Internationalizing US. Diplomatic History: A Practical Agenda *

International history has been much with us of late. Indeed, it has become over the last decade inmasingly difficult to open a joumal or hear a luncheon address without being treated to the academic equivalent of a ritual rain dance summoning the spirit of a more international approach.' You are by now familiar with the essential message. More work along the wellestablished lines of multiarchival research is imperative if we are to establish an adequate understanding of American relations with the other great powers as well as the lesser ones. Nonstate actors also deserve more attention for their influence on U.S. policy. We should extend our work into economic and social realms where the state may be marginal to the understanding of international interaction. Finally, the comparative dimension should figure more prominently in our work. Because any case becomes clearer when set alongside other comparable cases, the resulting insights can be rich, especially for Americans studying their own country's policy and hence in need of distance from it. Although advocates of international history have dealt in detail with our research program, they have had strikingly little to say about the broad implications of a more global approach for other facets of our scholarly life. It is time to propose a practical, if preliminary, agenda that considers the ramifications of a more international diplamatic history-for the def~t ion