Download Putting American History into World History

Putting American History into World History
Changing ideas about the national narrative
Traditional form of narrative
Nation‐state as homogeneous, bounded, territorial entity
Professional History and the Nation‐State
Why is the nation as the unit of historical study
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Revival of “American Exceptionalism”
Two Exceptionalisms
Aspirational (Lincoln)
Tutelatory (Wilson)
Exceptionalism and “Consensus History”
Recent Changes in Teaching and Research
Transnational and Global Approaches Are Traditional
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Frederick Jackson Turner
Lecture to Wisconsin Teachers, 1891:
“The Significance of History”
Henry Adams and W.E.B. Dubois
1890s: Globalization and Immigration
1990s: Globalization and Multiculturalism
The United States has always been embedded in global history
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Global History and American History begin at the same time and with the same event
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The World before Columbus and Magellan
Abrahamic Religions and the Afro‐Eurasian World
Greek knowledge and the Age of Discovery
The Age of Discovery: The Real Discovery
The Ocean not a Barrier but rather a Connector
Global History Begins
America Re‐connects with Afro‐Eurasia
Afro‐Eurasian World Well Travelled and Well Known
Vasco DaGama in India
Asia and Europe—Why didn’t Asians Travel to Europe
The Problem of Ignoring Geography
The Problem of Ignoring Geography
History works across space and well as over time
Linear, Whiggish narratives ignore geography
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The Dutch Empire and the establishment of New Amsterdam
Over‐emphasis on the European Atlantic
Five times more Africans than Europeans made the Atlantic transit before 1820
The Sustenance of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere depended upon Global connections for Labor and Trade
China and the Wealth of the Americas
Foundation of Manila by the Spanish in 1571
Global Connections reveal that historical change and historical explanations operate across space as well as through time
space as well as through time
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American Revolution American Civil War
Both in part Global Events
James Madison’s explanation for American Independence
The Competition of Empires
“The Great War” 1689‐1815
Global causes of the American Revolution
“Military‐fiscal crisis” of European empires
Why does an Absolutist King come to the aid of Republicans who espouse Principles of Society and Government anathema to him? American War a cause of the French Revolution?
American War a cause of the French Revolution? French War Aims
Why did Lafayette join the American cause?
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Tea Act of 1773: a Global Policy
Issue: Debt and Bank Liquidity Crisis
Tea Act reduced Taxes
What was the problem?
Transnational aspects of the making of the new R
Republic
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Partisanship and Political Parties
Jay Treaty, French Revolution, Haitian Revolution
Adams and Jefferson Policy toward Haiti
Adams and Jefferson: Policy toward Haiti
Haiti and Jefferson’s greatest achievement
Why the era of “Good Feelings”?
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The global aspects of the American Civil War
Nineteenth‐century Liberalism
1848: Freedom and Nationalism
1848: Mexican War and Wilmot Proviso
1848: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Abraham Lincoln
1848: Lincoln and Louis Kossuth
“A House Divided Cannot Stand”
Space of Culture and Space of Government
From Confederation to Nation‐State
Lincoln’s Language
State‐making and Emancipation
US: 4 million Enslaved People freed
European Nations and Empires: 40 million Serfs and other Unfree People Emancipated
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Global “Federative Crisis”
World of Empires to World of Nations
New Nations
Centralization
Germany, Italy, Japan, Argentina, France, Siam
Empires become more like Nation‐States
Ottoman and Russian
Meaning of the Civil War in Europe
Why professional historians focused on nation as unit of history—national subjects or citizens
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Johns Hopkins and Columbia
Historians and the work of forgetting for the sake of the nation
Does history have a role in the making of a
Does history have a role in the making of a cosmopolitan citizenry?
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A Nation Among Nations:
“encourage and sustain a cosmopolitan citizenry, at once proud nationals and humble citizens of the world”
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