The American Revolutionary Tradition and the World, or Why America Has Wanted to Spread Democracy Everywhere

From the very beginning of its history the United States has sought to spread republicanism or democracy around the world. The American Revolutionaries believed that their new nation was in the vanguard of history and had a responsibility to spread its form of government wherever they could, not by sending troops but by example and diplomatic pressure. Throughout the nineteenth century the United States was usually the first nation in the world to recognize new democratic regimes that attempted to throw off monarchy, beginning with the French Revolution and continuing with the colonial rebellions in South America and the many abortive European revolutions of 1848. This Revolutionary tradition was challenged by the Communist revolution in Russia in 1917. Since then the United States role in the world has never been quite the same.