Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America by Eric Rauchway (English) Pap

Description: Blessed Among Nations by Eric Rauchway, Professor of History Eric Rauchway Nineteenth-century globalization made America exceptional. On the back of European money and immigration, America became an empire with considerable skill at conquest but little experience administering other people's, or its own, affairs, which it preferred to leave to the energies of private enterprise. The nation's resulting state institutions and traditions left America immune to the trends of national development and ever after unable to persuade other peoples to follow its example. In this concise, argumentative book, Eric Rauchway traces how, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the world allowed the United States to become unique and the consequent dangers we face to this very day. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description Nineteenth-century globalization made America exceptional. On the back of European money and immigration, America became an empire with considerable skill at conquest but little experience administering other peoples, or its own, affairs, which it preferred to leave to the energies of private enterprise. The nations resulting state institutions and traditions left America immune to the trends of national development and ever after unable to persuade other peoples to follow its example.In this concise, argumentative book, Eric Rauchway traces how, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the world allowed the United States to become unique and the consequent dangers we face to this very day. Author Biography Eric Rauchway has written for the Financial Times and the Los Angeles Times. He teaches at the University of California, Davis, and is the author of Murdering McKinley: The Making of Theodore Roosevelts America (H&W, 2003). Review "Rauchways book is right on time and right on target." --Kirkus Reviews"Provocative . . . Blessed Among Nations combines the same fluid writing style, bold interpretive approach, and ambitious agenda that made the work of mid-twentieth-century historians like Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and C. Vann Woodward so important and so broadly relevant." --American Heritage Long Description Nineteenth-century globalization made America exceptional. On the back of European money and immigration, America became an empire with considerable skill at conquest but little experience administering other peoples, or its own, affairs, which it preferred to leave to the energies of private enterprise. The nations resulting state institutions and traditions left America immune to the trends of national development and ever after unable to persuade other peoples to follow its example. In this concise, argumentative book, Eric Rauchway traces how, from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s, the world allowed the United States to become unique and the consequent dangers we face to this very day. Review Quote "Written by an accomplished, imaginative historian who well understands those beginnings of modern America -- the years of the Progressive Era -- this book on one level suggests why socialism never took root in the United States, and why the supposed melting pot and the early Federal Reserve System worked as they did, but on quite another level develops a highly revealing argument how Americans faith in their "empire" and their exceptionalism shaped in often unexpected ways what we now call globalization and their part in it." --Walter LaFeber, Tisch University Professor, Cornell University "I can always depend on Eric Rauchway to display the meticulousness of a careful historian with the literary flair of a fine novelist. "Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America "adds to this admixture a powerful public voice as well; a tour de force." -- Eric Alterman, author of "When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences...""" " " " ""With his trademark lapidary elegance, Rauchway shows us that Americas position astride the currents of globalization is due not merely to a mysteriously voracious capitalistic impulse, but to often fortuitous effects of seemingly unconnected particulars, such as monopolies rather than government dominating lending, and the diversity of our immigrants impeding a socialist revolution. A flinty and compelling synthesis."--John McWhorter, author of "Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America" " " "American exceptionalism is one of those things often asserted, seldom convincingly proved. By setting the history of the United States in the context of the history of the first age of globalization, EricRauchway has come up with a powerful new argument about what exactly made the American experience different. "Blessed Among Nations" is both brilliant and convincing. For the breadth of his vision, the author deserves to be blessed among U.S. historians" --Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard University and author of "Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire""" Praise for "Murdering McKinley": "A fascinating story of America at a crossroads." --Bob Hoover, "Post-Gazette, Pittsburgh " "A fascinating trip through late-19th century America . . . A compact masterpiece . . . A book that holds high the standard for popular history." --Heather Cox Richardson, "Chicago Tribune" Excerpt from Book 1 Globalization and America King Edwards new policy of peace was very successful and culminated in the Great War. . . . [Afterward] America was . . . clearly top nation, and History came to a [full stop]. -W. C. Seller and R. J. Yeatman, 1066 and All that (1931) The United States became the country we know today at the end of World War I, when it took over the role of "top nation" from Britain. The story of its rise to this position of strength began at the end of the Civil War. After the demise of slavery, America spread west over the plains, swiftly settling the continent and bringing twelve new states into the union. With the winning of the West came the transformation of the United States into the worlds largest economy. By 1917, when the United States entered World War I, America stood out among nations, its anomalously large economy yoked in uneven harness to an anomalously small government with unusually few powers. Perhaps paradoxically, the United States could not have diverged so significantly from the behavior of other countries had other countries not involved themselves so significantly in American affairs. The globalization of the nineteenth century, in which powerful forces reached across national boundaries to bind the earths people tightly together, pushed American development in a peculiar direction. We need neither admire nor despise these peculiarities to note them and assess how much they resulted from the impact of international factors.1 From the first, European settlers in America claimed they were making a special society in the New World, but they did not mean a society like the powerful and peculiar nation the United States became. John Winthrop may have told his fellow Puritans in 1630 that their settlement "shall be as a Citty upon a Hill," and Ronald Reagan may have echoed him in 1989, referring to the "shining city upon a hill," but their Americas and their figures of speech, though superficially similar, differed profoundly.2 When Winthrop spoke to his Puritan flock they had not yet landed on the Massachusetts shore. They had still to build themselves even a modest shelter from the elements, and his "Citty" stood in the far future. When he imagined the people of the world looking to America, he envisioned them critically comparing the New Worlds people to their godly ideals, and he shuddered to think what might happen if the Puritan project fell short of virtue in the worlds sight: "wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evil of the wayes of god," he warned.3 By contrast Reagan knew his "city" shone before the people of the earth, and he spoke confidently of their opinion that the United States served as a powerful exemplar of freedom. Between Winthrop and Reagan lay more than three centuries of history and a world of difference, but the bit of history that made the most difference happened relatively recently, and indeed within Reagans lifetime. The world into which he was born, at the start of the twentieth century, was only just awakening to what a strange success European settlement had made in America. Even if Reagan was right about what the world thinks of the United States, the earths people have more often envied than imitated America. At the end of World War I, the United States stood out as an empire with considerable experience of conquest but little experience of administering other peoples or indeed of administering its own affairs, which it preferred to leave to the energies of private enterprise. In the years since, American leaders have frequently repeated their hope that the world would come to follow the U.S. example. But unlike Britain, which during its reign as top nation seeded the globe not only with its governmental system so that Westminster could regard itself unblushingly as the Mother of Parliaments but also with the Anglican Church and British banking and a hundred greater and lesser cultural institutions like cricket, the United States has lent the world neither its system nor its habits of government.4 It remains now as it was in 1917, both immune to the trends of national development that elsewhere prevail and also apparently unable to persuade other peoples to follow its lead. Moreover, the insistence of American optimists that, the evidence of history notwithstanding, the world will naturally come around to the American way of doing things has more than once led to disaster. In the 1920s, at the close of the first modern era of globalization, American leadership preserved neither peace nor prosperity in the world. And in the early twenty-first century, after another decades-long bout of globalization, the United States still stands at the forefront of nations, still mighty, still apparently called upon to lead a world of people who do not-perhaps because they cannot-follow its example. If today Americans wish to avoid repeating the catastrophes of the 1920s we must understand why the United States became an unfollowed leader, and why other nations are still unlikely to imitate it. Likewise, citizens of the rest of the world who wish to understand why the worlds top nation remains relentlessly peculiar will need to know how it became that way. The answer is simple, if paradoxical: the United States extensive connections to the rest of the world have created and maintained the nations peculiar habits of government. No other nation enjoyed Americas unique place within the network of worldwide forces that commentators today summarize under the term globalization, nor have these forces affected the development of other countries as they have America. To frame the idea as a hypothesis: globalization has reinforced American character. And like all hypotheses, particularly those that rely on the use of -ations and notions like national character to sum up complexities, this one bears elaboration before we test it against the evidence. AMERICAN CHARACTER First, Americanness needs clearer definition. If we wish to know why this nation is different from all other nations, we should make sure we know how it is different. Scholars dislike the suggestion that America has an unusual history. We worry that an emphasis on American difference too easily slides into a celebration of American exceptionalism, or a belief that the United States can freely defy the tedious norms that govern other nations. This is a legitimate concern. Noticing that the United States has historically enjoyed considerable success with an empire built on the cheap might well lead us to continue this tradition in circumstances where it will not succeed. Noticing that the United States has historically gotten along with a habitually half-hearted commitment to social welfare might lead us to go on supposing minimal social policies will continue to suit us in the future. Yet this legitimate concern leads scholars to make some unpersuasive arguments about the past: that Americas western conquests constitute not just an empire-for that case can be made-but an empire like others; that Americas limited nineteenth-century pensions policies constitute not just a kind of social insurance-for that case, too, can be made, at a stretch-but a social insurance plan like others; that these histories constitute suitable foundations for modern growth in both areas. In this book I proceed on the assumption that whatever our hopes for the future, they will fail of fulfillment if we poorly represent the past. We need to notice and explain salient differences in American development much as a natural historian might notice and explain salient differences that define a species: not to glorify it, but simply to identify it. Noting, for example, that an elephant has a trunk, and other animals do not, does not mean praising the elephant, but it helps us understand the elephant-moreover, it helps us understand the environment in which the elephant developed. An elephant has a trunk because its DNA codes for it, but that DNA survived because it represented a fit adaptation to the elephants circumstances. So, too, with the ideas that support Americas exceptional behavior: they survived because they represent adequate adaptations to historical circumstances. If we want to understand their survival, we had better understand those circumstances. Thus, while we might want to invoke ideas or culture to explain what makes the United States stick out, we should resist this temptation. Analysis of culture, while it tells us what Americans want, tells us little about what they actually get. Americans have long expressed a devotion to liberty, both political and economic, and a proportionate distaste for government power. This devotion explains much about American desires. But history does not always permit the expression of desires and ideals in law and customs. To employ the genetic metaphor again, we may say that the United States has the gene for liberty-but, like all genes, it needs a favorable environment for its expression.5 Therefore we should discuss Americanness as an outcome rather than as an input, and we should focus on the influential elements in the historical environment, and their effect on the expression of American ideals. This choice would put us in the good company of some early students of American habits who studied the material environment and the international circumstances in which Americans lived. In the early nineteenth century, the German poet and politician J. W. Goethe looked at the mineral endowments of the New World and declared, "America, you have it better."6 Writing at about the same time, the French political thinker Alexis de Tocq Details ISBN0809030470 Author Professor of History Eric Rauchway Short Title BLESSED AMONG NATIONS Language English ISBN-10 0809030470 ISBN-13 9780809030477 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 973 Year 2007 Imprint Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S. Subtitle How the World Made America Country of Publication United States Affiliation University of California, Davis DOI 10.1604/9780809030477 UK Release Date 2007-06-26 AU Release Date 2007-06-26 NZ Release Date 2007-06-26 US Release Date 2007-06-26 Publisher Hill & Wang Inc.,U.S. Publication Date 2007-06-26 Illustrations Illustrations Audience General Pages 256 We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! 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