OPEN UNIVERSITY SEPTEMBER 22, 2006
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by Darrin McMahon
In his post several days ago, Casey Blake alludes to a disturbing trend in European intellectual circles--the tendency to "read back from the present moment to a sweeping condemnation of American history as a whole." European attitudes toward America are of course varied and complex--it is something I have been thinking a lot about of late as a collaborator for a forthcoming PBS documentary on the subject (see a clip here at the website of the Center for New American Media). But Casey touches on an interesting fact: Europeans, in general, don't know much about American history, and many don't seem to care. Whereas you can go to almost any small college in America and find, say, a professor or two of French or German history, you will be hard-pressed to find a professor of American history anywhere in France or Germany. There are, to be sure, notable exceptions, as well as a number of programs teaching a kind of trendified American studies--film courses with heavy doses of Zizek and Critical Theory and that sort of thing. But a course on the American Revolution, the New Deal, or the Civil War? Good luck.
This is not an entirely new development, and it says something about European insularity, as well as an inveterate cultural condescension (eg. America is too young to have a history). But as one commentator to a post of mine pointed out recently, there was a time during the cold war when even America's most virulent detractors were well versed in American high culture, and probably American history too. In part that was because Americans themselves were working harder then to get the message out. Tom Bender has been arguing recently that American historians should do more to overcome parochialism, making their work intersect with the big world out there. That is one route. But another is the type of cultural diplomacy that we did so much of during the cold war when Europe clearly "mattered"--visiting lecturers, exchanges, chairs at European universities, and so forth. Given the centrality of America's relationship to the rest of the world today, everyone has an interest in knowing more about our past.
29 comments
It goes way beyond knowledge of US history. Try modern cultural achievements. Most Euros are not aware, or else choose to disregard, the extraordinary influence of America upon modern art, architecture, music and above all, poetry. The latter case is perhaps understandable-- who reads poetry these days? Besides, poets generally are the most difficult to translate, and the likes of Dickinson and Whitman are highly idiosyncratic; Whitman's an acquired taste for anyone who lacks an appreciation of the gnostic impulse, for example. Not sure that Stevens translates well, either. Even so, the influence of Whitman on the ibero-american world is hard to overestimate. Pessoa and Neruda recognize their debt to him, and it's not a stretch to say that Whitman is the father of modern iberian and latin american poetry. So it's only through wilful denial, or sheer ignorance, that any educated person who speaks portuguese or spanish, could deny the huge importance of the US to modern poetry. As to the plastic arts, again, the American contribution to the modern ethos, to the way we see things and the way we live, is hard to overestimate. But ask a supposedly cultured European to discuss Frank Lloyd Wright or Jackson Pollock and you're as likely as not to get a blank stare.
- teplukhin
September 22, 2006 at 12:46pm
Mr McMahon, I do hope that your documentary presents some very interesting evidence, turned up by the EU constitution debate in France especially, that, thanks to Google, wikipedia, blogs and the web generally, ordinary Europeans are developing an appreciation for the sophistication of US political and constitutional history and achievements. Even if elitist Euros are poisoned by their profs' and intello heroes' disdain for the US and steered away from a good faith, serious exploration of US history and culture-- as I've heard many times from all manner of Euro-pseudo-intellos, "What history? The US has no history!"-- despite this vacuum at the high end of the educational ladder, a quiet revolution is taking place with Europeans everywhere else. I do hope you spend some time investigating the efforts of non-ENArque, ordinary Frenchmen in pointing out the absurdities and fatal shortcomings of the EU constitution. Start with the website of Etienne Chouard, the Marseiles high school shop teacher who destroyed many of the hollow arguments of the 'Yes' elitists, often by referring to the simplicity, clarity and good sense of the US Constitution. (Note that the GUI is cheesy but the arguments contained within the site are lucid and powerful). http://etienne.chouard.free.fr/Europe/ Christopher Caldwell summarizes the clash of the old anti-US elite and the French 'Non' groundswell: http://tinyurl.com/rxefv
- teplukhin
September 22, 2006 at 1:08pm
To a large extent, modernism is American culture. Modern political parties and modern mass democracy (US early 19c), mass public education (ditto), modern multiculuralism (US melting pot), modern music (jazz), modern architecture (the skyscraper), the individualistic modern poetic voice (Whitman) and of course abstract expressionism and pop art: these are vivid, everyday examples that show modernism to be more closely associated with America and creative Americans than with any other country or collection of countries. No one who considers himself or herself a serious student of modernism, modern society or modern life can fail to be deeply immersed in American history and culture. It's like pretending to be a Catholic theologian and denying the importance of anything from Rome. And yet the vast majority of educated Europeans couldn't tell you the name of the world's first mass political party or the authors of the Federalist Papers or tell a Pollock froma Frankenthaler or a Lloyd Wright from a Sullivan or a Whitman poem from one by Dickinson.... It's hard to believe that this Euro-intellectual denial isn't conscience and willful. A shame that our diplomatic corps and public diplomacy efforts don't work more aggressively to counter this sinister denial of the truth.
- teplukhin
September 22, 2006 at 2:41pm
So what. A lack of knowledge of these does not indicate a willful denial of the American intellectual it merely demonstrates the diversity of cultural interests between the two continents. That is precisely how culture functions.
- ndmackenzie
September 22, 2006 at 3:29pm
Ah, le grand match du piss commence... ("New Order"--snicker. Clown.) Rather than respond to mackenzie's tedious swill I'll direct mon ami Cleary's attention back to the point of this thread, which is to try to understand the bizarre absence of US history courses and lecturers from the universities of Europe. Even if one assumed a level of hostility bordering on the mackenziean, this fails to explain the phenomenon. No intellectual of any consequence believes that you can resist an enemy without at least expending minimal effort to understand him. And yet there's next to nothing in European universities and curricula. A better explanation is one based on the cheaper emotions, fear and resentment. The former stems from the very reasonable belief that young Frenchmen and Germans like M. Chouard and his millions of 'Non' comrades will find much to admire in US history, politics and culture, and start asking some very hard questions about the EU project that they've decisively rejected. The latter is just sour grapes.
- teplukhin
September 22, 2006 at 3:45pm
Can you name specific universities? I think US history gets about the same amount of attention in European universities as German or Italian history does in the US. (There are good reasons for the American fascination with France and Britain.) The average German is probably no more ignorant of American history than the average American is of German history. But this is interesting. It's the last page of my library's copy of Perry Miller's _Errand into the Wilderness_ (1964 reprint): A LETTER TO THE READER Overseas, there is considerable belief that we are a country of extreme conservatism and that we cannot accommodate to social change. Books about America in the hands of readers abroad can help change those ideas. The U.S. Information Agency cannot, by itself, meet the vast need for books about the United States. You can help. Harper Torchbooks provides three packets of books on American history, economics, sociology, literature and politics to help meet the need. To send a packet of Torchbooks [*] overseas, all you need do is send your check for $7 (which includes the cost of shipping ) to Harper & Row. The U.S. Information Agency will distribute the books to libraries, schools, and other centers all over the world. I ask every American to support this program, part of a worldwide BOOKS USA campaign. I ask you to share in the opportunity to help tell others about America. EDWARD R. MURROW Director, U.S. Information Agency [*retailing at $10.85 to $12.00] PACKET I: Twentieth Century America Dulles/America's Rise to World Power, 1898-1954 Cochran/The American Business System, 1900-1955 Zabel, Editor/Literary Opinion in America (two volumes) Drucker/The New Society: The Anatomy of Industrial Order Fortune Editors/America in the Sixties: The Economy and the Society PACKET II: American History Billington/The Far Western Frontier, 1830-1860 Mowry/The Era of Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of Modern America, 1900-1912 Faulkner/Politics, Reform, and Expansion, 1890-1900 Cochran & Miller/The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of America Tyler/Freedom's Ferment: American Social History from the Revolution to the Civil War PACKET III: American History Hansen/The Atlantic Migration, 1607-1860 Degler/Out of Our Past: The Forces that Shaped Modern America Probst, Editor/The Happy Republic: A Reader in Tocqueville's America Alden/The American Revolution, 1775-1783 Wright/The Cultural Life of the American Colonies, 1607-1763 ------------- I thought it was interesting that the purpose is to dispel the notion that the US is a country of extreme conservatism. I wonder how the books (which I haven't read) square with that agenda. All I can say is that the titles seem to scant the Civil War, and 1920s-1950s (apart from The American Business System, 1900-1955).
- ggponi
September 22, 2006 at 4:34pm
I dare say most average Europeans know more about American history, past or present, than we know about theirs. Quick, who is the Prime Minister of Denmark? How about Canada? (not even in Europe but our own neighbor) When did Canada get their own Prime Minister? In daily life, Europeans are bombarded by Hollywoods version of American history. American documentaries are broadcast everywhere, as is CNN, etc. American rank about the lowest in Geography. How can you know the history of a place if you don't even know where it is?
- blackton
September 22, 2006 at 5:02pm
Let's be blunt - from a European point of view, there is no American history. Until 1917 the US was a place where people went to leave history behind and start afresh. Since then American and European history on a world scale have largely coincided, and where there have been local differences - Vietnam, racial integration - Europeans have not seen that there's anything to learn from. The same is true of politics and law, areas of primary concern in the US and ones that are viewed as being local and settled in Europe. Europe does not share the constant need for self-analysis in these areas, explaining why American progress - so notable in the US - has not received the same attention in Europe
- jcooney
September 22, 2006 at 8:33pm
I had idly begun to read this thread,in spite of the omnipresent sneering that we all have to suffer through when discussing education in America. I decided to check some Universities in Europe. so, I went through the U of Vienna, U of Bologna, U of Innsbruck, etc. And the poster seems to be correct: there does not appear to be courses in American and US history. Maybe I can't figure out the curricula pages, my German is rusty and my Italian is non existent. As to why the europeans, I believe aside from the Brits, have no intellectual interest in the US, it is a real mystery. I recall that we have participated in two world wars and a cold war on their continent. That would sure make me curious about these guys that somehow have saved the bacon. On the other hand, weren't the universities in Europe complicit with the ancien regime as well as the Nazis and Fascists? Maybe we busted their chops?
- dgorton
September 22, 2006 at 8:48pm
In European eyes, America's entry into the two world wars, and the waging of the cold war, are easily explained. America stepped in on the side of right, to fight evil, in all three cases. The world agreed that the aggressor in both world wars was evil, and the fight against communism was an easy sell too. There's no need to be curious about America's motives in each of these cases. Grateful might have been good, but given the collateral destruction of Europe stands over the relative intactness of the US.
- jcooney
September 22, 2006 at 9:07pm
If one's definition of "history" excludes anything in the modern era, then of course the US has no history. This attitude fits the Tory or royalist world-view in which Church and Crown and Aristocracy are the institutions that matter. But how can the European Left have such hostility to the cradle of modernism, the birthplace of constitutional democracy and mass political parties and mass democratic culture? Bizarre.
- teplukhin
September 22, 2006 at 9:09pm
...taugh in American colleges and universities?
- ChanRobt
September 22, 2006 at 9:39pm
A Day Without Americans Day all across Europe. That'll fix those snotty Euros.
- ChanRobt
September 22, 2006 at 9:40pm
Your notion that America has no history and is merely where Europeans went to escape history is just a cute abstraction. Most people, I think, would regard the world's oldest and most powerful political regime worthy of some historical study by virtue of those facts alone. Add to that America's unique status as the first nation to purport to stand for universal human rights; its status as an artificial creation of ideas; its struggles to reconcile power, freedom, and justice (Lincoln is worthy of study by eeryone); its struggles to accommodate every ethnicity, race, and cultural tradition of the world within its borders; its leadership (like it or not but much to like) in modern culture; and its veritable invention of the modern world and the postmodern world, and, I dare say, the case for intellectual inquiry into the subject of America (which must, at the very least, include its history) by non-Americans seems fairly compelling. The fact that many universities in Europe apparently don't offer any courses in the subject -- and American universities offer countless courses in world arcana of all variety -- is shocking. Moreover, the notion that there's "nothing to learn" from Vietnam or race in America seems wilfully perverse. Seems to me there is some concern among Europeans today regarding minority populations and tricky wars.
- jhildner
September 22, 2006 at 10:24pm
"And how many American intellectuals can tell" "Marcel Proust from Georges Perec" One wrote against the Dreyfus conviction and the other experimented himself out of literature. Proust by the way was also influenced by American literature of the 19c. "James Joyce from Samuel Beckett" One was influenced by American literature, the other was Joyce's secretary and was influenced by kafka. "Christa Wolf from Ingeborg Bachmann" One was an East German by choice as she tried to escape from her pro Nazi background. The other had an affair with Max Frisch. "Italo Calvino from Leonardo Sciascia" One was a great fantasy writer who also wrote a terrific novel about Italian partisans. The other one is not that important. "Wim Wenders from Werner Fassbinder" Wenders is a great film maker, Fassbinder was an antisemitic thug and a pretentious film maker. "Joy Division from New Order" Who cares! "Richard Rodgers from Norman Foster" One was a great popular composer of operettas the other is known only to mackenzie. Et cetera from et cetera legion of etceteras out there. Your point?
- jacksondyer
September 22, 2006 at 10:46pm
"It could also be argued that 'American' is in fact European/African/Asian in its contribution e.g. Blues and Jazz music was a fusion of Celtic and African sounds during the civil war." What bull, had Africans immigrated to Ireland I doubt they would have invented Jazz. Jazz is the product of a typical American environment. It depends on the contribution of many elements such as musical instruments as well as other ethnic musics of which "celtic' may be only one. The others would be English and French songs and Jewish Klezmer melodies of which Cleary knows nothing about. Besides there is much more to American culture than Jazz.
- jacksondyer
September 22, 2006 at 10:52pm
I said earlier that America had the world's oldest political regime. The British might disagree and date the formation of their current constitutional monarchy from the Glorious Revolution about a hundred years earlier. In any event, America's regime is among the oldest in the world.
- jhildner
September 22, 2006 at 11:36pm
It misses the mark to compare a Dane's knowledge of the American president with an American's knowledge of the Danish prime minister, since one is the most powerful man on earth and the other . . . isn't. Moreover, as some have noted above, the Americans liberated the Danes from Nazi occupation and saved them from Soviet occupation. It might be natural that the Danes then take an interest in their protector. Whereas the Danes -- or the Danish elites, anyway -- insulted the Americans nonstop even while the Americans went about saving the Danes from Soviet occupation. It might make sense, then, that Americans feel a waning desire to familiarize themselves with the politics of small, unimportant European nations. A more telling series of questions, by the way, would be: how many Danes know who the prime minister of Canada is, or when Canada received her own prime minister? And: How many Canadians can name the Danish prime minister? The answer, in both cases: next to none.
- myles_weber
September 23, 2006 at 12:18am
Europeans also may not know that much about each other's history. A Bulgarian friend of mine once described her history education; very good on Bulgaria, nearly non-existent on the US, but pretty spotty on the rest of Europe too. I suspect the Dutch are weak on Italian history, and vice versa. And since most European university students specialize more than American ones do, all the history they get is likely to be in the secondary schools, save for the history majors.
- withywindle
September 23, 2006 at 12:22am
"Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands." Basques
- jacksondyer
September 23, 2006 at 1:26am
I found some U.S. history courses at Universitat Erfurt, which interestingly enough is in the former DDR. In fact, some of these classes are quite specialized: http://sulwww.uni-erfurt.de/lehrveranstaltungen/20 06-ws/VV-2006-WS-online-englisch.pdf http://sulwww.uni-erfurt.de/lehrveranstaltungen/20 06-ss/VV-2006-SS-online.englisch.pdf (Scroll down to the BA History section in each) It's true that US history is a niche focus for Europeans, just as French or German history would be for Americans. The difference is that, with the exception of perhaps the British, few European school children get a broad overview of American history comparable to that we Americans get of European history, even post-French Revolution European history. Besides, fewer and fewer of the very American professors who might stimulate overseas interest in our history are going overseas to teach in European universities anymore, because leaving North American academia can be a career killer. Fulbright fellowships help, but you can count on one hand the number of European institutions at which an Ivy League professor would be caught dead teaching. We're quickly becoming victims of our own insularity.
- primwallflow
September 23, 2006 at 1:52am
At the Law Faculty of the University of Leiden, we begin our masters course in Legal Philosophy with the Federalist Papers. Now tell me sir, what law faculty in America does that?
- perseus353
September 23, 2006 at 6:43am
"Fascinating stuff. A lot of people on this island could be accused of being what Chan referred to as, 'professional Irishmen'." As an reader and admirer or Joyce and Beckett I do think that there is such a thing as a unique Irish culture worth preserving. I am a strong believer in the preservation of small cultures and languages. Not to say that these cultures don't change over time, yet we shouldn't discard them for all that in the name of some spurious notion of "multi-culturalism" which is no culture at all.
- jacksondyer
September 23, 2006 at 12:21pm
You can't be serious! The Federalist Papers are routinely studied in America, especially in law schools when considering the foundations of the Constitution.
- jhildner
September 23, 2006 at 1:22pm
A September 9, 2006 press release from the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation states:
I tried to make it easy on people by asking them to name a current prime minister of Denmark, let alone any. I am sure most Danes know who Jefferson, Adams, Washington, are etc. when at the time the US was not even a tenth rate power. Europeans are already bombarded with more information about America then they want to know, it is not surprising (especially considering how much longer their own history is) how they might slight the study of ours. Another question, please do not consult wikipedia, who is the current Prime Minister of China? What is his function? Can anyone name the last Chinese dynasties name? I remember when I attended college most students knowledge of history was appalling, they took the class, crammed for the test, then they happily forgot what they learned.
- blackton
September 23, 2006 at 5:15pm
That's good. I guess I had a partial impression. Not enough law schools in America do Jurisprudence well. In Europe, Jurisprudence or "Metajuridica" departments are generally weak, except for ours of course.
- perseus353
September 23, 2006 at 5:56pm
"I couldn't agree more Jack on protecting cultures. A lot of Europeans see the American cultures omnipotence as a threat. Natural and maybe correct. Teplukin is right on that, fear drives it." I don't think they really know American culture. What they are afraid of is McDonalds, Hollywood shlock movies, and other mass produced popular culture items. I don't like them either, but they do not represent American culture any more than "soda bread" or the croisants represent the totality of Irish or French culture. To know American culture you need to study American history, literature, music, and art. "I tried reading Joyce, oh how I tried. A friend finished Ulysses. He hasn't been the same since. He keeps staring into the distance muttering, 'the horror, the horror.'" Well, that's too bad. I found it exhilirating. I reread it every now and then.
- jacksondyer
September 23, 2006 at 10:45pm
If you are talking about highschool history lessons then you have to ask what history do you want teachers to leave out- the Russian revolution? The Nazis? Some quick overview of their national history? I took a US politics and history course at Cambridge and I know lots of History majors who opted to do some American history, so those posters excluding Britain from the more general point are probably correct. One of the points that might be being overlooked is that US colleges have more money then they know what to do with and can run courses on obscure topics that are fitfully attended. Continental universities have no such funding to offer all the courses that it should. Oh, and as someone who has attended universities on both sides of the pond, I can confirm that most students (even graduate students) have little knowledge about history in general, and the history of the other side of the Atlantic specifically. Having had WWII and the Nazis every year since I started nursery, I was amazed that many of my fellow Grad students had not learned about them at all at their American high schools. This defensive and nationalist snorting shows the attitude that stops understanding- any reading or research is superfluous until people stop acting so defensively about eachother in the first place.
- sradford
September 24, 2006 at 8:32am