Comparative Approaches from Germany: The "New Nation" in Advanced Industrial Capitalism, 1860-1940-Integration, Stabilization and Reform

Abstract

The history of German historiography on the United States has always been a history of scarcity and want. Its development in West Germany after 1945 is no exception to that rule, even if some of the West German historians may have become a bit more conscious than their predecessors before the end of World War II. Institutes for North American Studies (AmerikaInstitute) at a few universities have been traditionally dominated by the language and literature professors, or occasionally by geographers (e.g., in Cologne, Munich, Frankfurt, Mainz). Chairs explicitly designated for North American or United States history were established in Cologne only in the 1950s and within the resourceful Institute of North American Studies of the Freie Universitat Berlin in the 1960s (now called the John F. Kennedy Institute). The majority of West German (and West Berlin) scholars since the 1950s have done historical research on the United States outside of the institutional framework. The typical Americanist among German historians, if there ever was such a person, seems to be a loner within his or her surroundings, which have in general not been too favorable to North American Studies. In addition, and at least partly following the established career patterns of German academic life, most of these people have not been solely specialists in American history: the majority started out in German (or at least European) history, some moving completely into U.S. history, others (such as myself) remaining what may be called part-time Americanists. Although this relatively broad and unorthodox approach (at least compared to American standards and traditions) to a certain extent has favored comparative studies from the beginning, most of the work has been monographic or introductory. Apart from an ambitious (and slowly moving) project of a Handbuch der Neueren Geschichte Nordamerikas [Handbook of North American History] (planned for 3 volumes), in the field of comprehensive summaries of U.S. history there has been a history of the U.S., with about 85 percent of its text written by British authors,1 a short history of the U.S. since 1917,2 and a twentieth-century Economic History.3 The monographs basically have fo-