This chapter explores how capitalism has shaped US global power, and how US foreign policy has shaped the trajectory of US capitalism. The approach departs from more well-examined questions, such as quantifying how much capitalist motivations dictated foreign policy decisions, or interrogating whether US actions were determined by geopolitical calculations of realpolitik, versus ideological commitments to democracy, versus ambitions of expanding market share. Rather, beginning with an observation of the inextricability of the development of capitalism and the US as a nation, this chapter examines in what ways economic motivations, structures, and beliefs have appeared in US diplomacy; how centering capitalism shifts the definitions we have of terms like “US foreign relations” and “US global power”; and how this framework troubles concepts we might otherwise have left unexamined. This approach poses new methodological challenges: determining what scale(s) are most useful for studying capitalism; the problem of accessing private corporate archives; how to consider the role of the state in a study that places capitalism at its core; expanding the roster of actors in the history of US foreign relations; and considering how a focus on business and labor changes our understanding of the connections between US power abroad and at home.

Drawing from the economic, political, and security records of the Kế Bào Coal Company – one of the first two large-scale French coal mining companies established in Tonkin – this chapter tracks the rise and fall of the company and offers a labor, social, and racial history of the many pioneers of the coal frontier, such as the Chinese and Vietnamese migrant coal mine workers, the Vietnamese convicts, and the French personnel. By situating the history of large-scale coal mining in Kế Bào within the regional context of the Sino-Vietnamese borderland and the global coolie trade of the nineteenth century, this chapter illustrates the risks and precarities of coal mining along a remote maritime coal frontier in the early days of French colonialism in Tonkin. Specifically, it highlights the perils of financial miscalculation, labor mismanagement, overoptimistic and incomplete geological surveys, and the environmental and ecological challenges of extracting coal in a tropical landscape unfamiliar to Europeans, all of which contributed to the company’s downfall.

This chapter provides a geographical, ethnic, and economic overview of the coal mining frontier of Quảng Yên in northern Vietnam during the precolonial period, before large-scale coal mining began in the late nineteenth century. The first part of this chapter highlights the ethnic diversity, political volatility, rampant piracy, cross-border smuggling, and illicit trade that characterized this porous Sino-Vietnamese borderland, where state surveillance was often absent. The chapter also examines precolonial mining patterns, the Nguyễn dynasty’s mining policies, and the role of the Chinese in precolonial mining exploitation in Vietnam. Notably, the chapter attributes the decline of the precolonial mining economy in Vietnam to several environmental, political, and technological factors. The last part of this chapter documents the French struggle to stabilize and pacify this complex and volatile mining frontier in the late nineteenth century, paving the way for the region’s first large-scale coal mining enterprises and mining settlements.

This chapter offers, first, some how-to tips for close analysis of documents and other texts to uncover a greater range and depth of meaning. Examining the choice of words, the grammatical structures, and the leaps of logic within metaphors and other figures of speech can yield fresh insight into the assumptions, the categories of analysis, and the overt as well as the less conscious agendas of historical actors. Cadence, inflection, repetition, and even silences can in this sense “speak.xy4 Physical presentation, cultural practices, and personal behaviors can suggest how leaders oriented themselves toward others and their likely intents. Second, this chapter explains how historians can read sources for evidence of the interplay between more emotional and more rational modes of thinking. Historians studying the emotions do not need training in neuroscience or psychology. Rather, they need to read texts carefully and evaluate such evidence as discussion of emotion, words signifying emotion, emotion-provoking tropes, and bodily actions triggered by emotion. Also significant is language evidencing excited behaviors, ironies, silences – and the cultural milieus of these and other expressions. Like all historical evidence, such signs of emotion should be interpreted and contextualized rather than taken at face value.

The national security paradigm is a comprehensive framework or methodology that relates variables to one another and allows for diverse interpretations of American foreign policy in particular periods and contexts. National security policy encompasses the decisions and actions deemed imperative to protect domestic core values from external threats. This definition underscores the relationship of the international environment to the internal situation in the United States and accentuates the importance of people’s ideas and perceptions in constructing the nature of external dangers as well as the meaning of national identity, American ideals, and vital interests. This chapter outlines the key tasks to employ a national security methodology, beginning with identifying the key decision-makers, for example by reading memoirs, diaries, biographies, and oral histories. It then discusses the sources to use to appraise how these decision-makers assessed the intentions and capabilities of prospective foes, as well as perceptions of their own country’s strength and cohesion, the lessons of the past, the impact of technological innovations, and the structural patterns of the international system. The chapter emphasizes the importance of using empathy, understanding the core values of the past, and defining the meaning of power.

This chapter explores the transformations caused by the 1920s coal boom in Tonkin, especially with respect to forests and the ways in which they were exploited. Demand for mine timber soared during this period, since coal mining enterprises required a large number of mine props to support their underground tunnels. With hard timber becoming a highly sought-after commodity, illicit timber exploitation and trading networks began operating under the radar of French colonial surveillance. Taking advantage of this mining-driven high demand for timber, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Dao loggers and traders exploited and sold hard timber to large-scale coal mining companies, often without permission. Forest rules were flouted in a frenzied search for mine timber. This chapter underscores how capitalist developments, such as coal mining, were the main perpetrators of the destruction of timber forests in Tonkin, as opposed to indigenous swidden farming practices. This story of coal mining and deforestation also demonstrates the adaptability of indigenous networks, the internal weakness of colonial rule, and the ecological consequences of unchecked capitalist developments.

This chapter examines the formation of a liberal mining regime in Tonkin, which fueled a mining frenzy in the 1920s. To encourage prospectors and capitalists to invest in and exploit the mining resources of remote colonies, such as Tonkin and Annam, a colonial mining regime that granted mine explorers extensive rights to control and develop mining concessions as they saw fit was formulated in 1897. This chapter also explores how the liberal mining regime in Tonkin enabled the rise of big coal companies, such as the French Coal Company of Tonkin (SFCT) and Đông Triều Coal Company (SCDT). Their rapid growth and illicit mining expansion subsequently led to increasing conflicts among the two companies, the colonial government, and local communities over the use of natural resources, such as timber forests, public land, and maritime zones. Overall, this chapter highlights how the bubble created by mining deregulation led to the wasteful use and arbitrary division of land, rampant prospecting fraud, widespread destruction of preexisting forests at mining perimeters, and the illegal tactics employed by the big coal companies to encroach upon public resources.

This chapter explores the relationship between technology and US national security. While it affirms the continuing importance of “traditional” historical subjects like war and diplomacy, it calls for scholars to bring more rigorous research and critical sophistication to bear on them. In other words, it calls for scholars to take a “process-based” approach to these historical subjects rather than the “outcome-based” approach favored by strategic studies scholars. It explains how the author came to study the relationship between technology and national security and how other scholars influenced her approach, which seeks to blend empiricism with theory and benefits from a comparative perspective. Next, the chapter offers tips for conducting broad and deep archival research, emphasizing the value of finding aids and the need to minimize reliance on intermediaries between the researcher and the evidence. It also offers tips on reading in and across subfields and disciplines. Finally, the chapter highlights the importance of taking technical matter, whether it be weapons technology or law, seriously on its own terms while also understanding its constructed nature.

What is ideology? How can we discern significant, enduring ideas from more fleeting ones? With these opening questions the chapter lays out some ways scholars might investigate the impact of ideology on international history. The chapter offers how-to insights for historians to examine worldviews, national visions, and personal biases as they have shaped US foreign relations. In so doing, we are reminded to always consider our own ideologies, preconceptions, and assumptions, regardless of whether those presuppositions are more or less obvious. The chapter singles out key contested concepts – such as “civilization” and empire – and suggests a focus on language and rhetoric in approaching this subject. Biography and a concentration on people and groups is crucial to any deep investigation of ideology. The cultural embeddedness and historical context of the actors and ideas we focus on is critical to this work. International and transnational dimensions of thought are virtually omnipresent in the historical record; so, too, one must keep in mind the shaping role of markets and economic ideas and the impact of competing forms of nationalism. Overall, the chapter emphasizes the relationship between norms and ideology, the significance of religion, along with themes such as power, progress, and democracy.

Drawing from the memoirs of Edmond Fuchs and Emile Sarran – two French geologists sent by the French government to Tonkin in the 1880s to conduct mining expeditions – this chapter reconstructs their geological mission and examines their ecological and geological findings about the Quảng Yên coal basin in Tonkin. The chapter also underscores several limitations and inconsistencies in the French geological findings, including Fuchs’ overoptimistic assessment of the industrial and military applications of Tonkinese coal, Sarran’s inflated estimates of Tonkin’s coal reserves, and their omission of the impact of environmental factors on future large-scale coal mining activities in Tonkin. It argues that these scientific limits resulted from logistical and topographical challenges encountered by the geologists in Tonkin. It further posits that the immense pressure imposed by both the French government and the French Ministry of the Navy and Colonies was likely a contributing factor, since it was necessary for the geologists’ missions to demonstrate how the discovery of Tonkinese coal could help strengthen French industrial might and imperial ambitions in Asia.

Historians of US foreign relations have much to gain by incorporating some of the methodological interventions made by scholars of race and Ethnic Studies. Drawing on research on US–Caribbean and US–Central American relations, this chapter tackles the following questions: What does it mean to study race as a central component, and not just a byproduct of US foreign relations? How does race appear in and outside of government archives? And what are some assumptions that require reassessment to ensure that US foreign relations scholars are not using –race– as a mere descriptor of –other–? A core component of the chapter is its combined use of field-specific observations and personal reflections amassed over the course of twenty years of research and writing. It does not propose one unified meaning of “race,” nor one specific method for examining race as an idea and practice. Instead, it maps out how the fields of African Diaspora Studies and Critical Ethnic Studies have expanded our understandings of racialization and racial formation, provides examples of effective approaches that draw from specific events and published works, outlines questions to ask before, during, and after conducting research, and invites researchers to recognize how archives function as racialized spaces.