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US 鈥榚xceptionalism鈥 has spun a complex web

By Tim Roberts | June 9, 2014, Monday | Print Edition

IN late 2013 US President Barack Obama mentioned “American exceptionalism” as a basis for possible US military intervention in Syria. Critics condemned Obama for resorting to Cold War logic to justify a new foray in American imperialism.

But “American exceptionalism” has meant more than simply US meddling in other countries. This concept has a history that is surprisingly complex, helping justify not only American interventionism but American isolation as well as domestic reform. Indeed, these latter emphases may become more important reasons that Americans talk about “exceptionalism” in the future.

In “Democracy in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville first described the United States as “exceptional.” Tocqueville meant that American society lacked the wealth disparity of feudalistic Europe, and was politically liberal, though not revolutionary.

But other Europeans introduced the idea of America as exceptional long before Tocqueville. Within a century of Christopher Columbus arriving in the New World, British writers claimed a few North American colonies alone could supply as much raw materials as all of Europe and the Near East combined. Meanwhile, colonial Virginia offered all free men the opportunity to vote for their government, the first case of a modern republic.

And dissenters from the Church of England, the Puritans, founded colonial Massachusetts in 1630 as a “City upon a Hill,” meaning an exemplary community favored by God. America as a place to get rich — later called the American Dream — to have a political voice, and as a nation “under God,” became enduring ideas of American exceptionalism.

Through the mid-nineteenth century, exceptionalism normally meant American isolation.

Expanding US territory

President Thomas Jefferson warned against “entangling alliances.” After the American Civil War, however, exceptionalism changed from meaning America was especially separated from the world to meaning the United States had a role to transform the world.

From the founding of the United States in 1787 through 1900 Americans fought small and large wars against Indians, North Africans, Mexicans, Koreans, and Spaniards to expand American territory and trade.

A historian, Frederick Jackson Turner, in the “frontier thesis,” emphasized that territorial expansion was the key to understanding the uniqueness of American society. Turner emphasized Americans’ penchant for violence, individualism, and opposition to big government.

Other writers justified Americans’ expansion of borders and especially deployment of force differently. They argued that Americans were actually introducing peaceful “civilization” to their opponents. In this way, exceptionalism functioned to explain that the United States, even though a global power, was not a colonial empire.

The arrival in the United States of European socialists in the late nineteenth century, and especially the upheavals of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, shaped American exceptionalism in a new direction. That is, from World War through the end of the Cold War, exceptionalism meant anti-communism.

Perhaps especially since the end of the Cold War, scholars of American history and politics have rethought the key assumptions of American exceptionalism. They note that other countries — Australia and Canada, for example — had “frontier” histories somewhat similar to America’s.

They note the emergence of class division in the United States. And they note the rise of other countries and regions, such as the European Union, Brazil, and China, as American competitors. These factors suggest that arguments for American exceptionalism may decline in the near future.

On the other hand, the United States remains the most likely country to which foreigners wish to immigrate, and American “soft power” seems widespread.

The real question will become whether institutions that were the first basis for claims about American exceptionalism— religious freedom, economic and political opportunity — can be sustained, even as the United States comes to look more like the world, and less unique. If so, then American exceptionalism can help, not harm, Americans and their neighbors.

Tim Roberts is a US Fulbright Lecturer at Zhejiang University. These views are his alone, and do not reflect those of the Fulbright Program or Zhejiang University. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.

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