What’s an American
J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur’s 1782 letter, “What Is an American,” a part of a series of short essays in his Letters from an American Farmer, strives to define the character of the American nation at a time of its birth. In the letter, the author supplies an early depiction of what would later become “the American dream.” Crévecoeur makes effort to distinguish between the European economic order and the economic organization of the American society (Douglas, 2001). The former is defined as one where the poor “toil, starve, and bleed” only for a part of their brow to be taken by “a despotic prince, a rich abbot, or a mighty lord.” The American economic organization, on the other hand, is defined as being less stratified where there is no princess to toil, starve, and bleed for. Americans are therefore not answerable to any king, court, or bishop and have the freedom to make their own decisions to a point. While the European rich and poor lead segregated lives but in American all are the same, which has inspired immigration of the middling and the poor to America (Douglas, 2001).
A European is said to be American citizen when he leaves behind him all his previous prejudices and mannerisms such as the mechanism of subordination and servility of disposition inculcated in him by poverty under the European socioeconomic system. The new American order, conversely, the benefits of one’s industry were in tandem with the progress of their labor (Skipp, 1992). Thus, the American is a reformed European acting on new principles because there were able men who had experienced much miseries in Europe and were after a fresh beginning. Crévecoeur distinguishes an American as the only person in the world with parents and grandparents from different cultural backgrounds (English, Scotch, Irish, French, Dutch, Germans, and Swedes). In general, therefore, an American has a simpler lifestyle founded on equal opportunity and self-determination, and America is the most perfect society in existence in the world; while Europe is the direct opposite: overly intertwined person in a largely complex social, economic, and political structure (Skipp, 1992).
Unique American identity
Regardless of the diverse and multi-ethnic nature of the American society, the unique American identity is largely a product of the colonial heritage of its original thirteen British North American colonies. The inhabitants of the British North American colonies maintained allegiance to the crown of England for a long time before the emergence of American identity (Connors & MacDonald, 2011). The rise of unique American identity can be attributed to the departure of British troops along with the diminishing British influence in the United States at the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783. Americans had no longer a British cause to adhere to in terms of national identity, thus were free to publicly support their own American cause. The new American identity was reflective of the history and unique experiences of the colonists in the British North American colonists. It was characterized by great focus on public education for the masses because it had already taken root in New England. It also reflected the religious pluralism of the different groups of intermixed people in the colonies (Connors & MacDonald, 2011). Finally, it included American egalitarianism – the belief in equality of all people that contributed to establishment of a government founded on the consent, of the governed.
References:
Connors, L. E., & MacDonald, M. L. (2011). National identity in Great Britain and British North America, 1815-1851: The role of nineteenth-century periodicals. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.
Douglas, C. (2001). Reciting America: Culture and cliché in contemporary US fiction. Urbana [u.a.: Univ. of Illinois Press.
Skipp, F. E. (1992). American literature. New York: Barron’s.
