The relevance of European and American conceptions of history

[public hermit]

I suppose that was the idea, right? Of the Puritans and everyone who came after, to found a completely different society, so it makes sense that it would be seen as the beginning I suppose. What you are saying there also reminds me of Last Exit to Brooklyn. Maybe that reflects the same idea? It’s full of characters striving to achieve an ideal situation in one way or another and all failing to do so. The characters all seem to be trying to build lives but with no solid foundation. I suppose that is what the constitution was intended to be, a foundation for a new kind of society. It makes sense to take that and move forward with it, and I think it can be said to have been largely successful but like you seem to be saying the past can’t just be ignored without consequences.

Maybe if we could grasp how young a nation we really are, then the idea that we are in some sense still working on that initial foundation would be more acceptable? This country is still a great experiment. There's no shame in admitting our wrongs, only in not trying to correct them. I am hopeful that we are still trying to get it right. I think more and more people are willing to do the hard work of realizing those initial ideas for all people.

 

[Chesterton]

I’m not sure about the idea of the democracy of tradition in relation to literature. I think it’s true in theology, certainly in churches I’ve been part of people can have a tendency to become fully convinced of a thing without really having any understanding of it, because it is part of the churches’ teaching. I don’t think you can apply it so easily to literature though, it’s true that there were other poets and playwrights in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s times, writing about the same themes, in many cases repeating the same stories in different ways, but Shakespeare for example just did it way better than anyone else, as did Chaucer. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the human condition is much more far reaching than say Ben Johnson’s. Truly great writers really capture something that other people just aren’t able to express to the same degree and with the same incisiveness, so they earn their place rather than being voted into it. The English language and English society would be fundamentally different had there been no-one of Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s calibre at the time.

Everything you say may be true but my point is only that humans are the ones who decide things like "Shakespeare did it better", and so his work becomes part of the national culture or character.

 

[Caliban]

...To current events.

A couple of things I came across recently have made me question whether people living in the US have a fundamentally different way of thinking about what constitutes recent history, and what might be called ancient history, or just things that occurred 'a long time ago'.

The first was an article written by a young woman that I read on Medium about certain themes in 'ancient' literature. What the article was actually about was medieval and renaissance literature, which the writer appears to think of as periods of 'ancient' history. The second was the idea I've seen in a few threads here on CF that the period of slavery in the US happened so long ago that it no longer has any relevance.

This last idea is worth discussing, I think. As a European, I tend to see history as stretching back in one unbroken line (which is indeed what it does) to the very earliest times we know anything about. Everything that ever happened in any significant way had an effect on everything that came after it. To me, that seems obvious - am I wrong? I have spent most of my adult life living in the UK, in England specifically. The dual influences of the classical world and the Germanic/Nordic world are obvious and widespread in English society, thinking, language - pretty much everything. It is not difficult to see how major events in history have shaped the way the English see themselves and how English society functions, 1066 (and all that), the great plague, the subsequent peasants revolt and so on and so on. All of these historic influences come together to inform the perceptions and prejudices of the average person in the street. Again, this seems obvious.

Slavery was common in the US during what was in England the Victorian era - of course slavery was effectively exported to the US from England and other European countries, via colonialism, so this isn't about apportioning blame in any sense, just about things that happened - but wasn't part of most people's lives actually in England at that time. But that same period was tremendously influential on English society and how English people see themselves in all kinds of ways that are absolutely still relevant to how that society functions now. A society and its history are ineluctably bound to each other, what society is now in any country is what previous actions and events have made it. Again, this seems blatantly obvious.

It does to me, anyway, but it does seem that maybe this way of thinking isn't so common or regarded as obvious in the US - ? Is that true? To me, the Victorian period was really not all that long ago, in historical terms. Slavery in the US ended, as I understand it, in the late 1800s, there were laws in place that defined black people in some parts of the US as unequal citizens up until the 1960s, and quantifiable social prejudice continued into the 1970s. None of this is ancient history, but the view that none of this has any relevance today, with regard to the current situation as much as the wider picture of race relations in the US, seems to be quite common.

That's my impression in any case, and it is just an impression, so I'd be interested in hearing what people living in the US think about it. The US is after all a very young country and so a different understanding of history, and different conceptions of what constitutes ancient history, are explainable.

Your post seems to be invoking the idea of hagiography. Initially involving the biography of saints, hagiography is now considered a pejorative among historians that represents history with a less critical eye and with a reverential attitude. Many conservatives in the U.S. revere the historical narratives they were taught growing up, that overt criticism of those narratives become offensive to them and historians are described as "rewriting history."

The left will do something similar by the use of presentism. This is the anachronistic imposition of modern values of historical figures and making contemporary moral judgements on them. Many conservatives react against this without knowing what it is called. For example, Thomas Jefferson wrote that all men are created equal. Did he really believe that? Not like we do today, but he initiated a larger principal that all people today benefit from. Many on the left will judge Jefferson to be morally bankrupt and disregard his contribution to moral progress. Others see him as a progressive of his era. Still others see his as saintly and revere him as a "Founding Father"--using almost religious language to describe him and others of that generation.

In the U.S. passions are at high water mark because the culture is changing from religious to secular and from white to greater representation of ethnic backgrounds. Polarization happens everywhere now--even in our reading of history.

 

[Chesterton]

I find it odd though. I speak to a fair number of foreign fellows or registrars that make their way through here, and these are all educated people.

The Europeans (mostly British, German, Danish, Dutch) are usually more clued up about history in general. The Australians, Canadians and Americans have more narrow views of their own - even less with Australians, where I remember I had a guy where I had to point out to him that he had a Eureka stockade flag on his clothing, which he knew nothing about. We also get a whole bunch of people from Dubai or parts of Africa, and they are also myopic in their own ways, but less than those others. I think Europeans are more aware of history in a broader cultural sense than other groups, and I can only think it is the presence of ruins and such that are responsible.

I wonder if another reason for Europeans being more aware could be that it's because European cultures have played such a significant role in world history. They've "reached out and touched" a lot of other peoples, both physically (with ships) and with ideas, starting with the Greeks I suppose. And there's the idea of "Westernizing". One Russian tzar, whose name escapes me, wanted to Westernize, which I guess stated simply means to be like Europe. Japan came to want to Westernize or Americanize, and of course without Europe there'd be no America. Maybe when your role in history is very important you're more interested in it, and want to know more about it.

It cuts both ways though, as you pointed out. What you choose to celebrate or forget says a lot about you; and I think a large part of the New World's views are a purposeful act of Forgetting. It reminds me of when a US secretary of state made disparaging rematks to a British minister about how they could have acted so in the Anglo-Zulu wars or somesuch, and he retorted that it was about the same time as the Mexican American war.

Eh, maybe he was just another rude American.

Even today, the West of the US is not seen as what it really was - the fruit of an expansionist myth, the Manifest Destiny. Like Siberia, the Western US states are the product of 19th century expansionism; as much as British India or the Scramble for Africa. Their roots lie in the same thinking, but the way we reflect on them, are drastically different. Custer is not juxtaposed to Isandlhwana often, but we have similar historic forces, like convergent outflow of Western civilisation, at play here. The stories we tell ourselves differ.

I have to disagree with how Americans see the Western U.S. I think we know what was going on then. We might not talk about it a lot, but I think we know.

 

[Radagast]

One Russian tzar, whose name escapes me, wanted to Westernize, which I guess stated simply means to be like Europe.

This one? Peter the Great - Wikipedia

 

[Chesterton]

This one? Peter the Great - Wikipedia

Yeah yeah, that one. I knew it was Peter the something.

 

[JackRT]

Why do you consider imprisonment for committing a crime the equivalent of enslavement of the innocent?

Does imprisonment in the USA mean that the prisoner is no longer a citizen? There are both federal and state laws regulating wages and working conditions. Why do these laws not apply to citizens who are in prison?

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I have to disagree with how Americans see the Western U.S. I think we know what was going on then. We might not talk about it a lot, but I think we know.

Okay, that was not my impression. In Britain or South Africa, remembering the colonialisation is fraught with issues. The popular heroes of colonial expansion are no longer celebrated. Figures like Robert Clive, Cecil Rhodes or Kitchener aren't lauded as they used to be. In my own country, even mention the Voortrekkers and immediately you are pegged as racist. Or how Australia struggled now with commemoration of the arrival of the First Fleet.

In the US, I don't see that animosity to the Pioneers; and the Wild West, though less culturally prevalent, is not presented as something akin to a European colonisation. True, there is some pushback on Thanksgiving, but that mostly seems a fringe thing (from my admittedly outsider perspective). Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the US supported decolonisation in some form or other, but the westward expansion of the US was not seen as a similar event. It is true that these US territories were settler colonies, like Australia or Canada; or to a lesser extent South Africa, Rhodesia or Kenya; which makes it hard to balance the claims of former inhabitants and the claims of the current settled ones.

I don't know, but the manner in which the narrative is presented seems different to me. Maybe because the US is seen as a unit, while in other colonisations there was not territorial cohesion. As you said, it is less talked about; while in other countries there is a continuous profusion of crocodile tears obligated whenever any Colonial legacy is even mentioned.

 

[Tom 1]

In the U.S. passions are at high water mark because the culture is changing from religious to secular and from white to greater representation of ethnic backgrounds.

Yes that makes a lot of sense.

 

[Radagast]

Yeah yeah, that one. I knew it was Peter the something.

If it's "Someone the Something," it's usually "the Great."

Only in France would they call a king "Pepin the Short."

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

If it's "Someone the Something," it's usually "the Great."

Only in France would they call a king "Pepin the Short."

Ethelred the Unready, Charles the merry monarch (which was a term of opprobrium at the time), John Lackland, Richard Crouchback, Bloody Mary etc.

There is a rich nomenclature of kings, such as Edward Longshanks, Eric Bloodaxe, Louis the Fat, Frederick Stupor Mundi, Richard the Lionheart, Edmund Ironsides, Edgar the Peaceable, Edward the Confessor, Harald Fairhair, Louis the Pious, Ivan the Terrible, etc. The Great is usually reserved for the top echelon, although nowadays people often ommit these agnomen.

 

[Bob Crowley]

This is very true. I feel the modern world in general, but the New World states like the US, Australia, Canada, etc. have a profound lack of sense of the past....

Speaking as an Australian, we've only been a constituted nation since 1st January 1901, that is to say 119 years. Prior to that the six Australian states were a bunch of separate British colonies (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia (which included what is now the Northern Territory), Western Australia and Tasmania). So we just don't have a European sense of continuity stretching back over the centuries.

An old building to us is one that is a hundred years old. I was talking to a client from work the other day and he said his house was built around 1918. To me that's old.

When we participated in the Boer War on behalf of Britain the late 19th Century, each state sent their own separate contingent eg. Queensland Imperial Bushmen for one example.

Sure there's the indigenous record stretching back thousands of years, but that generally wasn't recorded, and for most non-indigenous Australians, does not form part of our psychological sense of history. Obviously indigenous people feel differently but most of us have a different sense of origins.

So you're correct in saying that we don't have a strong sense of history.

This reminds me of a comment my old pastor made about some of the eschatological viewpoints that come out of (usually) Protestant circles. He commented that most of them come out of the USA, and that "I think they're a bit weird." He added, "The Europeans don't think that way, and they've had a much longer experience of Christianity."

So your comment about a "sense of history" applies to our perceptions of the church as well. I"m Catholic (by choice as an adult) but I would not have the same sense of church continuity that I think an Italian or Roman would have, with evidence of the church's past all around them.

 

[Tom 1]

Ethelred the Unready, Charles the merry monarch (which was a term of opprobrium at the time), John Lackland, Richard Crouchback, Bloody Mary etc.

There is a rich nomenclature of kings, such as Edward Longshanks, Eric Bloodaxe, Louis the Fat, Frederick Stupor Mundi, Richard the Lionheart, Edmund Ironsides, Edgar the Peaceable, Edward the Confessor, Harald Fairhair, Louis the Pious, Ivan the Terrible, etc. The Great is usually reserved for the top echelon, although nowadays people often ommit these agnomen.

Jones the Steam.

 

[Tom 1]

I recently saw attempts to put back up statues of Mary in Prague thrown down as the Hapsburg Austro-Hungary crumbled, and jockeying over the borders of old Hungary in eastern Europe; or how money used to depict old mediaeval kings there, too.

This kind of thing gets complicated, with different groups making claims of the supremacy of their particular group-within-the-group etc, in the worst cases leading to full on conflict between neighbours, as in the Balkans. Maybe having too much history is a bad thing also, since no-one really has any definitive interpretation of it all.

 

[Tom 1]

Everything you say may be true but my point is only that humans are the ones who decide things like "Shakespeare did it better", and so his work becomes part of the national culture or character.

True.

 

[Caliban]

I’m not sure about the idea of the democracy of tradition in relation to literature. I think it’s true in theology, certainly in churches I’ve been part of people can have a tendency to become fully convinced of a thing without really having any understanding of it, because it is part of the churches’ teaching. I don’t think you can apply it so easily to literature though, it’s true that there were other poets and playwrights in Chaucer’s and Shakespeare’s times, writing about the same themes, in many cases repeating the same stories in different ways, but Shakespeare for example just did it way better than anyone else, as did Chaucer. Shakespeare’s portrayal of the human condition is much more far reaching than say Ben Johnson’s. Truly great writers really capture something that other people just aren’t able to express to the same degree and with the same incisiveness, so they earn their place rather than being voted into it. The English language and English society would be fundamentally different had there been no-one of Chaucer’s or Shakespeare’s calibre at the time.

This is completely accurate. The study of Aesthetics is the attempt to explain why one artwork is distinctly "better" than an another. Many scholars reject this attempt, but a minority do not. Check out the work of Harold Bloom if interested in the Western Cannon.

 

[Chesterton]

Okay, that was not my impression. In Britain or South Africa, remembering the colonialisation is fraught with issues. The popular heroes of colonial expansion are no longer celebrated. Figures like Robert Clive, Cecil Rhodes or Kitchener aren't lauded as they used to be. In my own country, even mention the Voortrekkers and immediately you are pegged as racist. Or how Australia struggled now with commemoration of the arrival of the First Fleet.

In the US, I don't see that animosity to the Pioneers; and the Wild West, though less culturally prevalent, is not presented as something akin to a European colonisation. True, there is some pushback on Thanksgiving, but that mostly seems a fringe thing (from my admittedly outsider perspective). Throughout the last half of the 20th century, the US supported decolonisation in some form or other, but the westward expansion of the US was not seen as a similar event. It is true that these US territories were settler colonies, like Australia or Canada; or to a lesser extent South Africa, Rhodesia or Kenya; which makes it hard to balance the claims of former inhabitants and the claims of the current settled ones.

I don't know, but the manner in which the narrative is presented seems different to me. Maybe because the US is seen as a unit, while in other colonisations there was not territorial cohesion. As you said, it is less talked about; while in other countries there is a continuous profusion of crocodile tears obligated whenever any Colonial legacy is even mentioned.

I think you're right that seeing the U.S. as a unit plays a part. It was seen less that way at one time, but the idea was made concrete by force of arms in the Civil War. So, I think we think of people moving west over the ocean, then moving west over the land till they hit another ocean. Kind of all one gradual event playing out.

And you mention popular heroes of expansion. Unless I'm forgetting some things, I think we just don't have much in the way of heroes or events involved in the Westward expansion. I mean heroes like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone arose during that time, but weren't really involved with the expansion. Maybe it was too gradual? Two exceptions are Lewis and Clark, who made the famous expedition. The other significant events I suppose would be the California Gold Rush, and the Mormons trying to start their own nation in Utah. I guess the way Oklahoma came to be is an interesting side note. They taught us about Lewis and Clark and the '49ers in school, they didn't tell us about the Mormons. Other than the whole expansion itself, there's not much specifically to protest. Of course things are moving fast and I wouldn't be surprised if I wake up tomorrow to find out they've banned reading about Lewis and Clark.

Oh wow, as soon as I finished that paragraph, I suddenly realized I didn't notice the water I'm swimming in - Texas. A revolution, and then a war, over a big chunk of real estate, and there were heroes, so that was a big deal. We're the only state of the 50 that requires its schoolkids to learn state history.

You've kind of opened the door for me to rant a little, and a rant goes good with coffee, so... I live where the Alamo is. The city is run by a city council which currently consists of approximately one conservative, and ten lunatic, wanna-be tyrants. In front of the Alamo there's a large stone cenotaph, a memorial to the heroes who fought and died inside the Alamo. My family name is on the cenotaph because an ancestor of mine died in the battle. Here's a pic so you can get an idea of the size of it:

The council is going to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to move the cenotaph. I'm sure they'd prefer to just outright destroy it, but they probably couldn't come up with a justification for that, so they're going to move it to some nearby side street where tourists won't see it, except for the few who may happen upon it. I imagine tourists of the future who do see it will wonder "why didn't they put this thing in front of the Alamo?"

This is part of a larger plan. Right now, there's a little plaza area in front of the Alamo. It's an open relaxed space where you can mill about, sit on a bench or on the grass and have a snack. Admission is free so you could wander in an out of the Alamo. For a fee, if you want, you can have a guided tour where someone tells the story. What the city's going to do is cordon off the area in way that forces persons to be corralled though an entry way where they'll be forced to listen to a guide, who's going to be telling a new story. They city says it wants to present a "broader view" of the battle and surrounding circumstances. There is no broader view. This isn't mysterious ancient history. We know everything there is to know about what happened, from both sides, at least sufficient for any questions a casual tourist or local child might have. I believe they may be attempting to create a new myth.

I haven't heard of a single resident of this city who isn't opposed to the whole idea, if nothing else for the unnecessary waste of money, but the politicians know what history is best for us, so they're barreling ahead with the plans.

 

[grasping the after wind]

Does imprisonment in the USA mean that the prisoner is no longer a citizen? There are both federal and state laws regulating wages and working conditions. Why do these laws not apply to citizens who are in prison?

How does that answer my question?
A person that has been convicted of a crime deemed an offence warranting imprisonment loses many rights that that person held before being convicted. Not just in the USA but everywhere there a laws that when broken carry a penalty of imprisonment.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

...To current events.

A couple of things I came across recently have made me question whether people living in the US have a fundamentally different way of thinking about what constitutes recent history, and what might be called ancient history, or just things that occurred 'a long time ago'.

The first was an article written by a young woman that I read on Medium about certain themes in 'ancient' literature. What the article was actually about was medieval and renaissance literature, which the writer appears to think of as periods of 'ancient' history. The second was the idea I've seen in a few threads here on CF that the period of slavery in the US happened so long ago that it no longer has any relevance.

This last idea is worth discussing, I think. As a European, I tend to see history as stretching back in one unbroken line (which is indeed what it does) to the very earliest times we know anything about. Everything that ever happened in any significant way had an effect on everything that came after it. To me, that seems obvious - am I wrong? I have spent most of my adult life living in the UK, in England specifically. The dual influences of the classical world and the Germanic/Nordic world are obvious and widespread in English society, thinking, language - pretty much everything. It is not difficult to see how major events in history have shaped the way the English see themselves and how English society functions, 1066 (and all that), the great plague, the subsequent peasants revolt and so on and so on. All of these historic influences come together to inform the perceptions and prejudices of the average person in the street. Again, this seems obvious.

Slavery was common in the US during what was in England the Victorian era - of course slavery was effectively exported to the US from England and other European countries, via colonialism, so this isn't about apportioning blame in any sense, just about things that happened - but wasn't part of most people's lives actually in England at that time. But that same period was tremendously influential on English society and how English people see themselves in all kinds of ways that are absolutely still relevant to how that society functions now. A society and its history are ineluctably bound to each other, what society is now in any country is what previous actions and events have made it. Again, this seems blatantly obvious.

It does to me, anyway, but it does seem that maybe this way of thinking isn't so common or regarded as obvious in the US - ? Is that true? To me, the Victorian period was really not all that long ago, in historical terms. Slavery in the US ended, as I understand it, in the late 1800s, there were laws in place that defined black people in some parts of the US as unequal citizens up until the 1960s, and quantifiable social prejudice continued into the 1970s. None of this is ancient history, but the view that none of this has any relevance today, with regard to the current situation as much as the wider picture of race relations in the US, seems to be quite common.

That's my impression in any case, and it is just an impression, so I'd be interested in hearing what people living in the US think about it. The US is after all a very young country and so a different understanding of history, and different conceptions of what constitutes ancient history, are explainable.

Tom, I think that in the U.S. there is more than one conception about the essence and significance of history, and what it is thought to be and what it is thought to be about will simply depend upon several factors, one of which is the extent and kind of education. Remember, we in the U.S. are a pluralistic nation, and that pluralism is in more than just one social vain.

On my own part, I can vouch for the idea that to one segment or strata of the U.S. population, history has nearly zero relevance and very little is known about it. This is the 'frame of mind' I had while growing up as a young boy, and I think this obtained in this way because I lived within what was more or less a non-intellectual family environment. However, once I became a Christian, became very familiar with the bible, and once I became educated in the Social Sciences a little later on, among other fields, my views have changed (and grown) quite a bit. It's now safe to say that I have a very different understanding about 'History' than I did 40 years ago.

It might be better to think of us in the U.S. as a melting-pot, as we've called ourselves. You're going to find more than just one or two, or even three, frames of mind regarding the significance of any kind of history here.

Peace.

 

[Chesterton]

It might be better to think of us in the U.S. as a melting-pot, as we've called ourselves. You're going to find more than just one or two, or even three, frames of mind regarding the significance of any kind of history here.

If that's the case then the melting pot isn't doing any melting.