American History Blues

[sam_sonite]

America is the current hegemon so everyone (regardless of nationality) feels they are entitled to an opinion.  I respect and appreciate this.  However it gets annoying when you see SO many opinions which are influenced by a very basic comprehension of American history which is often far from complete.  Sadly it is really hard to remedy this.  The

Comments

[boots262]

What you're talking about is completely problematic, and has often defeated me when reading both American, and to an extent British and European texts. Not so much with history, however, but I think that's because I've been very lucky to have had an excellent American History teacher in the form of my supervisor, Stephen Robertson. Most of the history I've read of 19th and 20th century America has been from primary sources, and I've been grounded by his lectures and explanations in parts of the American 'mindset' or zeitgeist.

All national histories assume that they will be of main interest to their own country(wo)men, but it can be extremely disempowering to read something about a hegemon that was clearly never intended for you to really interact with. I would suggest going for academic texts, but they are expensive. They are written to an international standard of vocabulary and syntax, often avoiding the disempowerment due to cultural difference, but have their own attendant problems, namely elitist and exclusionary language and

[sam_sonite]

Historians have a way of being fixated on a particular era or even certain facets of an era. This is not necessarily useful to someone who is looking at the way the world works and is trying to figure out how it got that way. I truly believe that having a thorough knowledge of general American history makes it easier to understand the why behind certain world events.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I was born American. I believe that in the nineteenth century a good knowledge of British history would have served the same purpose. Perhaps in a few decades it will be Chinese. Just in case, we might want to start taking Mandarin lessons and doing some reading.

[str8bi]

I think the best thing is to read a book on American history written by someone that is not American. :)

I understand where you are coming from with your point of view about not understanding American history but I think that you have to understand something about education in Australia.
The majority of out education in history is based off Europe or Australian history.
This is only natural I guess given our station as a Birtish colony.
So for us we never really get taught American history unless you are genuinely interested in it and follow it up in later studies.
So our position to comment form is only really based off what we see and hear in the news and through popular culture.
I realise that this is not a good plaec to comment from most of the time but it is what our background and perspective is.
Personally I limit my comments on America because of this although I feel that I do have a place to comment on the international world scene and on the actions of America on it.

[sam_sonite]

I understand why Australians would not learn American history at school. My complaint is that for those who are 'genuinely interested' and attempt to follow up on that interest, it is ridiculously hard. Not everyone wants to read academic texts written by pompous windbags who use large words where smaller ones would do as a way to bolster their self-esteem (not all of them do this,but enough to be annoying). Besides academics always have their own extremely biased opinion about areas your average person does not care about. In an area such as American history I imagine it would be far worse than normal.

[str8bi]

Thats why we need a History for Dummies series. :D
Something that just gives us the facts and explanations. :)

[sam_sonite]

That would be so cool.