An Introduction
Introduction to American Studies
Historical Dates
 August 6, 1945
 Hiroshima
 Hiroshima Peace Memorial
 Designed by the Czech
architect Jan Letzel in 1915
as the Hiroshima Prefectural
Exhibition Hall
Santa Margherita di Liguria, Italy
Historical Dates
 October 12, 1492
 Christopher Columbus
leading a group of 3
ships – The Niña,
Pinta and Santa María
– lands on an island in
the Caribbean
 He names the island
“San Salvador”
What is the power of words?
 The island’s residents knew it as “Guanahani”
 What is the power of naming?
 What is the significance of the word “discovery”?
 1 a: to make known or visible: expose
 b archaic: display
 2 a: to obtain sight or knowledge of for the first time:
find
 b: find out
What are Columbus’s words?
 “So that they are good to be ordered about, to work
and sow, and do all that may be necessary, and to
build towns, and they should be taught to go about
clothed and to adopt our customs.”
 16 December 1492, Journal of the First Voyage
 “From here one might send, in the name of the Holy
Trinity, as many slaves as could be sold, as well as a
quantity of Brazil [timber]. If the information I have is
correct, it appears that we could sell four thousand
slaves, who might be worth twenty millions and more”
 September 1498, Journal of the Third Voyage
Basic questions for this course
 How similar are Americans and Europeans?
 If throughout its history, the majority of the people
of the United States have either been immigrants
from Europe or their descendants, why are the
attitudes, outlooks, perspectives, senses of
identity, etc. of Americans and Europeans so
different?
 The search for the answers to this question has
been one that has long employed American and
European scholars, writers and thinkers.
1782
 J. Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1815)
 Immigrated to America in 1755
 In 1782, he published Letters from An American
Farmer
 Letter III:
 “What then is the American, this new man?...He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient
prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the
new mode of life he has embraced, the new government
he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He has become
an American by being received in the broad lap of our
great Alma Mater. Here individuals of all races are
melted into a new race of man, whose labors and
posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.
Americans are the western pilgrims.”
1835
 Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
 Democracy in America
 First published in French as De la démocratie en Amérique in two
volumes (Volume 1 in 1835 and Volume 2 in 1840)
 “Everything is extraordinary in America, the social
condition of the inhabitants as well as the laws; but the
soil upon which these institutions are founded is more
extraordinary than all the rest. When the earth was given
to men by the Creator, the earth was inexhaustible; but
men were weak and ignorant, and when they had learned
to take advantage of the treasures which it contained,
they already covered its surface and were soon obliged
to earn by the sword an asylum for repose and freedom.
Just then North America was discovered, as if it had been
kept in reserve by the Deity and had just risen from
beneath the waters of the Deluge.”
o Volume 1, Chapter VIII
 “The position of the Americans is therefore quite
exceptional, and it may be believed that no democratic
people will ever be placed in a similar one. Their strictly
Puritanical origin, their exclusively commercial habits,
even the country they inhabit, which seems to divert
their minds from the pursuit of science, literature, and
the arts, the proximity of Europe, which allows them to
neglect these pursuits without relapsing into barbarism,
a thousand special causes, of which I have only been
able to point out the most important, have singularly
concurred to fix the mind of the American upon purely
practical objects. His passions, his wants, his
education, and everything about him seem to unite in
drawing the native of the United States earthward; his
religion alone bids him turn, from time to time, a
transient and distracted glance to heaven.”
o Volume 2, Chapter IX
 “THE principal aim of this book has been to make known the laws
of the United States; if this purpose has been accomplished, the
reader is already enabled to judge for himself which are the laws
that really tend to maintain the democratic republic, and which
endanger its existence. If I have not succeeded in explaining this
in the whole course of my work, I cannot hope to do so in a single
chapter. It is not my intention to retrace the path I have already
pursued, and a few lines will suffice to recapitulate what I have
said.
 Three circumstances seem to me to contribute more than all
others to the maintenance of the democratic republic in the United
States.
 The first is that federal form of government which the Americans have
adopted, and which enables the Union to combine the power of a great
republic with the security of a small one.
 The second consists in those township institutions which limit the
despotism of the majority and at the same time impart to the people a
taste for freedom and the art of being free.
 The third is to be found in the constitution of the judicial power. I have
shown how the courts of justice serve to repress the excesses of
democracy, and how they check and direct the impulses of the majority
without stopping its activity.”
o Volume 1, Chapter VIII
What are some possible causes?
 “City Upon a Hill”
 American exceptionalism
 Manifest Destiny
 The Frontier Hypothesis
 The Melting Pot
 Slavery and race