Lydia Plath

Jolly Fellows: Male Milieus in Nineteenth-Century America/The Company He Keeps: A History of White College Fraternities

he argues in a memorable aside, p. 11). Instead, Ninkovich highlights the progressive features of late nineteenth-century liberal thought that kept the door open to the theory that all races might one day attain civilized status. Global Dawn must be read by anyone interested in late nineteenth-century American foreign relations indeed, anyone interested in America’s place in the world across time. A sign of its depth is that it raises as many questions as it answers. The one that kept popping into the mind of this reviewer concerned the role of Britain, both as the key power in late nineteenth-century globalization and as the filter or even fountainhead for the American liberalism of the era. Ninkovich mostly emphasizes how American liberals, such as Josiah Strong and John Fisk, developed distinctly American conceptions of the spread of civilization. One wonders if their inveterate desire to establish their national distinctiveness paradoxically reflected the lack thereof. Despite the rise of pan-Americanism in this period, Latin America receives very little attention does this reflect a dearth of coverage of the region in the liberal journals? What about the Civil War how did this cataclysmic event shape the American conception of ‘‘civilization’’? A final, and related, question concerns the antecedents of the cultural internationalism of the late nineteenth century. Scholars of earlier periods have found a similar cosmopolitanism lurking behind the facade of isolationism, be it in the writings of Jeffersonian internationalists or among Whigs who employed a similar vocabulary of ’’civilization.’’ Rather than a global dawn, has Ninkovich uncovered the bright sun of midday? Ninkovich presents Global Dawn as a case-study of why culture should be taken seriously by historians of foreign relations. In a thought-provoking conclusion, he contends that the cultural internationalism of the late nineteenth century provided the foundation upon which later imperialism and globalism would rest. Gilded Age liberal journals did not determine the outburst of 1898, nor the subsequent century of American globalism, but they were necessary prerequisites. Much the same can be said of Ninkovich’s new book: it is an essential starting point for anyone seeking to understand America’s place in international affairs.