The OLD Philosopher – John M. Miller
Were there no England, there would be no United States of America. Were there no Britain or United Kingdom, there would be no USA. Were there no Europe, America as we know it could not exist. “America” (meaning in our usage, the USA) is a European invention.
It needs to be stated, however, that there were “Americans” here before any Europeans came to America. American Indian culture was the only culture in the Western Hemisphere for thirteen thousand years before European explorers or settlers ever set foot here. Native Americans have had some influence on “American” culture, but as a realistic percentage, not very much. This may be a sad fact, a sober fact, a sobering fact, but it is a fact.
Great Britain, and especially England, has left its stamp on the USA more than any other European nation-state. Waves of eighteenth and nineteenth century immigrants from Germany, France, Holland, Italy, Ireland, Scandinavia, Russia and elsewhere in eastern and southern Europe brought their cultures to the land now occupied by the USA. The folkways and mores (to use the terms of sociology) they brought with them inevitably affected us as well.
In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, immigrants from European-dominated states elsewhere in Central and South America have also come to the United States. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Spanish colonized most of the Americas south of our border, including the Caribbean. Among large countries, the only exception was Brazil, where the Portuguese held sway. People have come from all those southern nations into the United States, bringing aspects of their cultures with them.
People also have come here from nation-states where, at various periods, Europeans held power in Africa and Asia, such as Egypt, Somalia, Kenya, Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), South Africa, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India, Vietnam, China, and Japan. Historically, we have been less likely to receive immigrants from places where Europeans never had enduring influence, such as north and central Africa and central Asia.
The United States of America has the greatest degree of “internationalization” among its citizens of any nation in the world. The Statue of Liberty was deliberately pointed toward Europe, but her appeal to huddled masses yearning to breathe free has circled the entire globe. It has done so, however, largely to Europeans or to peoples who were dominated by Europeans from the sixteenth century to the present.
I am attempting here to suggest that from its inception to the current moment, what evolved into “American culture” was heavily European in its origins. The essential genesis did not come from Asia, Africa, Australia, or from the indigenous peoples already living here before Europeans arrived. It came from Europe or from peoples where Europeans held the reins of power for much of the last five centuries.
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Nevertheless, from the moment English settlers first set foot in Virginia in 1607 and in Massachusetts in 1620, and when other Europeans came here after that, America slowly began to create its own distinctive culture. After the American Revolution, and particularly during the nineteenth century, Americans came to see themselves as a unique culture and Americans as a unique people. We may have evolved out of various European nations, but we saw ourselves first as Americans, not as Euro-Americans.
A very small number of the Founding Fathers may have envisioned a vast nation stretching from sea to shining sea, but most did not. How could they? They scarcely could plan for thirteen separate British colonies becoming the United States of America, let alone foreseeing a country reaching from Maine to Hawaii and from Florida to Alaska. In 1776, it was impossible for anyone to imagine such an immense nation-state.
Out of all these disparate European-based nationalities, we did manage to knit together a uniquely “American character,” an “American spirit,” an “American ethos.” Considering how large a nation we became and in relatively so short a time, that was remarkable. With so many nationalities melting into our melting pot, how could that possibly have happened?
Well, nearly all Americans, regardless of how long or short a period as they personally or their forebears were (or were not) here, they were committed to whatever singular notion they had of “America.” They wanted to be Americans. As European-oriented as America was in its origins, we deduced, it was not European. It was American.
To imagine that America has become totally Americanized is an innocent and understandable illusion. Our language, our form of government, our laws, our customs, our clothes, our food, our mental constructs, our skin pigmentation (although on a fairly rapidly decreasing basis) are all European in origin.
Nonetheless, toward the end of the second decade of the current century, a uniquely American culture has clearly come into focus. Other peoples can easily spot an American from fifty yards, except that for all of them it is fifty meters. They can tell who we are by our hair styles, our clothes, our shoes, our mannerisms, and our behavior. In the same way, we can tell they are not Americans on the basis of those same factors.
In 1962 and 1963, I spent my second year of seminary in Scotland. Then my wife and I traveled throughout Europe for two months. I will readily admit that I became a confirmed and un-reconstructable Europhile and Scotophile and Anglophile in my early twenties. For all its faults, of which there are an appalling plethora, I am nevertheless convinced that Europe is by far the most positive influence on America there ever was or shall be. Without Europe, America (the USA) is nothing. For that matter, without Europe, the Americas would be nothing.
Back in the early Sixties when traveling in Europe, I was struck by how quickly I could pick out Americans in a crowd of people on any European street. Back then, anyone wearing blue jeans was almost certainly an American. Now, everyone everywhere seems to wear jeans, although not necessarily blue. But denim has become a universal form-fitting fabric. It was invented, I presume, in America.
Up until the mid-twentieth century, European clothing styles influenced styles in developed nations around the world. Since then, American styles have become the dominant influence. Europeans imitate us in what they wear more than we imitate Europeans. American “culture” is becoming dominant throughout the world.
Americans appear to have more national confidence than most other people. Most people have national pride, but most Americans especially have boundless national confidence. Americans seem more brash than other people, especially than Europeans, who are more reserved. We appear more sure of ourselves. We may not be exactly arrogant, but we are definitely not diffident either. Obviously these are not only generalizations, but subjective generalizations.
Characteristics of “the American character” have slowly developed. Americans may have trouble identifying one another, but most other people can identify us quite readily. Some of us may be proud of that. Some may be dismayed. Some may be mystified. In any case, for better or worse, four centuries after Europeans landed here, an “American character” has evolved. That is beyond dispute.
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The institution of government seems to be more trusted now in Europe than in America. From the late nineteenth through the late twentieth century, governments rose and fell more rapidly in Europe than in America, particularly in southern Europe. Multi-party states and coalition governments were a major factor in that trend. But in large measure, European democratic nations have tended to support the notion of “government” more naturally than did Americans.
Only in the American Civil War did a government fall, although even that is a point still debated by American historians. Governments don’t “fall” in the USA. Instead they merely change complexion by election.
The American nation originated as an anti-government movement. The government they so vehemently opposed was the British monarchy and its regally-dominated Parliament. My impression is that there has always been more of a libertarian streak in American political sentiment than in Europe. Many Americans have long believed that the government which governs the very best governs the very least. Europeans are less likely to think like that. “Government” has always been “big” in Europe.
Over the course of three millennia, Europeans discovered that they had had to get along with one another, or there would be constant unrest if not outright warfare. In one sense, however, the history of Europe is a history of constant political and military conflict. Nevertheless, since the end of World War II, there have been no major wars in Europe; none. Europeans have learned to live in peace with one another, even if they have not necessarily happily done so.
Furthermore, European governments in recent decades have tended to be relatively strong, compared to previous decades or centuries. The governments of Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Switzerland, the Low Countries, eastern Europe, and Scandinavia have managed to maintain the support of most of their people throughout recent decades.
In the US, there has always been an element of anti-government antipathy. “Rugged individualism” is a valued American trait, and it may naturally see itself in opposition to any form of government. There are currently some indications of anti-government libertarianism in Europe, but it is as nothing compared to the USA. The election of Donald Trump and the seemingly inexplicable continuing support of the Trump base suggest that the concept of a strong central government is no longer alive and well in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
So why, you may wonder, did I even bother to write this essay. What is its purpose?
It is this, and truly only this: If America and Americans think they have created a culture which should be emulated by the entire world, we have very badly deluded ourselves. The culture we have is indeed distinctively American, but like European or Asian or African or South American or Australian or Canadian culture (whatever those terms might mean), every culture is unique. No culture is flawless, however. In truth, “flaw” is not a word which can accurately be attached to a proper notion of culture everywhere, and among all peoples. We were taught that in Sociology 101. Culture, all culture, simply IS; it evolves, it grows, it changes. But culture always exists everywhere.
My purpose in this essay is simply to say that European culture is a diminishing influence on American culture. “America” has existed in various manifestations for more than four centuries. That is certainly long enough for it to develop its own particular culture.
There is a phrase in the Episcopalian Prayer Book which suggests that “we think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think.” From the moment John Smith and chums first set foot on the banks of the James River in what they declared to be Virginia (no doubt much to the amazement and amusement of the natives already living there), Americans have always had a persistent and almost ineradicable tendency to do just that; we think very highly of ourselves.
Into the twenty-first century of the Common Era, all Americans of every ethnic background are still fundamentally cultural Europeans. I am extremely gratified that is the case. Culturally what we shall be a thousand years from now is impossible to predict. But for now, as the song doesn’t say but could say, “I’m proud to be a Euro-American!”
- September 25, 2017
John Miller is a writer, author, lecturer, and preacher-for-over-fifty-years who is pastor of The Chapel Without Walls on Hilton Head Island, SC.