WHY STUDY AMERICAN HISTORY?

Henry Ford once said, “History is more or less bunk.” To an industrialist who revolutionized the automobile industry by discarding old methods and creating new ones, the past may have seemed irrelevant. But it is clear that Henry Ford understood thoroughly what had occurred in industrial America before his time when he developed the assembly line and produced an automobile that most working Americans could afford. Whether he was aware of it or not, Henry Ford used his understanding of the past to create a better future. (In fact, what Henry Ford really meant was that history as being taught in the early 1900s was bunk.)

Whatever Ford’s opinion of history was, history is about understanding. It would be easy to say that “in these critical times” we need to know more about our history as a nation. But even a cursory study of America’s past reveals that relatively few periods in our history have not found us in the midst of one crisis or another—economic, constitutional, political, or military. We have often used the calm times to prepare for the inevitable storms, and in those calm times we ought to try to predict when the next storm will arise, or at least consider how we might cope with it. Because the best predictor of the future is the record of the past, we can learn much of value even when the need for such learning is not immediately apparent. Once the inevitable crisis is upon us, it may be difficult to reflect soberly on what we can learn from the past. As philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, “Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives no help.” A modern version of that dictum, often used in a military context, goes something like, “It’s hard to remember that your mission is to drain the swamp when you’re up to your butt in alligators.” In any case, without looking backward, we may find the road ahead quite murky.

No matter how much American history keeps presenting us with trying new situations, we discover from looking backward even to colonial times that we have met comparable challenges before. Conditions change, technology presents us with new resources, populations grow and shift, and new demographics alter the faces of America. But no matter how much we change as a nation, we are still influenced by our past. The Puritans, the early settlers, founding fathers, pioneer men and women, Blacks, Native Americans, Chinese laborers, Hispanics, Portuguese, eastern Europeans, Jews, Muslims, Vietnamese—all kinds of Americans from our recent and distant past—still speak to us in clear voices about their contributions to the character of this great nation and the ways in which we have tried to resolve differences among ourselves and with the rest of the world.

Everything we are and hope to be as Americans is rooted in our past. Our religious, political, social and economic development proceeded according to a design—whether random or cyclical—and the patterns of that design are intelligible to us when we study our heritage. The men who wrote our timeless Constitution, the most profound political document ever produced by man, were acutely aware of what had gone before as they fashioned a document that would serve millions of Americans yet unborn, and the power of our form of government comes from the fact that our fathers took the best of the past and built upon it.

Our success as a nation, past, present, and future, depends on how well we know ourselves, and that knowledge can only come from knowing our history. Without hindsight we are blind to the future; without comprehending our past—the positive and negative aspects—we can never truly know where we want to go. History is an essential element of the chain of events that defines our road ahead. As Michael Crichton wrote in his novel Timelines: “If you don’t know history, you don’t know anything; you’re a leaf that doesn’t know it’s part of a tree.” We are all part of the American tree, and its roots go very deep.

What Is American History About?

For most historians the fundamental question to be answered in the study of history is, “What really happened?” In studying American history we know a great deal about “what happened,” and relatively few serious questions exist about the basic facts of American history. We have fought wars, elected presidents, built factories, cultivated millions of acres, produced enormous wealth, seen immigrants flock to our shores, driven the Indians off the plains and onto reservations, ended slavery, and so on. If what we call history stopped there, we would have something other than what we think of as history—we would merely have chronology. History as a study, however, goes beyond the mere chronology and into the how and why these things happened. History, in other words, soon becomes complicated.

We know, for example, that the American Revolutionary War began when shots were fired at Lexington and Concord in 1775. We are still undecided, however, about the exact nature of that experience—was it really a revolution, or merely a transfer of power across the Atlantic? We know that the Japanese empire bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, but controversies have raged over the causes of that aggression, and about how much was known of the impending attack on that fateful morning. The real causes of the Civil War continue to be debated, and hundreds of books have been written about the events surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. As soon as we begin to ask how and why things happened, consensus disappears.

Another point to remember in studying American history is that it did not begin in a vacuum. Thousands of years of human history preceded the discovery and colonization of the North American continent, and much of that prior history had a direct or indirect bearing on how this nation was formed. Some historians view American history as an extension of the history of Europe, or of the history of the “Western world.” On the other hand, some claim that American history tells a tale that has no real parallel in the histories of other nations, even though Americans have much in common with other peoples. That view is sometimes referred to as “American exceptionalism,” the idea that America’s history is unique. Both views have some merit, but the important point to remember is that Americans sometimes fail to see themselves in their proper relationship to the rest of the world, often at their own peril. In other words, we are not alone.

As we shall see, American history has strands that find their roots in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rome. Indeed, the “American Empire” has been compared—for better or worse—with the Roman Empire, and much of our political philosophy, as well as our literary and social concepts, can be traced to the ancient Greeks. The scientific discoveries associated with the Renaissance were frequently based in the work of Muslim scholars and historians, who kept classical ideas of the ancient world alive during Europe’s so-called Dark Ages. The advances of the Renaissance led in turn to the discovery and exploration of new worlds, of which our ancestors were the beneficiaries.

When the Europeans left their homes to come to America they did not leave everything behind, but brought with them their religions, their cultural ideas, their values and concepts of justice and freedom. They named their colonies, cities, towns, and villages after their Old World homes and in some measure tried to recreate them on virgin soil. For reasons we will discuss later, that attempt at re-creation was futile if not actually undesirable, for the movement to the New World was inevitably a transforming experience. But the colonizers felt their roots deeply, and those roots persisted in influencing their decisions for generations.

Although America is necessarily connected with the rest of the world in profound ways, for significant periods in American history events in this country occurred without being influenced from without. The colonists who arrived here in the 16th century, for example, were largely untouched by events occurring elsewhere except as they stimulated further emigration from Europe. In the 18th century, however, a series of dynastic wars among the European powers were often played out on the battlefields of North America. In the latter decades of the century, the influences of the American and French revolutions were felt strongly on both sides of the Atlantic.

Later, as America filled up its frontiers, 19th-century Americans went about their business without much reference to the rest of the world, except, of course, for the influence of millions of refugees and immigrants who poured in through Ellis Island and other ports in the latter decades. Because the European world was relatively free from conflict during that “Hundred Years’ Peace,” America was relatively untouched by major events beyond our shores.
Eventually, perhaps inevitably, America was dragged into conflicts with foreign powers, but those periods were typically followed by periods of withdrawal—or isolation, as it is sometimes called. It was only during the 20th century, beginning with World War I, that the United States became a major player on the international scene. Since the end of World War II America has been a dominant force in international affairs.

To go back to our origins, however, we may start with the proposition that American history did not begin with Jamestown, nor the Spanish settlement of North America, nor Columbus, nor even with the arrival of the Native Americans. For America is a Western nation, a nation whose roots lie deeply in Europe, albeit with powerful strains of Native American, African, and Asian cultures mixed in. America is an outgrowth of the evolution of European society and culture. From our politics to our religion to our economic and social behavior, we follow patterns that emerged over time from the ancient civilizations of the Western world—Greece, Rome, the Middle East, and the barbarian tribes that ranged across northern Europe before the rise of the Roman Republic and the Greek city-states.

Our principal religion is Christianity. Our drama is tinged with the influence of Greek tragedy. Our laws have grown out of the experiences of the Roman Republic and the Greek city-state. Our philosophy is heavily derived from Plato and Aristotle, and our science and mathematics also stem from the ancient world, often via Islamic and African scholars who picked up long-lost threads and wove them into new shapes that were embraced by Europeans during and after the Renaissance. Those developments in science and mathematics made possible the great age of exploration, which led to the discovery of America (or “rediscovery” if you prefer) by Columbus and his successors.

Following are ways in which the pre-Columbian world touched American history:

• Religious: The Judeo-Christian heritage of America is strong and still has enormous influence over our attitudes and beliefs. The Crusades, the Reformation, and the entire religious history of Europe are part of the background of America. Our religious heritage helps determine our relationships with the rest of the world.
• Political: Early concepts of democracy were Greek—the funeral oration of Pericles from Thucydides could be used at a present-day 4th of July celebration. The Roman Republic was the last great republic before the United States. The founding fathers were aware of that history and used it in making their revolution and writing our Constitution.
• Philosophical: As Alfred North Whitehead remarked, “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” In other words, our ideas of self, society, and government, and the nature of our universe, have roots in ancient and medieval philosophies.
• Cultural: Our poetry, drama, music, literature, and language are all part of the Western European heritage. We formed our own culture, but it was informed by all that had gone before.
• Economic: From mercantilist beginnings America became the most successful capitalist nation in the history of the world, partly because of our adoption of the Protestant (Puritan) work ethic and the notion that God helps those who help themselves. Banks, publicly owned stock companies, corporations, insurance companies, and other economic enterprise systems had their roots in Europe, but were refined and expanded in America.

In beginning our study of American history, then, it is important to enter it with an open mind and a broad vision. Indeed, as one goes up the academic ladder in the course of studying history, one’s focus is likely to narrow. Where an introductory course such as the one in which you are probably enrolled covers about one half of American history, an upper level or graduate course might cover a single event, such as the Vietnam War, or a single aspect of American history, such as American economic history. Here we will look at the big picture, realizing as we do that the overall picture is even larger than it may seem, and that we will leave out many details. This is just the beginning.

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