FDR's Good Neighbor Policy: Sixty Years of Generally Gentle Chaos

by Fredrick B. Pike

Overview

A study of how and why US-Latin American relations changed in the 1930s: “Brilliant . . . [A] charming and perceptive work.” ―Foreign Affairs
 
During the 1930s, the United States began to look more favorably on its southern neighbors. Latin America offered expanded markets to an economy crippled by the Great Depression, while threats of war abroad nurtured in many Americans isolationist tendencies and a desire for improved hemispheric relations. One of these Americans was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the primary author of America’s Good Neighbor Policy.
 
In this thought-provoking book, Bolton Prize winner Fredrick Pike takes a wide-ranging look at FDR’s motives for pursuing the Good Neighbor Policy, how he implemented it, and how its themes played out up to the mid-1990s. Pike’s investigation goes far beyond standard studies of foreign and economic policy. He explores how FDR’s personality and Eleanor Roosevelt’s social activism made them uniquely simpático to Latin Americans. He also demonstrates how Latin culture flowed north to influence U.S. literature, film, and opera. This book is essential reading for everyone interested in hemispheric relations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292786097
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	02/24/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	422
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Fredrick B. Pike, winner of the American Historical Association's 1963 Bolton Prize, holds a distinguished graduate award from the University of Texas Institute of Latin American Studies.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Section I. The Great Depression and Better Neighborliness in the Americas
  • 1. Operatic Prologue
  • 2. Depression: The New World’s Great Equalizer
  • 3. Depression in America’s Cities, Depression in the Countryside, and a Rapprochement with Latin America
  • 4. Americans Reassess Capitalism and the Hemisphere
  • 5. A Clint Eastwood Cinematic Epilogue
• Section II. Inducements Toward Good Neighborliness
  • 6. Religion, Social Gospel, and Social Work
  • 7. American and Latin American Intellectuals as Good Neighbors
  • 8. Becoming Good Neighbors through Arts and Letters
  • 9. Krause, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the American Culturati
• Section III. Ambivalence of Mood: North Americans Contemplate Latin Americans
  • 10. The Lure of the Primitive and the Acceptance of Cultural Diversity
  • 11. Single-Minded Bigots No Longer
  • 12. Racial Bigotry and Hemispheric Relations
• Section IV. The Roosevelt Styles in Latin American Relations
  • 13. Sizing Up Latin America: The Young and the Mature Roosevelt
  • 14. Hyde Park Patrician in the Latin Style
  • 15. The Roosevelt Style: Corporatism and Tricksterism
• Section V. Launching and Targeting the Good Neighbor Policy
  • 16. Discarding the Burdens of Interventionism
  • 17. Agrarian Myths and the Good Neighbor Policy
  • 18. The Good Neighbor’s Romance with Mexico
  • 19. Good Neighbor Policies: Soft, Hard, and Indeterminate
  • 20. FDR: What Kind of a Good Neighbor?
  • 21. First the Hemisphere, Then the World
• Section VI. Security Issues and Good Neighbor Tensions
  • 22. The Hemisphere in Danger
  • 23. Two in One Flesh: Economic and Security Issues
  • 24. Three in One Flesh: Economic, Security, and Cultural Issues
  • 25. Old and New Hemispheric Tensions as One War Gives Way to Another
  • 26. The Good Neighbor Policy in Transition as Its Presiding Officer Dies
• Section VII. Farewell and Welcome Back the Good Neighbor Policy
  • 27. The “American Century” Begins
  • 28. Rethinking Good Neighborliness as the American Century Begins
  • 29. The Cold War and a Hemispheric Marriage of Convenience
• Section VIII. Good Neighbor Themes and Variations Half a Century Later
  • 30. New Economic Forces Begin to Transform the New World
  • 31. Expanding Potentials for Good (and Bad) Neighborliness toward Century’s End: Religion and Immigration
  • 32. Toward Century’s End: Problems in Privatized Paradises
  • 33. The Enduring Potential of FDR’s Gentle Chaos
• Notes
• Index

Editorial Reviews

A senior scholar of hemispheric relations signing off, Pike has some fun in this, his last book. While examining the origins and consequences of 1930s U.S. Latin America policy, he grants himself an autobiographical preface and the freedom to cite Peggy Lee, Clint Eastwood, Debussy, and other unlikely sources. Like Pike's previous book, The United States and Latin America (Univ. of Texas Pr., 1992), this one takes a relaxed, thematic look at social, economic, and cultural forces at work in the United States and its neighbors. Pike clearly admires FDR, in whom he sees a trickster's ability to fuse opposites-as in his imperfect foreign policy that even so contributed to an enduring "gentleness of chaos in the New World," in contrast to cataclysms abroad. Readers seeking detailed analysis will be better off with Irwin Gellman's Good Neighbor Diplomacy (Johns Hopkins, 1979), still, this unique view is recommended for academic and larger public libraries.-Robert F. Nardini, North Chichester, N.H.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Looks at FDR's motives for pursuing the Good Neighbor Policy and examines how he implemented and sometimes ignored it, discussing how its themes have played out in international relations up to the mid- 1990s. Explores Latin Americans' reactions to FDR's personality and Eleanor Roosevelt's social activism, and demonstrates the ways in which Latin culture has influenced US literature, film, and opera. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

A brilliant though unorthodox treatment of the cultural and intellectual developments that lay behind the policy of the Good Neighbor. The influence of culture on foreign policy is a theme open to absurd generalizations and pointless anecdotes and is often dealt with poorly. Pike does it superbly, with successive chapters that illuminate how the Great Depression profoundly altered the way in which many norteamericanos and Latin Americans conceived of their mutual relations.... This charming and perceptive work deserves a wide readership among students of hemispheric relations.

Foreign Affairs

A brilliant though unorthodox treatment of the cultural and intellectual developments that lay behind the policy of the Good Neighbor. The influence of culture on foreign policy is a theme open to absurd generalizations and pointless anecdotes and is often dealt with poorly. Pike does it superbly, with successive chapters that illuminate how the Great Depression profoundly altered the way in which many norteamericanos and Latin Americans conceived of their mutual relations.... This charming and perceptive work deserves a wide readership among students of hemispheric relations.

Foreign Affairs - David C. Hendrickson