Dale C. Copeland's A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China is a historical study of how American international trade and foreign policy are often interlinked. Taking the reader from pre-independent colonies through two wars with Britain, this book shows how American behavior and antagonism towards Britain were largely due to British desires to keep America's growth in check. Over the subsequent centuries, America's foreign policy would often reflect the realpolitik of trade relations with allies and "enemies" throughout the world as the country grew both geographically and economically.
Copeland's historical framing of trade and foreign policy sets up a useful final chapter where he discusses the present relationship between the United States and China, a country that itself is in a position of rising global economic and political strength. Copeland analyzes potential scenarios for how the U.S.-Chinese relationship may play out in the coming decades, drawing on China's history as well as America's current political environment to map out potential outcomes.
A World Safe for Commerce may be a complex book to digest in some areas, particularly when economic or foreign policy theories are explained. However, the bulk of the book is a fine narrative of understanding America's economic growth and how its foreign policy was tied largely to its global position and, in recent decades, its desires to shape global economic conditions.
MY RATING: 4
