Drift or Mastery? A Corporatist Synthesis for American Diplomatic History

The state of modern American diplomatic history somehow mirrors its subject matter: Camelot to crisis to conundrum-and then the ennui of the new brown decade. What once imparted vitality and verve, excitement and expectancy to the field was the dynamic impact of left-revisionism. Its great virtue was to rescue historians from the sterile political science debate over realism versus idealism. The result was a new debate that was more honest and fervent, and conceptually more challenging and sophisticated. Revisionism, for friends and opponents alike, became the great intellectual multiplier. William Appleman Williams alone, in an incredible tour de force, not only stimulated and/or outraged, but probably made more careers than any historian since Charles A. Beard. Attacking or footnoting his basic thesis became a leading cottage industry. That salubrious spread effect began to slow even before Jimmy Carter proclaimed our national malaise. The writing (or at least the publication) of revisionist-oriented diplomatic history fell from 25-30 percent of the whole in