INTRODUCTION TO
AMERICAN STUDIES I
An Introduction
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
Who’s this?
Other statues of Columbus:
L: Bremerhaven, Germany, Ludwig Habich, c. 1900
R: Vienna, Austria, Josef Cesar, 1862
Christopher Columbus
 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
believes that he is in India…
 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
Index to Columbus’s account of his
journeys: Gold
Excerpts and engravings from A Short Account of the Destruction
of the Indies (1542) by Bartolomé de las Casas
 They [the Spanish] would
erect long gibbets …
and bind thirteen of the
Indians at one time, in
honour and reverence,
they said, of Our
Redeemer and the
twelve Apostles, and put
firewood around it and
burn the Indians alive.
 [T]he lord asked the holy
father whether Christians
went to the sky. The
priest replied that they
did, but only those who
were good. And the
cacique then said … that
he did not desire to go
to the sky, but rather
down to hell, so that he
would not be where they
were and would not see
such cruel people.
What are the images of “discovery”?
America (1598)
“Americus
rediscovers
America”
“He called her
but once and
thenceforth she
was always
awake”
Jan van der
Staet (Stradanus)
b. 1523,
Flanders
d. 1605,
Florence
What are the images of “discovery”?
Discovery of
the New
World (1621)
Wolfgang
Kilian
b. 1581,
Germany
d. 1662,
Germany
What are the images of “discovery”?
[Columbus
discovering
America].
Etching In
Antonio de
Herrerra y
Tordesillas,
Historia
general de las
Indias
Occidentales,
1728.
What are the images of “discovery”?
The Landing
of Columbus
in the New
World (1803)
Frederick
Kemmelmeyer
b. 1788,
Germany
d. 1816,
Maryland
What are the images of “discovery”?
Landing of
Columbus
(1847)
John Vanderlyn
b. 1775, New
York
d. 1852, New
York
This painting is
in the rotunda
of the U.S.
Capitol
buidling
What are the images of “discovery”?
The Landing
of Columbus
(1893)
Albert
Bierstadt
b. 1832,
Germany
d. 1902, New
York
What are the images of “discovery”?
Columbus
Taking
Possession of
the New
Country
(1893)
Lithograph by
L. Prang & Co.
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
 John Hector St. John De Crevecoeur (1735-1815)
 Born in Caen, Normandy, he 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)
 French aristocrat who travelled between 1831-1833 with Gustave de Beaumont on a charter to
examine American prisons.
 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.”
 Volume 1, Chapter VIII
Democracy in America, Volume 2, Chapter IX
 “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.”
Democracy in America, Volume 1, Chapter VIII
 “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.”
What are some possible causes?
 “City Upon a Hill”
 American Exceptionalism
 Manifest Destiny
 The Frontier Hypothesis
 The Melting Pot
 Slavery and race
The history of exploration and
colonization is a complex one
For example, do you know?
 The oldest, continuously inhabited settlement in the United
States?
 Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico
 Established in c. 700 A.D., it has been continuously occupied since at
least 1075 A.D.
 The oldest, continuously-occupied European-established
settlement in the United States?
 St. Augustine, Florida (1565)
 Area first explored in 1513
 French establish Fort Caroline nearby in 1564
 The Spanish attack the French Fort and in the autumn establish their
own settlement
 The oldest state capital?
 Santa Fe, New Mexico (1607)
 Established by the Spanish and made capital of the province of
Nuevo Mexico in 1610
Regional Histories
 Regional histories and their non-British elements are
important
 The Spanish and Mexicans impacts in the Southwest
 The French impacts in Louisiana and in the Mississippi
River Valley and Great Lakes
 The Dutch impacts in what is now New York
 The German impacts in eastern Pennsylvania and the
Ohio River valley