The End of Americanization? or Reinventing a Research Field for Historians of Europe

Abstract

The Americanization of Europe has been an elusive and controversial topic for historians because it poses questions of definition, causation, development, and significance. This essay addresses these issues, reviews the historiographical record, reassesses the current paradigm, and presents an agenda for future research. A revitalized paradigm theorizes Americanization as a disruptive force on European society and culture rather than a process of benign appropriation or trivial imitation. It incorporates American corporate and political power limiting local agency, treats transatlantic exchange at multiple levels while retaining the filter of the national, and maintains that the process, rather than coming to an end, has become the new norm. I also argue that Americanization functioned as a stimulus and foil for self-assessment that illuminates basic concerns of Europeans. Most important, the phenomenon of Americanization represents the American phase of European globalization, identifying America’s contribution to the interconnection and homogenization of the transatlantic community but also exposing resistance to transnationalism. Anti-Americanism, the twentieth-century opposition to Americanization, anticipated current challenges to globalization. My aim is to rescue this topic from critics who have disparaged it and to (re)establish it as a viable field of historical research. For Europeans, the twentieth century was the American century.