Abstract
The question of the origins of anti-American discourse is both contentious and complex. The most radical answers go as far back as to 1492, the argument being that the discovery of the New World initiated the use of America as a mirror of Europe.1 However, since anti-Americanism concerns itself specifically with the United States, it seems reasonable to place the terminus a quo in the second half of the eighteenth century, in the years surrounding the American War of Independence. This logical argument is substantiated by the historical record. Thus, we encounter in this period two embryonic forms of European resentment toward America, both of which are significant as points of departure for later, more developed varieties.
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Notes
James Boswell, Life of Johnson (1791) (London: Oxford UP, 1953), p. 590.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, “From Natural History, General and Particular,” in Henry Steele Commager & Elmo Giordanetti (eds.), Was America a Mistake? (New York, Evanston, IL & London: Harper & Row, 1967), p. 53.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) (New York, Evanston, IL & London: Harper & Row, 1964).
Alexander Hamilton, “The Federalist No. 11,” in Alexander Hamilton, James Madison & John Jay, The Federalist: With Letters of “Brutus” (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), p. 52. Franklin’s efforts are discussed in Chinard, “Eighteenth Century Theories,” pp. 39–42.
The standard reference on this tradition of “biological” anti-Americanism is still Antonello Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World (1955) (Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh UP, 1973). See also Philippe Roger, L’Ennemi américain, pp. 21–57.
Joseph de Maistre, Considerations on France (1797) (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), p. 60.
G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Geschichte (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1970), p. 114.
Friedrich Schlegel, Philosophie der Geschichte (1828), in Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel- Ausgabe, vol. IX (Munich, Paderborn & Vienna: Schöningh, 1971), p. 403.
Nikolaus Lenau, Sämtliche Werke und Briefe (Leipzig: Insel, 1970), vol. II, pp. 158–59.
Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme (1839) (Paris: Gallimard, 1972), p. 131.
Honoré de Balzac, Le Curé de village (1841) (Paris: Gallimard et Librairie Générale Française, 1965), p. 323.
Gustave de Beaumont, Marie; or Slavery in the United States (1835) (trans. Barbara Chapman) (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1958), p. 36.
Heinrich Heine, Ludwig Börne: Eine Denkschrift (1840), in Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1978), vol. 11, p. 38.
Charles Dickens, American Notes (1842) (London: Penguin, 2000), p. 36.
On Nikolaus Lenau’s journey to America, cf. Michael Ritter, Zeit des Herbstes (Vienna & Frankfurt/Main: Deuticke, 2002), pp. 105–30. Dickens likewise talked disparagingly about the “almighty dollars” (indeed, he coined the phrase), but was later more than willing to accept a princely payment in dollars during his American reading tour of 1867–68. Cf. Malcolm Bradbury, Dangerous Pilgrimages, pp. 114–15.
Honoré de Balzac, La Rabouilleuse (1842) (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1966), pp. 52–53. Balzac’s description of the United States is unintendedly ironic, given the fact that the novel itself represents France as a country marked by extreme selfishness and avarice; even for Balzac, this novel is extraordinarily preoccupied with money. Philippe Roger, who makes a brief mention of La Rabouilleuse, notes that in French literature of this period, it is mostly the villains who emigrate to America. L’Ennemi américain, pp. 62–63.
Ferdinand Kürnberger, Der Amerikamüde (1855) (Frankfurt/Main: Insel, 1986), p. 72.
Heinrich Heine, Romanzero (1851), in Heine, Historisch-kritische Gesamtausgabe der Werke (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1992), vol. 3:1, p. 102.
Frederick Marryat, Diary in America (1839) (London: Nicholas Vane, 1960), pp. 47–48.
Quoted in Hildegard Meyer, Nord-Amerika im Urteil des Deutschen Schrifttums bis zur Mitte des 19: Jahrhunderts. Eine Untersuchung über Kürnbergers “Amerika-Müden” (Hamburg: Friederichsen, de Gruyter & Co., 1929), p. 49.
Cf. Victor del Litto, La Vie de Stendhal (Paris: Editions du Sud, 1965), p. 248ff.
Stendhal, Lucien Leuwen (1834–35) (Paris: Gallimard, 2002), p. 26. Stendhal apparently was unaware that New York had not been the capital of the United States since 1790. Besides being an influential historian, Guizot was also the leader of the French conservatives under Louis Philippe.
George A. Mulfinger, Ferdinand Kürnberger’s Roman Der Amerikamüde,’ dessen Quellen und Verhältnis zu Lenaus Amerikareise (Philadelphia, PA: German American Annals Press, 1903).
Oliver Goldsmith, “The Deserted Village” (1770), in Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, vol. IV (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966), pp. 300–301.
Cf. John Robert Moore, “Goldsmith’s Degenerate Song-Birds: An Eighteenth-Century Fallacy in Ornithology,” Isis, vol. 34, no. 4 (1943), pp. 324–327.
John Keats, “Lines to Fanny (What can I do to drive away)” (1819), in The Complete Poems of John Keats (New York: Modern Library, 1994), p. 349.
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© 2011 Jesper Gulddal
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Gulddal, J. (2011). The Invention of Anti-Americanism. In: Anti-Americanism in European Literature. Studies in European Culture and History. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016027_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016027_2
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