Abstract: The article examines the formation of one of the foreign policy doctrines of expansionism, which became the main instrument of US foreign policy in the twentieth century. The theory of "open doors", the essence of which is to provide equal opportunities to all interested parties on the basis of unlimited economic freedom and unhindered penetration of capital, was proclaimed by Secretary of State J. Hay in 1899 in relation with China, which was considered as a potential market for the sale of industrial goods and a profitable object of capital investment. Having opposed the division of China by the European powers, the American ruling elites proposed to replace individual control over individual parts of the country, according to the concluded agreements on "spheres of influence", with the establishment of a collective system of external supervision over its entire territory. By putting external expansion in the form of international agreement, they wanted to force competitors stronger in military and political terms to play by the proposed rules, transferring power rivalry to the trade and economic area, where their commercial superiority was undoubted. The nationalist movement of the Yihetuans, which began in the autumn of 1898, aimed at expelling foreigners out of the country, jeopardized the idea of implementing the doctrine of "open doors". After much thought, the White House abandoned the widely disseminated peacefulness and approved the participation of the expeditionary force in the joint intervention of European powers in China. Interference in the internal political affairs of a formally sovereign state meant that the United States was involved in its violent redistribution. Later, Washington continued to follow its course around the world, creating an arsenal of new political and economic methods, officially formalized as a generally accepted international principle in the 1922 treaty of the Nine Powers.

Abstract: Slavery has always been condemned across the world; however in the end of the XX century, such canonical concept was rectified based on the extensive examination by American scholars of compilation of narratives of the former slaves collected in 1930s in the United States. At that time, 2,300 former slaves from 17 states were interviewed about their life in the era of slavery. Later, these interviews were placed in open access on the website of the Library of US Congress, reconstructing a contradictory picture of everyday life of African-Americans in the conditions of plantation economy: some reminiscences convey almost a nostalgic feeling of the past, while others criticizes it severely. The author in his attempt explain the historical accuracy of the results of mass interviewing of African-Americans, tries to make sense why 70 years later, the eyewitnesses of the same event have polar viewpoints. Forming the new comparative-historical approaches towards examination of collective consciousness under the influence of anthropologization of historical knowledge, the interview materials allow reconstructing the period, demonstrating the value system of the entire population group, unlike biography that structures the chain of events in chronological order. Analysis of the archive “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938” has not been previously conducted within the Russian historiography, just briefly mentioned as one of the documentary aspects of the institution of slavery. The contained material is important for scientific comprehension of the bygone era of slavery, reflected in the collective memory of long-suffering African-American sub-ethnos. The problem of slavery in the United States, which synthesizes heritage of the past with practices of everyday life in various manifestations, seems optimal from the perspective of historiographical interest.

Abstract: The article examines the little-studied in Russian historiography topic of the role of U.S. President T. Roosevelt in resolving the first Moroccan crisis. The author seeks to determine the content, forms, and methods of his influence on the position of the leadership of Germany and France, and to examine the routes of the resolution of the regional conflict from spring 1905 to April 1906. Particular attention is paid to the secrecy of Roosevelt's mediation mission, which excluded information leakage. Through the use of not only generally accepted means, but also methods of threats and blackmail, the president managed to convince the conflicting parties to sit at the negotiation table in the Spanish town of Algeciras, to shift their position from a dead point and to achieve a mutually beneficial compromise concerning the key issues on the agenda. The main method for analyzing the Moroccan crisis and the ways it was solved is the systematic approach, which consists of a comprehensive analysis of the regional conflict's anatomy in order to comprehensively identify the relationship and interactions of the entire body of participants with an emphasis, above all, on the actions of the American side. No less fruitful is the use of historical comparative studies in determining both Roosevelt’s mediation motives and the methods he used to solve the Moroccan crisis, including in comparison with the tools used in the Russo-Japanese war. In Russian historiography, Roosevelt's mediation mission in resolving the Moroccan crisis has not been the subject of focused studies, but only briefly mentioned as one of the episodes in his foreign policy activities. The article is written based on original sources from the epistolary heritage of the president, for the first time introduced into scientific circulation.