The Shock of America

The American Republic and Europe have always had entangled transatlantic histories despite putative isolationism under the injunctions of George Washington. No aspect of comparative or transnational history has been more exhaustively studied in the English-speaking world. These two books draw upon such work to synthesize the relationship from the turn of the twentieth century to the present. Both deal with the unevenness of the transatlantic connection as economic and political catastrophe spurred conflict and necessary cooperation in the aftermath of wars, and both treat the fundamental asymmetry as American power grew. The books also sensibly deconstruct the notion of a united Europe against which the United States can be compared, giving excellent attention to Germany and Eastern Europe in Mary Nolan's case, and to Italy, France, and Britain in David W. Ellwood's. Both regard the cultural aspects of the Euro-American relationship as important. Nolan rejects the familiar “American century” terminology in favor of a “transatlantic century”—a gesture toward the transnational decentering of the United States within a larger system. She asks us not to read later American power back into 1898, and her book charts the fits and starts of the nation's development into the global hegemon. Rejecting Eric Hobsbawm's periodization of a “short twentieth century” of war and totalitar ianism from 1914 to 1991, Nolan adopts the chronological parameters of the 1890s to the present to avoid “free-world” triumphalism inherent in communism's downfall (Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991, 1994). Continuing her story into the early 2000s, she detects the “limits of the American century” (p. 7). A gradual and uneven erosion of American power and influence in Europe began by the 1970s, due to growing U.S. economic weaknesses fueled by imperial overreach and domestic economic performance, and to European self-determination surrounding the 1980s nuclear arms race and post–Cold War politics in Eastern Europe

American Century · American exceptionalism · Diplomacy · Economic history · Foreign policy · Great power · Hegemony · Isolationism · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Transatlantic relations · Historical Geopolitical and Social Dynamics · History · Law