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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
American historiography has always been preoccupied with American history. This is still the case in our present time. It is a natural phenomenon which applies in the same sense to other nations. Like other nations, too, America has always had historians who devoted themselves partly or exclusively to the study of the history of foreign lands. Within their guild they always were and still are a minority. Their position vis-à-vis the reading public and also vis-à-vis the subjects of their interest is more problematic than that of the historians who concentrate on the national past. For the American historian of foreign lands the question of a specific historical sense is not only inescapable but also more difficult to answer than for his colleague who writes on American history. As Leonard Krieger has pointed out a few years ago, this historical sense may be defined as the capacity to understand the temporally distant in its own terms together with the consciousness of its relations with the familiar. When the American historian of extra-American (i.e. in our case European) history finds the temporal distance extended by the geographical and cultural distance, he is quite naturally tempted to start out by asking of his subject: ‘What is it to me or I to it that I should aspire to study and understand it?’ This basic question can lead to interesting historiographical results, but it can also lead into the sterility of mere antiquarianism.
page 1 note 1 Krieger, Leonard, ‘European History in America’, in Higham, John, Krieger, Leonard, Gilbert, Felix, History (Humanistic Scholarship in America, The Princeton Studies, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 235.Google Scholar
page 3 note 1 Ibid. p. 238.
page 4 note 1 Ibid. p. 239.
page 4 note 2 Colbourn, H. Trevor, The Lamp of Experience: Whig History and the Intellectual Origins of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), p. 21 ff.Google Scholar
page 4 note 3 If we peruse the leading histories of the Colonial past and of the Revolution, we can see that the reference to the European background is in most cases very scant. It is noteworthy only in Cotton Mather's Magnolia Christi Americana (1702) and in Thomas Prince's Chronological History of New England (1736). But even here we do not perceive more than a fragmentary image of the Old World. Mather points to Europe as the site of the incomplete Reformation which was to be gloriously perfected in America. Prince presents the reader with a summary of the history of mankind as an introduction to the history of New England because he wants to show ‘the age of the world when this part came to be known to the other’. Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 240.Google Scholar
page 5 note 1 Levin, David, History as Romantic Art: Bancroft, Prescott, Motley, and Parkman (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 3–23.Google Scholar
page 6 note 1 Guggisberg, Hans R., ‘William Hickling Prescott und das Geschichtsbewusstsein der amerikanischen Romantik’, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien II (1966), 176–93Google Scholar; Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 241 f.Google Scholar
page 6 note 2 Motley, John L., History of the United Netherlands from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce, vol. 1 (London, 1901), p. iv.Google Scholar
page 6 note 3 Motley, John L., Democracy, the Climax of Political Progress and the Destiny of Advanced Races: An Historical Essay (London, 1869), p. 6.Google Scholar
page 6 note 4 Motley, John L., The Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I (London, 1896), pp. liii–lvGoogle Scholar. Cf. Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 243.Google Scholar
page 7 note 1 Motley, John L., ‘Historic Progress and American Democracy’, in Representative Selections, with Introduction, Bibliography, and Notes, ed. by Higby, Chester P. and Schantz, B. T. (New York, 1939), p. 105 f.Google Scholar; Levin, , History as Romantic Art, p. 86 ff.Google Scholar; Guggisberg, Hans R., Das europäische Mittelalter im amerikanischen Geschichtsdenken des 19. und des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts (Basel & Stuttgart: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1964), p. 33.Google Scholar
page 7 note 2 Colbourn, , The Lamp of Experience, p. 25 ff.Google Scholar; Guggisberg, , Das europäische Mittelalter, p. 31.Google Scholar
page 7 note 3 Guggisberg, , op. cit. pp. 61–5.Google Scholar
page 8 note 1 Herbst, Jurgen, The German Historical School in American Scholarship (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1965), pp. 99–128Google Scholar. Cf. Iggers, George G., ‘The Image of Ranke in American and German Historical Thought’, History and Theory 2 (1962), 17–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 8 note 2 Ibid. p. 112 ff.; Herbst, , op. cit. p. 112 ff.Google Scholar; Guggisberg, , op. cit. p. 63.Google Scholar
page 9 note 1 Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 245.Google Scholar
page 9 note 2 Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White (New York, 1905), vol. 1, p. 83.Google Scholar
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page 11 note 1 Henry M. Baird, History of the Rise of the Huguenots of France (1879), Huguenots and Henry of Navarre (1886), Huguenots and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1895); Samuel M. Jackson, Huldreich Zwingli (1900); Williston Walker, John Calvin, The Organizer of Reformed Protestantism, 1500–1564 (1906).
page 11 note 2 Cf. the works of Roland H. Bainton, Earl Morse Wilbur, Harold Bender, George H. Williams and many others. The significance of the present American contribution to Reformation research is easily recognized in such periodicals as Church History, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, and the German–Anerican Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte.
page 11 note 3 The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (1890); The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793–1812 (1893); Sea Power in Its Relation to the War of 1812 (1905).
page 12 note 1 The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (London: 1965, repr.), p. 83.Google Scholar
page 13 note 1 Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 260 f.Google Scholar
page 14 note 1 Ibid. pp. 263, 269 ff.
page 14 note 2 Boorstin, Daniel, America and the Image of Europe (New York, 1960), p. 23 ff.Google Scholar
page 14 note 3 Cohen, Warren I., The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I (Chicago, 1967).Google ScholarMoltmann, Günter, ‘Revisionist Historiography in the United States and its Importance for German-American Relations in the Weimar Period’, Deutschland und die USA 1918–1933 (Schriftenreihe des internationalen Schulbuchinstituts, Bd. 13, Braunschweig, 1968).Google Scholar
page 15 note 1 The visible symbol of this impressive development was the foundation, in 1925, of the ‘Mediaeval Academy of America’. Since 1926 this organization of scholars published the journal Speculum. It was to be the counterpart of the Journal of Modern History which was founded three years later as the professional periodical for European history since the Middle Ages. Although the number of trained medievalists was still comparatively small in the 1920s and 1930s, their interests covered a wide horizon. Cf. Guggisberg, , op. cit. p. 173 f.Google Scholar
page 15 note 2 Sarton, George, Introduction to the History of Science, 3 vols. in 5 parts (Baltimore, 1927–1948)Google Scholar; Thorndike, Lynn, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols. (New York, 1923–1958)Google Scholar. See especially Sarton's essay on ‘Science in the Renaissance’, in Thompson, J. W., Rowley, G., Schevill, F., Sarton, G., The Civilization of the Renaissance (Chicago, 1929), p. 79Google Scholar. Guggisberg, Hans R., ‘Jacob Burckhardt und Amerika’, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 13 (1968), 53–68.Google Scholar
page 16 note 1 Ferguson, Wallace K., The Renaissance in Historical Thought: Five Centuries of Interpretation (Boston & New York, 1948), p. 329 ff.Google Scholar
page 16 note 2 Guggisberg, , Das Mittelalter, pp. 137–50.Google Scholar
page 16 note 3 Haskins, Charles Homer, ‘European History and American Scholarship’, American Historical Review 28 (01 1923), 226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 16 note 4 Krieger, , loc. cit. p. 288 ff.Google Scholar
page 17 note 1 On the influence exerted by refugee scholars, notably from Germany and Austria cf. Stourzh, Gerald, ‘Die deutschsprachige Emigration in den Vereinigten Staaten: Geschichtswissenschaft und politische Wissenschaft’, Jahrbuch für Amerikastudien 10 (1965), pp. 59–77, 232–66Google Scholar; II (1966), pp. 260–317. Cf. also Krieger, Leonard and Stern, Fritz, ‘Editors' Introduction’, The Responsibility of Power, Historical Essays in Honor of Hajo Holborn (Garden City, N. Y., 1967)Google Scholar; Neumann, Franz L., ‘The Social Sciences’, in Neumann, et al. , The Cultural Migration: The European Scholar in America (Philadelphia, 1953), pp. 4–26Google Scholar; Fleming, Donald & Baylin, Bernard (eds.), The Intellectual Migration, Europe and America, 1930–1960 (Cambridge, Mass., 1969).CrossRefGoogle Scholar This volume, interesting and many-sided as it is, contains surprisingly scant information on refugee historians.
page 17 note 2 Another problem, which we cannot discuss here, is the question as to the reception and influence of the theories and methods of the ‘Ecole des Annales’ upon contemporary American historiography. That there is such an influence cannot be doubted, but it would not be an easy one to describe. It is astonishing to note how long it took for the works of Mare Bloch to be translated and published in the U.S.A. The writings of Lucien Febvre do not seem to have aroused much general interest among American historians. Braudel's, F.La méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l'époque de Philippe II (1949, 1966)Google Scholar has been very severely criticized by Baylin, Bernard, Journal of Economic History II (1951), pp. 277–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. One can perhaps say that the ‘Ecole’ is not very influential as a block but some of its works, ideas and methods have been taken up with sympathy and interest. Cf. Strayer's, Joseph R. ‘Introduction’ to Bloch's The Historian's Craft (Manchester and New York, 1954).Google Scholar For information on this point I am indebted to Professor R. S. Lopez of Yale University.
page 18 note 1 Haskins, Charles Homer, ‘European History and American Scholarship’, p. 215Google Scholar. Cf. Higby, Chester P., ‘The Present Status of Modern European History in the United States’, Journal of Modern History I (03 1929), 3–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar