This chapter provides practical guidance for using four types of digital resources: finding aids, digitized analog records, databases, and born-digital records. It points out a variety of potential pitfalls to consider, including searching finding aids in ways limited to the immediate and most obvious object of interest, compared to the benefits of wider searches based on a fuller understanding of bureaucratic structures and personnel. Effective use of the National Archives Catalog requires a full awareness of its limitations and how it can obfuscate relationships among various organizations and records. The discussion of digitized analog records describes various approaches, using as examples the online resources of the National Reconnaissance Office and the CIA, as well as the digitized microfilm of Department of State records by the National Archives. The World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers Data Files and the Disaster History Files are examples of traditional databases discussed. The Department of State Central Foreign Policy File for the years 1973–1979 is discussed in depth, including what is and is not online, how to effectively search the records, the use of P-Reels, and how to interpret the TAGS system. The chapter closes with suggestions on steps to take before visiting research institutions.

The treatment of North American Indigenous nations as domestic rather than foreign nations is deeply woven into the political-legal fabric of the United States. Even before the United States could exert any real authority in vast regions of Native North America, US officials fancifully defined the independent Indigenous nations whose territories they sought to expropriate as falling under the preeminent sovereignty of the United States. The customary exclusion of US–Indigenous relations from the history of American foreign relations reflected and reinforced this imperial project. Of course, Indigenous nations were, and are, sovereign peoples. This chapter provides a roadmap for those endeavoring to narrate histories that more accurately reflect the nation-to-nation dynamics of US–Indigenous relations. Drawing on the work of Native American and borderlands historians, along with those of Native American and Indigenous Studies scholars more broadly, it offers guidance on how to engage with frameworks such as settler colonialism and methodologies such as ethnohistory to contribute to building a critical and ethical body of work that explicitly frames US–Indigenous relations as international rather than domestic history.

This chapter explores the debate about the post-1890s expansion of the United States. Taking as a starting point the creation of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) in the 1960s, the chapter suggests that the Left has shaped our field’s discourse since that transformative decade. What constitutes and orients this intellectual movement has, however, changed over time: from the New Left, to the Cultural Left, to the Millennial Left. None of these three organic traditions regarded itself as a rigid School of Thought. Nevertheless, these three manifestations denaturalized, in turn, capitalism, nationalism, and liberalism by presenting each “-ism” as a synonym for US imperial power. Collectively, these three Left Turns have inspired field-defining debates about military power, free trade, cultural hegemony, and legal exception. The discussions have shaped the questions, methodologies, and interpretive tendencies of US foreign relations history. Rather than judging the cumulative effects of this six-decade debate, this chapter illuminates its often unappreciated genealogy. Hopefully, thinking historically about the historiography of US foreign relations history can suggest generative vistas for the future.

This chapter explores how capitalism has shaped US global power, and how US foreign policy has shaped the trajectory of US capitalism. The approach departs from more well-examined questions, such as quantifying how much capitalist motivations dictated foreign policy decisions, or interrogating whether US actions were determined by geopolitical calculations of realpolitik, versus ideological commitments to democracy, versus ambitions of expanding market share. Rather, beginning with an observation of the inextricability of the development of capitalism and the US as a nation, this chapter examines in what ways economic motivations, structures, and beliefs have appeared in US diplomacy; how centering capitalism shifts the definitions we have of terms like “US foreign relations” and “US global power”; and how this framework troubles concepts we might otherwise have left unexamined. This approach poses new methodological challenges: determining what scale(s) are most useful for studying capitalism; the problem of accessing private corporate archives; how to consider the role of the state in a study that places capitalism at its core; expanding the roster of actors in the history of US foreign relations; and considering how a focus on business and labor changes our understanding of the connections between US power abroad and at home.

This chapter examines the process of military mobilization in South Carolina during the initial months of the war. It probes what motivated men to volunteer for military service at this time and gives sustained consideration to flag presentations to volunteer units, public occasions that have been insufficiently appreciated by historians as important sites for the construction of Confederate nationalism at the local level. White women proved integral to the ritual and rhetoric surrounding these presentations, and so their role in the wider process and culture of mobilization is also analyzed. The final part of the chapter turns its attention to Federal forces establishing a vital foothold on South Carolina’s coast in late 1861 and, in particular, considers its consequences for the interior sections of the state. Federal success on the coast meant that the war had come a lot closer to home for those in the upcountry and this, when coupled with a growing realization that victory was likely to entail considerable sacrifice in terms of both blood and treasure, sowed the seeds for a more ardent national vision to emerge among some South Carolinians.

This chapter takes a dual approach to the subject of Confederate conscription. Its first half analyzes the policy from a political and intellectual perspective, positing that the expansion and tightening of conscription across the war reveals how an ardent strain of Confederate nationalism came to inform both policy and fundamental ideas about what it meant to be a citizen. As more and more men were called upon to enter southern armies and fight against an enemy that was increasingly willing to lay the hard hand of war upon the South, military service came to be interpreted as a fundamental obligation for able-bodied white men. The second half provides a more grassroots account of how conscription and exemption worked in the South Carolina upcountry. It argues that, while the exemption process was unquestionably influenced by class privilege as wealthy and well-connected South Carolinians could use their financial and social capital to evade military service in ways that their poorer neighbors simply could not, this did not cause a widespread rejection of the Confederacy.

This chapter offers, first, some how-to tips for close analysis of documents and other texts to uncover a greater range and depth of meaning. Examining the choice of words, the grammatical structures, and the leaps of logic within metaphors and other figures of speech can yield fresh insight into the assumptions, the categories of analysis, and the overt as well as the less conscious agendas of historical actors. Cadence, inflection, repetition, and even silences can in this sense “speak.xy4 Physical presentation, cultural practices, and personal behaviors can suggest how leaders oriented themselves toward others and their likely intents. Second, this chapter explains how historians can read sources for evidence of the interplay between more emotional and more rational modes of thinking. Historians studying the emotions do not need training in neuroscience or psychology. Rather, they need to read texts carefully and evaluate such evidence as discussion of emotion, words signifying emotion, emotion-provoking tropes, and bodily actions triggered by emotion. Also significant is language evidencing excited behaviors, ironies, silences – and the cultural milieus of these and other expressions. Like all historical evidence, such signs of emotion should be interpreted and contextualized rather than taken at face value.

The national security paradigm is a comprehensive framework or methodology that relates variables to one another and allows for diverse interpretations of American foreign policy in particular periods and contexts. National security policy encompasses the decisions and actions deemed imperative to protect domestic core values from external threats. This definition underscores the relationship of the international environment to the internal situation in the United States and accentuates the importance of people’s ideas and perceptions in constructing the nature of external dangers as well as the meaning of national identity, American ideals, and vital interests. This chapter outlines the key tasks to employ a national security methodology, beginning with identifying the key decision-makers, for example by reading memoirs, diaries, biographies, and oral histories. It then discusses the sources to use to appraise how these decision-makers assessed the intentions and capabilities of prospective foes, as well as perceptions of their own country’s strength and cohesion, the lessons of the past, the impact of technological innovations, and the structural patterns of the international system. The chapter emphasizes the importance of using empathy, understanding the core values of the past, and defining the meaning of power.

This chapter is where the writings and deeds of the upcountry’s lower-class "common whites" are analyzed most forensically. This material testifies to the genuine struggles ordinary households encountered due to the loss of male family members (and their labor) to Confederate armies, though this evidence also suggests that some white men remained home and played important roles in their households and neighborhoods during the first half of the war. These circumstances could provoke contests over power within families, contests that must be viewed holistically to appreciate the sometimes interwoven gendered and generational conflicts within them. The final part of this chapter considers the short-term military service that some older white South Carolinian men were required to complete at certain points of the war and how, by the final stages of the conflict, the well of white military manpower was finally running dry.

This chapter begins by analyzing the society and culture of the South Carolina upcountry during the late antebellum period. In particular, it outlines the subregional differences between the upper and lower piedmont parts of the state and considers the nature of class relations in the pre-Civil War upcountry. With respect to the latter, it argues that certain aspects of daily life, like socially and economically meaningful interactions between men of different classes and a prevalent culture of labor, helped ensure that class conflict did not cause white society to come apart at the seams. The remainder of the chapter focuses on sectional politics, fears about the ascendant Republican Party and what their success would mean for life in the U.S. South, and the secession crisis. Ultimately, a broad consensus on the necessity of secession was achieved in the upcountry in the aftermath of Abraham Lincoln’s election, but the prevalent ethos of unanimity could gloss over different levels of fervency toward disunion.

This chapter explores the relationship between technology and US national security. While it affirms the continuing importance of “traditional” historical subjects like war and diplomacy, it calls for scholars to bring more rigorous research and critical sophistication to bear on them. In other words, it calls for scholars to take a “process-based” approach to these historical subjects rather than the “outcome-based” approach favored by strategic studies scholars. It explains how the author came to study the relationship between technology and national security and how other scholars influenced her approach, which seeks to blend empiricism with theory and benefits from a comparative perspective. Next, the chapter offers tips for conducting broad and deep archival research, emphasizing the value of finding aids and the need to minimize reliance on intermediaries between the researcher and the evidence. It also offers tips on reading in and across subfields and disciplines. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of taking technical matter, whether it be weapons technology or law, seriously on its own terms while also understanding its constructed nature.

What is ideology? How can we discern significant, enduring ideas from more fleeting ones? With these opening questions the chapter lays out some ways scholars might investigate the impact of ideology on international history. The chapter offers how-to insights for historians to examine worldviews, national visions, and personal biases as they have shaped US foreign relations. In so doing, we are reminded to always consider our own ideologies, preconceptions, and assumptions, regardless of whether those presuppositions are more or less obvious. The chapter singles out key contested concepts – such as “civilization” and empire – and suggests a focus on language and rhetoric in approaching this subject. Biography and a concentration on people and groups is crucial to any deep investigation of ideology. The cultural embeddedness and historical context of the actors and ideas we focus on is critical to this work. International and transnational dimensions of thought are virtually omnipresent in the historical record; so, too, one must keep in mind the shaping role of markets and economic ideas and the impact of competing forms of nationalism. Overall, the chapter emphasizes the relationship between norms and ideology, the significance of religion, along with themes such as power, progress, and democracy.

This chapter explores desertion, disaffection, and disloyalty in the South Carolina interior. A spate of unauthorized absence from some military units and frustrations with the war at home led to a problem with disaffection and desertion emerging in the hilly and mountainous fringe along the state’s border with North Carolina during the summer and early fall of 1863. Concerned by this development, the authorities dispatched anti-deserter expeditions to the affected region. Though disturbances caused by recalcitrant deserters in and around the Blue Ridge Mountains would never be fully eradicated, these expeditions were generally effective at restoring order. This outcome warrants emphasis for it is revealing. Similar efforts elsewhere in the Civil War South tended to produce limited results at best or cycles of retaliatory violence at worst, but the relative success of these expeditions suggests that the dispatched troops needed only to reassert Confederate authority, not impose it by force on communities that were either completely out of heart with the war or never bought into the Confederate nation in the first place. This chapter also considers the small, isolated, though quite often impactful networks of dissent that could be found in some parts of the state.