ABSTRACT
American scholarship on China has always been beset by ambiguities and contradictions. China was an important target of American missionary activities: thousands of young Americans went to China to carry on religious, medical, and educational work. Some have seen American gestures toward China as the logical extension of America's westward expansion. Americans assumed that progress for China meant doing things in the American way. The Cold War turned the formation of a sense of national identity into an essentially negative process. This is well illustrated in the case of Americanism. The origins of the Cold War are to be found in the early twentieth century, but the roots of the matter go further back in the advent of the modem age. The hostility of the Cold War, the American project of military containment, diplomatic isolation, and a trade embargo helped maintain the isolation, but the impetus to close the country clearly came from within.
