Making The World Like Us: Education, Cultural Expansion, And The American Century (Perspectives On The Twentieth Century)

Making the World Like Us: Education, Cultural Expansion, and the American Century (Perspectives on the Twentieth Century)

This is the first systemic investigation of the various efforts to promote the expansion of American culture via major religious, social, political and governmental institutions. Christian missionaries, secular cultural elite, and the government have served as three major forces pushing American cultural values and political idealism abroad, although each has emphasized different elements of Americanism?Christian beliefs, individualism, democracy, and free enterprise?in championing American leadership. In the course of American ascendance as an international power and a superpower, education caught the imagination of different groups as the means to shape individual views and world outlook from the American perspective. Major philanthropic enterprises have likewise hoped to encourage positive sentiment toward American influence.