orth and the Spanish- and Portuguese-Americans to the south. Despite the oceans on both sides, the United States was from the start involved with Russia (because of Oregon and Alaska), China (because of trade), Spain, Britain, and other European powers. Isolation in a strict sense was never an option, and there is no evidence that the American masses, let alone the elites, favored it, especially once immigration widened and deepened the ties with Europe. It is true that the United States, through most of the 19th century, was concerned with expanding its presence in the Americas rather than with global policies. But exponents of America First, like John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, and the Manifest Destiny chorus, were imperialists rather than isolationists.Between the two world wars, America sometimes appeared , in theory as well as in practice, isolationist, and much of the tragedy of World War Two is attributed to this. But, despite rejection of the League, America was certainly not isolationist in the 1920s, though its intervention in international affairs was not always prudent, particularly in the Pacific. American interest in Asia had grown steadily throughout the 19th century, and it was not only, or indeed not primarily, commercial. It was religious and cultural too. There was something in Asian culture, it had been argued, that persuaded Americans that they had a mission to intervene and change it for the better. An American idealogy that the United States is the greatest country and therefore other countries benefit by our cultural bombardment (coca-cola and nike for instance). By the end of the 19th century, there were over 3,000 American -4-missionaries in Siam, Burma, Japan and Korea, and, above all, China. The one Asian country which resisted Americanization was Japan, and it symbolized this rejection of American cultural notions (though not its technology) by building an ocean going navy on a large scale. The Unite...
