The Colonialism And Historiography Of The Colonial Revival

After reading “Second Thoughts of Colonial Historians and American Indians” by James H. Merrell, it is important to acknowledge the symbolicism of the language used by so many Colonial Historians as they recount significant instances throughout our Indigenous American History. In many comparisons, word selection used to describe the Native peoples, tend to simplify their existence as merely hunters and gatherers.

Colonial life in America was a time of many victories and failings. It was a learning experience for the people of the time. In a A People’s History of the United States and A Patriot’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn and Larry Schweikart tell contrasting stories of the issues of colonial life.

“Manifest destiny”, the effects of industrialization, and the addition of millions of immigrants to American ranks mark America as it stood in the 1800’s. The introduction of a plethora of differing cultures and traditions meant that ideas of what it meant to be American were still forming as the country surged into its position as a global powerhouse. The “wild, wild West” had made its appearance as the Homestead Act of 1862 beckoned large numbers of landless citizens seeking to remedy such circumstances (Peopling of the West, 51). At the same time, Victorian standards for dress and poise still permeated the American middle-class. These strange cultural amalgamations of America in the 1800’s proved to be catalysts for the change that the turn of the century brought in – the millions of Americans on whose back the country had flourished sought recompense in the form of leisure to match their work. While the 1800’s had been chock full of Victorian values and industrious yearnings, the 1900’s entered with a demand for less rigorous social expectations. The Victorian values instilled in middle-class Americans were faced with a sudden challenge in the form of amusement parks that offered overburdened workers a respite from their dreary work days. While this new entertainment excluded some races, it allowed more classes and ethnicities to intermingle, enticed women from their traditional roles in the home, and disregarded the standards Victorian values had set for respectable

The Gilded Age’s cultural and intellectual elites were faced with a more innovative world as suggested in T.J. Jackson’s No Place of Grace, they are most often not harkened to the past as much as they would rather face the settings in the future. This book regards the effects of American antimodernism and from where it grounded its roots. Specifically, its dominant form as it withdraws from an overcivilized existence in modern society and precedes to pull other intense forms of a more physical and spiritual plain from medieval or oriental cultures. Determining that antimodernist movements were in it of themselves a complex blend of protest as well as an

When we think about American culture today, we usually think about the 4th of July, barbecuing, Donald Trump and football.We have centered our culture around ourselves and have not given much thought about the good of our country like our founders did when they wanted to avoid a tyrannical leader. In United States history, we have changed our culture due to given circumstances and becoming the “World’s Leading Power”, that we did not have to face the struggles that the colonists had to go through. Those struggles in the 1700’s had shaped American cultures and what they valued.

As an historian and prolific writer, Maier dedicated her professional life to the study and teaching of late colonial and revolutionary America. She initially wanted to be a journalist but realized her life’s passion after taking a “Colonial and Revolutionary America” seminar as a doctoral student at Harvard University. Maier went on to teach at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Wisconsin, and finally as the William Kenan Jr., Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she taught for three decades. In the 1990’s, Maier was a charter member of “The

Friedrich Fabri is in favor of the colonial expansion because he believes it will be quite beneficial for their economy and national development. His view on the motives for the imperialism is that it will be economic and political. Fabri states in his article, “Many things in the new nation are already made bitter through unproductive political quarreling, soured and poisoned, so that the notification of a new promising course of national development will produce a liberating effect, as the national spirit is stimulated in many ways. This would be delightful as well as a profit.” How I perceive this is that because of the debates between Europe and the other countries, the other countries became a mess and the ideas of Europe helping them on their feet was promising. This seems to be a trick as to get the countries to let Europe help them, but clearly it worked out for the better anyways. Fabri also mentions how England surpasses all other countries and how strong they are with their military.

Starting in 1754, the Seven Years’ war began and led up to a sequence of events involving the Parliament. The Parliament is the highest legislature in Great Britain and consisted of the House of Lords and House of Commons. The Parliament made three acts because of the Seven Years’ war, which affected the colonist greatly. The three acts made by the Parliament included the Sugar Act, Stamp Act, and the Tea Act. The Parliament made the acts to resolve issues and to enforce more laws, however, some acts made the colonist very upset and led up to events of commotion. The colonist had mixed emotions towards the act because some were liked and others were not.

Amid the administration of the three presidents, Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson, they were chosen amid a time in the US, known as the dynamic time. The Progressive Era was a time of open social activism and political change over the United States that spread over from the 1890s to the 1920s. The essential targets of the Progressive development were taking out issues caused by industrialization, urbanization, movement, and defilement in government. The development fundamentally focused on political machines and their managers. By bringing down degenerate delegates in office, a further method for coordinate vote based system would be built up.

At the dawn of the 1920’s America was entering a new era defined by a vast and complicated urban culture that would dominate the rest of the 20th century. New York was where the modern age was born. The very architecture spoke of America’s new ascendancy and aspirations. In New York, Broadway represented the latest in entertainment, Madison Avenue would come to stand for the bustling new business in advertising, and Wall Street represented the decade’s expanding economic activities. Harlem was where the unique American music of jazz began. Harlem was also contributing more than music to the American culture; it was a hot bed for political and cultural activity called the Harlem Renaissance. New York’s lower East side was for European Immigration;

The hyper-specialization within the field of American history since the 1970s has been a great advantage to colonial American studies. As historians branched off into previously ignored sub-fields they also drastically narrowed the time periods which they examined. While some scholars argue the abandonment of “deep history” leads to deficiencies in the field, it is the absence of this narrow analysis which is most noticeably absent in the

Thereby this project follows the idea put forward in Afred W. McCoys and Francisco A. Scaranos collection of essays Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making if the Modern American State. While dealing with as diverse topics as environment, economy, public health, military and race, the book tries to explores in “what ways, if any, the U.S [...] was formed or even transformed from [the] experiences gained at its colonial periphery”1. In their article On the Tropic of Cancer: Transitions and Transformations in the U.S. Imperial State McCoy and Scaranos argue that influence does not only flow from the center towards the periphery but that instead the imperial periphery was important for changes occurring in the center. Pointing out that while the new colonial territories provide a testing field for new approaches, the gained experiences also “profoundly influenced American cultures and society between 1840 and 1930”2. Thereby triggering a debate about the different aspects of this influence and how they create and recreate

In many ways the Colonial Revival was a direct reaction to the side effects of

During the height of colonialism between the 17th and 20th century, almost all of Asia was at one point either directly taken as a colonial possession, or was strongly influenced politically and economically by a colonial power. The exception to this was Siam (now Thailand) which has remained largely independent despite colonial pressure on all its borders (with the exception of the concession of what is now Laos and Burma).

The following narrative provides an example of how a Filipina American describes her negative self-concept: