History 478    Fall 2011    Essay One Assignment    
due in paper at the start of class on 4 October

ASSIGNMENT:
Historians of U.S. international relations who use the cultural model emphasize the power of ideas and cultural assumptions in shaping U.S. foreign policy.  Some of these scholars stress that U.S. international relations derived in large part from Americans’ notions of “progress,” “mission,” and “civilization.”  Based on your reading of the Early Documents, what big assumptions did Americans make when they invoked these three concepts?  For your thesis statement, find a way to crystallize in just a sentence or two what you see as the most important assumptions that Americans made when using these key terms (progress, mission, and civilization).

EVIDENCE:
Your main source of evidence for the paper should be the Early Documents.  To do well with this assignment, your paper will need to provide at least EIGHT different brief quotations from at least FIVE different primary sources in the Early Documents.  Each quotation must also come with brief context that identifies in some basic way the speaker of the quotation.  Lastly, your essay needs to do all this in just ONE PAGE.  The page should be typed and double-spaced, with normal one-inch margins and normal 12-point font (about 300 words total).  

ADVICE:
This assignment will challenge your writing skills, because you will need to fit a lot of evidence into a short essay.  You will likely need to write multiple drafts.  If your first draft comes to a page and a half, for instance, edit carefully to remove any “dead wood” words, “throat-clearing” filler sentences, or unnecessarily long quotations.

Your introductory paragraph, in which you lay out your thesis statement, should be unusually short for this assignment.  A two-sentence introduction is probably ideal, and anything over three sentences will probably take up too much space.  You do not need to have a conclusion paragraph.

You also do not need to worry about citations for this assignment, because everything you cite will come from just one source, our Early Documents.

Remember to consult the tips on writing on my personal faculty website.  Pay particular attention to my rules on avoiding “unattributed quotations” and on starting each paragraph with analytical topic sentences.



PRACTICE EDITING:
(224 words that could be cut down to about 140 words)
Improve this passage by removing “dead wood” words and filler sentences.  Also make sure that each paragraph has a good topic sentence, that each quotation is as brief as possible, and that each quotation comes with identifying context.

    When examining the history of U.S. international relations, careful analysis is required to uncover the true motives driving U.S. foreign policies.  Although different historians may take different positions, it soon becomes clear that an important driving force behind U.S. international relations has been the self-interest of cats.  From George Washington to Teddy Roosevelt, the feline influence on U.S. foreign policy has been striking.  
    Cats played an important role in providing Americans with rationales for imperial expansion.  As George Washington wrote in his 1783 Farewell Address, “our republic can only survive when our Feline Friends have ample space to hunt mice.”  James Monroe also argued that Americans needed to expand and increase their territorial holdings to serve the interest of cats.  His 1823 Monroe Doctrine speech warned, “We must consider the interests of the United States carefully, and refrain from hasty judgments on what is or is not in our best fortune.  Too many careless speakers expound recklessly with little heed for the consequences of their conclusions.  But one conclusions is clear: Europeans travel with poodles, and we must keep them out of the Americas.”
    Cats are of course not dogs.  “The civilizing influence of the Christian Tabby is far superior to the infernal barking of hounds.”  One missionary in 1907 agreed and wrote of cats’ “civilizing temperment.”  George Washington himself praised cats’ “noble constitution.”