morality of war; and Or I go back to the safer space of cultural foreign relations my U.S. history survey, which offers welcome relief with history, where the stakes are high but seldom a matter of units on social and cultural history, nevertheless (and life and death. necessarily) cannot leave war alone. I have written about Forgive me this grim little meditation. And by way of Vietnam and the bomb. I am, in other words, a chaser of lightening the mood, let me invite all of you to write me history’s ambulances. I suspect many of you are too. about SHAFR issues, anything at all. Are you happy with This answer, which causes many of my questioners to the direction of the organization? Do you have issues with shrink back in confusion and horror, sounds harsher than it? What might we do better, or more often? I look forward I would like. I did not enter the field in search of violence, to hearing from you; my email is [email protected]. although I was interested in figuring out the origins of the Vietnam War. Violence, including structural violence, Andrew Rotter is SHAFR President and Charles A. Dana terror, the threat of violence, theories of violence, and so Professor of History at Colgate University. on, came with that territory. I have accepted that. I also feel a responsibility not to glorify or fetishize violence; I wish to understand without forgiving. There is, of course, a politics to this: we try to explain outbreaks of violence in Page 4 Passport January 2010 A Roundtable Discussion of J.C.A. Stagg’s Borderlines in Borderlands: James Madison and the Spanish-American Frontier, 1776- 1821 J.M. Opal, David Dzurec, Brian DeLay, and J.C.A. Stagg Review of J.C.A. Stagg, forces. As the president does, so does of the republic. What, exactly, did Borderlines in Borderlands: James the nation.1 Madison intend to accomplish by Madison and the Spanish-American If this facet of executive authority sending special agents to West Frontier, 1776-1821 haunts those constitutional scholars Florida, East Florida, and Texas who believe in constitutional after word arrived that the Spanish J.M. Opal government, the inverse proposition monarchy had fled the French bedevils historians of American invasion of Iberia in 1809-10? How hat is done by the royal foreign relations: as the nation has did he understand America’s claim authority, with regard to behaved, so too has the president as spelled out in the retrocession of foreign powers,” William behaved. Such is the implicit Louisiana? Did he order, authorize, WBlackstone explained in his judgment of a formidable body of or condone the various filibusters authoritative opus, Commentaries historical literature and mythology. and armed rebellions that challenged on the Laws of England, “is the act of Robert Kagan’s new Dangerous Nation, Spanish rule in North America from the whole nation.” In the person or which Stagg challenges in a sharp 1810 to 1813? Stagg offers something institution of His Majesty, “as in a endnote, offers a recent example.