Just finished A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History (2006) by Thomas Bender, a first-rate historian at NYU. He argues that the traditional division of history as taught in US universities (and high schools) into "US history" and "world history" has artificially obscured the extent to which the two subjects are interrelated. This book is Bender's attempt to show how US history can only be properly understood if integrated into world history and told with reference to important events elsewhere in the world. Nice timing — world events are impinging on us more directly at present than for many years. I'll briefly summarize the book, then discuss how it applies to Mormon history.
It's easy to drift into American exceptionalism by thinking of America as just a very big island, insulated by oceans to the east and west and invisible neighbors to the north and south. The book debunks the exceptionalist paradigm by showing how much selected themes and events in US history depend on similar and contemporaneous developments across the world. Our links to the rest of the world go deeper than sushi and Italian restaurants.
In Chapter One, "The Ocean World and the Beginnings of American History," Bender notes that the big discovery of Columbus and his fellow explorers was not really the continent of America, it was the world ocean. Before the 16th century, Europeans thought of "the world" as an island world surrounded by a river. This goes back to the Greeks: okeanos (or Oceanus) was the great river surrounding the island world. And until the 16th century, that view was confirmed by European geographical knowledge of Europe, Africa, and Asia, a huge landmass surrounded by water. The Mediterranean was, of course, the sea in the middle of the land or terra. When Magellan and his crew circumnavigated the globe from 1519 to 1522, they changed that view forever. The term "ocean" then took on its modern meaning, and the world ocean emerged as a highway of commerce and warfare, dominated over time by Europeans as they developed and then exploited superior ships and naval gunnery. Think Master and Commander.
In Chapter Two, Bender places the American Revolution firmly within the long war between the French and English which stretched esentially from 1754 to 1783. The French were happy to assist the Americans during the Revolution because the English had eclipsed them in the earlier phase of their global imperial conflict. And without French aid, we would have lost the war. Remember that victory at Yorktown depended on the French fleet holding the British fleet at bay and on Rochambeau tutoring Washington at Yorktown in proper seige technology to overcome British fortifications (not an American specialty).
In later chapers, Bender brings out links between the liberal revolutions of 1848 and the US Civil War; between the European quest for empire and the US acquisition of formal imperial possessions in 1898; and between industrialization and socialism as experienced in both the US and the rest of the world during the 20th century. Good stuff, and if you are one of those folks who just can't get over the notion that free markets are a vast conspiracy to empower rich Republicans, you'll especially like the last chapter. His summary: "The United States is not outside of or apart from the common history of humanity, as some proponents of American exceptionalism would have us believe" (p. 296). It's a mind-expanding book for anyone raised on a diet of compartmentalized history books titled "History of X" where X is any country on the present world map.
What's the Mo app? Just as US history is sometimes told as if it occured in isolation from the rest of the world, so is Mormon history often told as if it happened in a social and religious vacuum. Once the Mormons got to Utah I think you can argue that a distinctive Mormon subculture emerged and that the institutional Church continues to reflect some of its characteristics. Think thrift, industry, and sobriety, or visit the Provident Living site for a full dose. Just the phrase "provident living" tells you you're not in Kansas anymore. But the fact that there may be some distinctive elements to 19th-century Mormon Utah and the LDS instituitonal culture of the 20th and 21st centuries doesn't justify exceptionalism in the account of Mormon history.
Admittedly, this may not be on the mark as criticism of LDS history as presently written. I think LDS historians now work hard to relate the LDS story of any period to contemporary social and religious events. Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling certainly tries to place the events of Joseph's life and the rise of the Church in the full context of American culture. And one could certainly argue that Correlation's job is to ensure that only the Mormon story gets told in curriculum materials, not anyone else's. They can tell their own religious story. And that's why you need to read history: you won't get it in Sunday School.
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