That most hateful land: Romanticism and the birth of modern anti-Americanism

Abstract

This article presents a comparative study of romantic anti-Americanism focusing on Britain, Germany and France. On the basis of the hypothesis that romanticism invented what might be called the basic vocabulary of anti-American discourse, the article presents a taxonomy of this vocabulary and points to the determining factors underlying the romantic disaffection for America and Americans. Five motifs are singled out as fundamental to romantic anti-Americanism: the lack of history and culture in the US, the crass materialism of its inhabitants, their vulgarity, their religious excesses, and the flaws of the American political system. The article closes with an interpretation of romantic anti-Americanism as a strongly self-affirming, Eurocentric discourse, which accustomed Europeans to think of Europe and America as antithetical entities, thereby paving the way for cultural constructions not only of the American ‘other’, but also of a common European identity.