The author of this textbook frankly states his historiographic technique in the preface:
A brief statement about the procedure followed by the author may be in order. Two approaches were possible. The first is known as ‘shredding,’ the other as ‘chopping’ the subject. In the first case an effort is made to show how a given policy is applied to each of the various chains of events that transpired. The method has obvious merits but has been discarded in the present study in favor of chopping. The reason is simple: This was the way events actually transpired. The action taken at any one time was likely to be determined by events that formed the context in which the policy was to be applied. A procedure that might have been ideal for Cuban or Argentine relations on a given occasion was occasionally wholly impractical at another date because of events transpiring elsewhere. As a result the narrative becomes a series of ‘stills’; it is hoped they will become a moving picture when passed in review. This procedure interrupts interesting stories (to the annoyance of the reader at times) [sic] but helps to make the emergence of policy evident. And the emergence of policy, rather than the narration of the history of events, is the primary purpose of this study.
There are other, and less brutal methods of writing diplomatic history that involve probing, dissection, and reconstruction, but these are not in question here.
The adoption of “chopping” as a method gives the book the flavor of a chronicle. The chapters cover periods, such as “War and Peace, 1914-1920” and the intra-chapter organization is usually geographical so that the reader is informed, from north to south or vice versa, how the United States carried on its relations with Mexico, “the North Coast,” and other areas.
This method demands country-by-country coverage, so in Chapter V we are given this paragraph: “Close supervision of Nicaragua continued without any particular change in practices or policies” (p. 159). The chronological approach is typified by this sentence: Thus closed 1928” (p. 234). The chapters, which cover periods of four to ten years, read like summaries of The United States in World Affairs.
The sources for the book include private papers and archives of the Department of State, in addition to a comprehensive collection of secondary materials. The bibliography will be very useful to future scholars.
Oddly enough Callott, like J. Lloyd Mecham, errs in reporting that the boundary dispute between Ecuador and Peru has ended. He states that “in February, 1945, finis was written to the oldest boundary dispute on the continent” (p. 353). Among other sources for this statement he cites Mecham (The United States and InterAmerican Security [1961], p. 170). However, Mecham in the same book (p. 408) states that in September 1960 Ecuador announced that it would no longer be bound by the 1942 agreement of Rio de Janeiro. Mecham was right the second time; Ecuador still refuses to accept the Rio terms.
Another annoying discrepancy—-within five pages (pp. 78, 81, 82) a British ambassador in Washington is referred to as Pauncefote, Pauncefort, and Paunceforte. The first is correct.
