American Exceptionalism

Did you even think that this may have something to do with enrollment of the classes? If you live in Germany or France, which do you think would be more important to YOU, history of a country on your border? or history of a country that you hate?

I don't know if this is true, but Kevin's response made me wonder if he's every met any actual Europeans. Without exception in my experience, they are much better informed on American history than most Americans are on theirs (for one thing, they're more likely to speak the language). Maybe McMahon is wrong (either about Europe or the US -- do most community colleges really have professors of French or German history), or maybe it's just that college classes are not, after all, the only way to disseminate knowledge.

To be fair, France and Germany have rather substantially more history than America does.

Well, most educated French and German people speak English, while very few Americans speak French and virtually nobody speaks German so in that sense Europeans tend to end up much better informed about the USA than Americans are about Europe.

Right....in fact they're usually surprised to meet any American with an inkling of European historical knowledge- the soft bigotry of low expectations, eh?

I think MY is on the right lines when he notes the deep structural differences between higher ed here and on the continent.

French people who wind up going to university get a *much* more intensive education during their late teens. They are going to learn a respectable amount of US history during that time--roughly what a decent "History 101" course for freshmen or sophomores would teach in the U.S.

Then they go to university, and study other stuff. That's cause 1) there are fewer distros (since they did that stuff as late teens, and 2) they don't really need that many deeply-trained American Historians.

I think it *is* somewhat lamentable that they don't have more American historians on their faculties, doing PhD-level and beyond research. Because god knows we need more fresh perspectives, given that Godwin and Ambrose both wound up plagiarizing stuff.

But that's where the difference is going to manifest itself--at the level of advanced research, not at the level of how much American history your average BA-educated Frenchman knows as compared to how much French history your averaged BA-educated American knows.

It was great to see this claim being made on TNR's "open university" with absolutely no data to support it.

I second Otto's comment. Certainly McMahon hasn't spent any time in my (intellecually impoverished) home state. This is Limbaugh-level, pull-it-out-of-your-ass commentary.

Sorry, but McMahon is simply wrong. At least about Germany.
Maybe he didn´t look for the right "terms".
I googled "Lehrstuhl Amerikanische Geschichte".
Translated roughly as "tenured professor/department american history". Results for example include the universities of Heidelberg, Cologne and Berlin.

Most German universities though don´t have a dedicated department for American, Spanish or Chinese history. What they´ve got is a department for "Neueste Geschichte" ("newest modern history"). That department is dealing with world history from the 19th century till now. Other history departments will deal with the Middle Ages, early modern history (1500-1800) or the ancient world (Rome, Greece for example). Simply put, dedicated history departments dealing with a special country or region do exist, but most history departments in Germany are structured around time periods and not locations.

It´s different for cultural and language departments. A lot of universities have an "Amerikanistik" department. Dealing with American language, literature and culture. It should be obvious that in order to study that you also need a bit of understanding about American history and politics.
Google for "Lehrstuhl Amerikanistik" and you´ll find a whole lot of German universities offering it.

Detlef's right about Germany, I think, but McMahon's right about France -- see the followup on OpenUniversity by David Bell, who's a historian of France and knows it well. ENS is actually atypically Americanist-heavy. For France, though, this is just a special case of a more general tendency among historians to ignore anything non-European. It's bad enough that my French historian friends bitch to me about it, despite the fact that in the unlikely event that anything was ever done about it, it would be their oxen getting gored.

Professors in China make $600 a month:

http://tinyurl.com/fwm3f

How long before these guys are supplying the world with degrees via the internets?

Without exception in my experience, they are much better informed on American history than most Americans are on theirs (for one thing, they're more likely to speak the language).

I am incredibly skeptical about this. It sounds way too much like what most of my friends said in college after studying abroad in big cites in Europe. While there, they were almost all surrounded with highly educated, upper- or upper-middle class, cosmopolitan Europeans. It's like taking your sample of Americans based on a group of NYU grad students and their friends and family.

Now, I don't know if lemuel is doing this, and it would certainly be ungenerous to assume so. All I can say is that my experiences in smaller cities in Scotland and Norway strongly suggest that your average European knows at least as little about American history as your average American. And, generally, I don't think Europeans are better than us. Get them started on Arabs and you'll be frickin' shocked what comes out.

Re: history of a country on your border? or history of a country that you hate?

How long has mass hatred of America been true of France? Yes, there's always been a trendy lefty hate of America in Europe, and a much smaller trendy rightwing hate of America too, but it's only been the last six years this has moved out beyond the fringes into the mainstream population. But to put your question in an American perspective, how many classes in Canadian or Mexican history would find in a typical US university versus history clasees in Russian or Islamic history?

Shame on me! :)
I only read McMahon´s article after posting my first comment.
And otto seems to be right.

Whereas you can go to almost any small college in America and find, say, a professor or two of French or German history, you will be hard-pressed to find a professor of American history anywhere in France or Germany. There are, to be sure, notable exceptions, as well as a number of programs teaching a kind of trendified American studies--film courses with heavy doses of Zizek and Critical Theory and that sort of thing. But a course on the American Revolution, the New Deal, or the Civil War? Good luck.

McMahon seems to have done no research at all about German universities. A simple Google search in German would have shown him lots of lectures about American history.
Of course he covers himself by saying that there are "notable exceptions". :)

American Revolution: Google "Vorlesung Amerikanische Revolution".
(Course/lecture American Revolution - 57,800 hits)

New Deal: Google "Vorlesung New Deal".
(Course/lecture New Deal - 34,000 hits)

Civil War: Google "Vorlesung Amerikanischer Buergerkrieg".
(Course/lecture American Civil War - 17,000 hits)

Now of course not every hit deals with a German university course.
But if you look at the links you´ll often see "uni-xxx" as part of the link. "Uni" is short for university, followed normally by the city where the university is located. For example "uni-koeln" (Cologne) or "uni-muenchen" (Munich).

Just looking at the links I´d say that practically every German university with a history department, economics department or "Amerikanistik" department covers one or all of the three topics mentioned by McMahon. As well as other American history topics I should add.

DivGuy wrote:

I am incredibly skeptical about this. It sounds way too much like what most of my friends said in college after studying abroad in big cites in Europe. While there, they were almost all surrounded with highly educated, upper- or upper-middle class, cosmopolitan Europeans. It's like taking your sample of Americans based on a group of NYU grad students and their friends and family.

No disagreement with you here. I´m pretty certain that the average German doesn´t know that much about American history. To be candid, they probably don´t know that much about German history. Say, the Thirty-Year-War for example.

But notice that McMahon didn´t talk about ordinary people either in his post. He wrote about "European intellectual circles" and university students. And "professor[s] of American history in France or Germany".

JonF --

When I first went to France in 1972 I was warned about the generalized hatred of Americans and American society throughout all levels of French society. It was, in my experience, an almost complete untruth; in fact, I'd have to say many Frenchmen and women demonstrated a friendliness and openness to my brother and myself as Americans completely beyond anything I'd experienced, say, as a Californian in New York.

Yes, this was at the height of the VietNam war and the midst of the absurd era of the ostentatious Maple Leaf jackets.

I'm curious as to whether the myth is any truer today.

I think the French would be quite shocked to find Americans just as overly sensitive about inane comparisons as they are. Why this rivalry between us?

My guess is that the number of European historians doing PhD-level research on American subjects is more or less governed by the interests of those historians and the availability of good data to research. All the pre-1492 data is going to skew things rather heavily towards European history.

As for the lack of history chairs with the term "American" in the title, nobody disputes that European students seem to have a better grasp at American history than vice versa, so, to paraphrase the Instapundit: "undisturbing, if true".

And that's because high school level educational differences can be explained very well at the high school level.

My (Dutch) high school curriculum focused more or less on recent history (i.e. 1848 onwards). The stuff you need the most if you want to make sense of where we are today.

Almost all the national-glory stuff (i.e. the 80-year war, the Dutch East India Company and Rembrandt) was skipped. Our right wingnuts still like to complain about that.

But reviewing the last 158 years, there have been rather few moments in which Holland featured very prominently on the world's stage. The US on the other hand have been quite busy.

So I think it is reasonable that Dutch schoolchildren learn about F.D. Roosevelt. Theodore, not so much. And there's absolutely no need for American schoolchildren to learn about Pieter Gerbrandy.

As a frenchman, I confirm that the supposed french americanophobie is a myth. We do not dislike the american people but it is a matter of fact that most of us dislike the current american government.

There is one thing you should understand, when the french government takes a decision it has absolutely no impact on the american way of life but the contrary is not true. Your country is so powerful that the behaviour of your government has an indirect ( or direct ) impact on the rest of the world.

It is a matter of fact and we have to deal with it.

To come back on the history, I have the feeling ( I'm probabily biaised because of my french perspective ) that the average educated french has a decent understanding of the american history. This is also,in my opinion because of the fact that we are very found of history in this country. And also because we believe there is a lot to learn about the past in order not to make mistakes again.

Sorry for my english.

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