This essay is concerned with the role of the “big” foundations in the United States during the “American Century” and with the ways in which their activities related to the projection of the country's political, economic, and cultural power around the globe. In order to provide some fresh empirical backup for the more general arguments about the subject, central parts of what follows focus on the work of the Ford Foundation, which from 1948 onward grew to become the largest philanthropic organization in the world, spending millions of dollars every year on international projects.

Because the major expansion of American foundation activity did not occur until after the end of World War II, however, the topic also raises the question as to when the “American Century” in fact began if seen through the lens of the historian of corporate capitalism and of culture. Whatever the time frame of the political historian, certainly from the perspective of cultural and business history a very plausible case can be made that, broadly speaking, the year 1900 must be the starting point. It was at the turn of the century that Europe – then still the power center of the world – began to perceive the United States as the new world power of the future not merely in terms of political and military potential but also – and indeed most particularly so – in terms of industrial-technological and cultural power and influence.