From Settler Colony to Global Hegemon: Integrating the Exceptionalist Narrative of the American Experience into World History
Author(s)
Adas, Michael
Abstract
Michael Adas asserts that most of the contributions to the substantial literature and equally substantial controversies over American exceptionalism have been offered by scholars with European orientations or comparativists who include examples from the United States in their studies. The result, he argues, is the neglect of a fundamental paradox that has been in the literature of exceptionalism since the earliest days of North American colonization: on the one hand, the vision of the American nation as a social and political experiment without precedent or parallel in global history, and, on the other hand, the belief that the American experience represents the vanguard of human history and a model for all humankind. Drawing on evidence from the histories of other settler societies and key themes in the history of non-Western peoples and cultures with which the United States has increasingly interacted, Adas analyzes the tensions between exceptionalism and globalism from a new perspective and addresses neglected issues raised by that inquiry.
He interrogates claims of American exceptionalism through an assessment of two of the more definitive, even mythic processes in U.S. history: colonial settlement and frontier expansion. In each case, Adas demonstrates that although American experiences reveal differences, they were by no means exceptional when placed in a comparative and global perspective. And he argues that patterns in the United States can be better understood within this larger frame of reference and, conversely, that an American dimension is critical for a full understanding of world history in the early modern and modern eras. Adas’s essay thus compels us to ponder the sources and implications of segregating the United States past from the rest of world history.
