American myths about national character tend to overshadow the
historical realities. Mr. Horsman's book is the first study to
examine the origins of racialism in America and to show that the
belief in white American superiority was firmly ensconced in the
nation's ideology by 1850.
The author deftly chronicles the beginnings and growth of an
ideology stressing race, basic stock, and attributes in the blood.
He traces how this ideology shifted from the more benign views of
the Founding Fathers, which embraced ideas of progress and the
spread of republican institutions for all. He finds linkages
between the new, racialist ideology in America and the rising
European ideas of Anglo-Saxon, Teutonic, and scientific ideologies
of the early nineteenth century. Most importantly, however, Horsman
demonstrates that it was the merging of the Anglo-Saxon rhetoric
with the experience of Americans conquering a continent that
created a racialist philosophy. Two generations before the "new"
immigrants began arriving in the late nineteenth century,
Americans, in contact with blacks, Indians, and Mexicans, became
vociferous racialists.
In sum, even before the Civil War, Americans had decided that
peoples of large parts of this continent were incapable of creating
or sharing in efficient, prosperous, democratic governments, and
that American Anglo-Saxons could achieve unprecedented prosperity
and power by the outward thrust of their racialism and commercial
penetration of other lands. The comparatively benevolent view of
the Founders of the Republic had turned into the quite malevolent
ideology that other peoples could not be "regenerated" through the
spread of free institutions.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!