About David Ekbladh

David Ekbladh is Associate Professor of History at Tufts University. His first book, The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order, (Princeton University Press, 2010) looks at the place of development ideas in American foreign relations during the twentieth century. It received a number of awards, including the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize. His current book project, Look at the World: The Rise of an American Globalism in the 1930s reflects a growing interest in the interwar crisis. It focuses on a period where political upheaval facilitated the rise of "totalitarian" states. These were believed to have changed the nature of international life. Americans came to the conclusion that to remain secure at home they had to actively promote policies they believed would assure global stability. This demanded the assumption of vast—and potentially limitless—commitments that defined a new type of American globalism.