Systematic Revisionism and a Generation of Ferment in American History

Abstract

The earnest veterans who swept into American graduate schools after the conclusion of the second world war were self-confident, mature in judgment, and eager to begin professional careers. Having paid for the mistakes of the previous generation in blood, sweat and deprivation, they were unlikely to accept the teachings of their elders without close scrutiny. The progressive history which was laid before them had enjoyed a long and successful run, going back to the early years of the century. By now its message of ameliorative progress, of populist orators or progressive tribunes defending the people against predatory and conspiratorial business tycoons, and of the emergence of a capitalism purified by regulatory agency, was old hat.2 Once a small and struggling experiment on a very large globe, the United States was now a certified colossus in a small world, apparently doomed to exist during the foreseeable future in uneasy balance with another national behemoth whose rulers and people espoused a hostile political philosophy. After the thoughtful American had sorted the western nations into friends, allies or enemies, there remained various underdeveloped polities, truly ancient in some cases, and in others rooted in the disintegration of the European colonial empires. These were countries, thought Washington policy-makers, that should be given aid and tutelage lest they take a wrong turn in their course toward modernity. Within this context of international ideological competition, American historians and social scientists with a historical perspective began to emphasize the major continuities in American political history. Despite fiery debates, American political leaders, according to these consensus historians, had been more remarkable, from the American Revolution to the present, for their general commitment to the same basic tenets of political philosophy than for their differences. A great contrast in ideas was found not within America itself, but rather by contrasting American political values and institutions with those of continental Europe and