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Book Review
| Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America's Civilizing Mission. By MICHAEL ADAS. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006. 542 pp. $29.95 (cloth).
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In the past few years, bookstores have been deluged with books critical of American foreign policy, and specifically condemning the actions of the Bush administration in the Middle East. In Dominance by Design, Michael Adas carries that critical interpretation of American policy into the past, arguing that throughout history the attitudes and actions of Americans toward non-Western peoples have been characterized by condescension, arrogance, and violence. In a mirror image of the tale of American exceptionalism found in so many histories, he presents the history of the United States as an ongoing moral disaster. This is the case not only when American actions resulted in political failures, as in Vietnam and currently in Iraq, but also when the United States was politically victorious, as in its expansion across the North American continent or its colonization of the Philippines. |
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Adas attributes the moral blindness and overweening arrogance of the American people toward non-Western peoples to the powerful technologies they have adopted or developed. He does not discuss the origins of America's technology or the reasons for its superiority over that of non-Western societies, subjects dealt with in many other books. Rather, he concentrates on technology as a cause of America's superiority complex toward non-Western peoples, as revealed in the words of its leading politicians and intellectuals. |
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