American National Identity
Colonial America, settled by Western Europeans, initially displayed social and cultural characteristics similar to the group by which it was founded. As America grew, population density increased, government was established, and a notion of 'civilization' was embedded into the American mindset. The previous influences, in combination with other factors, such as America's distance from Europe, helped the United States wage and win the Revolutionary war. The US, gaining it's Independence, inevitably was to evolve it's own unique cultural traits. Early America portrayed the wild frontier as part of their national identity, while common colonial American ideology stigmatized the associated Native American culture as less civilized, as savage, and as subordinate to 'modern' eighteenth and nineteenth century societies. Factors such as Western European influence, racist ideology, subjective sciences, and speculative theories all contributed to a prejudiced judgment passed on Native Americans.Throughout the eighteenth century, Europeans, and arguably colonial Americans too, were seen as the most prone to "the principles of popular government, freedom, and liberty (Horsman, pg.18)." A creationist view, popularized throughout Europ
Such statements inevitably provoked a response from Americans, who in retaliation critiqued Buffon's work as speculative and subjective science. This stance, against America as an inapt environment, coincided with the image of America as a wild and rugged frontier fit for cultivating life. Such critiques of 'new world' environmental factors help catalyze a national identity for America as a frontier's land. e and the United States, suggested that people were the products of their environment and thus differences in people could be explained by differences in their environments (Horsman, pg. 43). European thinkers, Pinkerton, White, Foster, Buffon, and Voltaire, while having varied views on the origin of man and the existence of biological determinism, held the white race superior in some sense to all others. Similarly Jefferson, Washington, and later Lincoln publicly held the Caucasian race superior. The former two studied the freedoms and liberties which the Anglo-Saxon race had pursued since their Teutonic origins, and believed them to be the most fit to govern (Horsman, pg.18). This prejudice, whether based on environmental factors or biological determinism, was ingrained in America's beginning and would later be justified in various ways. Wilderness played a two faced role in the development of American identity. America sold the concept of a rugged frontier and savage wilderness to both themselves and Europeans as American genre in books like The Last of the Mohicans. Concurrently, Americans condemned North American Natives for being savage, untamed, uncivilized, and living a different way of life. America had racism so deeply embedded into their ideology that scientific frauds and educational theorists attempted to justify Anglo-Saxon as the supernatural race in what they claimed was the pursuit of good government and freedom. Despite, the overpowering general beliefs of colonial America, some did see the hypocritical role America was assuming. Franklin saw it in the subjective definition of 'civil,' Gould obser
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1379
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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