ugh it were Americas destiny and natural preference. So it is worth examining in a longer historical context. There is nothing unique, as many Americans suppose, in the desire of a society with a strong cultural identity to minimize its foreign contacts. On the contrary, isolationism in this sense has been the norm wherever geography has made it feasible. A characteristic example of a hermit state is Japan, which tried to use its surrounding seas to pursue a policy of total isolation. China, too, was isolationist for thousands of years, albeit an empire at the same time. The British were habitually isolationist even during the centuries when they were acquiring an empire embracing a quarter of the worlds surface. The British always regarded the English Channel as a cordon sanitaire to protect them from what they saw as the Continental disease of war. The Spanish too were misled by the Pyrenees, and the Russians by the Great Plains, into believing that isolationism was feasible as well as desirable.The United States, however, has always been an internationalist country. Given the sheer size of the Atlantic (and the Pacific), with its temptation to hermitry, the early colonists and rulers of the United States were remarkably international minded. The Pilgrim Fathers did not cut themselves off from Europe, but sought to erect a City on a Hill precisely to serve as an example to the Old World. The original Thirteen Colonies had, as a rule, closer links with Europe than with each other, focusing on London and Paris, rather than on Boston or Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin had perhaps a better claim to be called a cosmopolitan than any other figure on either side of the Atlantic. He believed strongly in negotiations and in mutually advantageous treaties -3-between nations. Americas ruling elite was always far more open towards, interested in, and knowledgeable about the world (especially Europe) than the French-Canadians to the n...
