U.S. History Revised: Hustling as Mainstream American Culture

[Chris Alger]

This sounds like a really interesting book, especially now. An excerpt from the NY Times book review of Freedom Just Around the Corner: Rogue Nation:

This unusual book by Walter A. McDougall is the first of what will be a three-volume history of America. If this volume, which covers the period 1585 to 1828, is any indication of the promised whole, the trilogy may have a major impact on how we Americans understand ourselves.

McDougall, who is a Pulitzer Prize- winning historian at the University of Pennsylvania, opens "Freedom Just Around the Corner" with an arresting statement: "The creation of the United States of America is the central event of the past 400 years." Imagine, he says, some ghostly ship, some Flying Dutchman transported in time from the year 1600 to the present. "The crew would be amazed by our technology and the sheer numbers of people on the globe, but the array of civilizations would be recognizable." China, Japan, India, Russia, the vast Islamic crescent, South America and Europe are not all that different now from what they were in 1600. "The only continent that would astound the Renaissance time-travelers would be North America, which was primitive and nearly vacant as late as 1607, but which today hosts the mightiest, richest, most dynamic civilization in history -- a civilization, moreover, that perturbs the trajectories of all other civilizations just by existing."

McDougall's declaration is the kind that most American historians are very wary of making these days. It smacks of "exceptionalism," a forbidden word in the academy today. It suggests superiority, arrogance, unilateralism and perhaps neoimperialism. Indeed, even making generalizations about Americans or the American character is suspect. There are genders, ethnic groups and races, but no Americans, and certainly nothing resembling an American character. Maybe even these several identities do not exist, and there is only a multitude of individuals. Some historians have concluded that they cannot write national history anymore, but only microhistories of specific persons and small events.

McDougall has no such qualms. He unabashedly writes of Americans and assumes throughout that there is something called an American character. Only the character he describes may not be what many Americans would want to admit about themselves. Unlike other national narratives, which he says tend either to celebrate or to condemn America -- and in righteous seriousness -- his book aims to do neither. Instead, he wants to tell the truth about "who and why we are what we are," and to tell it entertainingly. His is thus a "candid" history. Its major theme is "the American people's penchant for hustling." We Americans, he claims, are a nation of people on the make.

Take, for instance, the fact that "American English is uniquely endowed with words connoting a swindle." McDougall lists (excluding obscenities) over 200 verbs and nouns, from "bait" to "thimble-rig." But we have more con men and hucksters than other nations not because we have a different nature or are worse than other peoples. It is just that "Americans have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul means or fair, than any other people in history."

...

If today we are shocked by shenanigans like the Enron debacle, insider trading, mutual fund abuses and the prevalence of special interests in politics, we need to get some perspective on our history. Americans, according to McDougall, have always been scramblers, gamblers, scofflaws and speculators. Nearly everyone in early America, it seems, wanted to know not what's good for the English crown or the colony or the nation, but "what's in it for me." Of course, there were honest righteous people, religious and high-minded people, who spoke out against excesses and abuses. But their idealistic voices only made Americans feel good about themselves without seriously diminishing the overall scramble for profit.

[andyfox]

"The only continent that would astound the Renaissance time-travelers would be North America, which was primitive and nearly vacant as late as 1607"

How can one take seriously anything written by someone who believes this?

Ambrose Bierce defined aborigines as "persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize."

Seems we perturbed the natives' trajectories.

[Chris Alger]

That's a good point. Still, with a population growth of around 100-150X (in North America), one could defend "nearly vacant" language as a density thing.

[Cyrus]

So in other words what you are sayin' is that Cons and Neo-Cons are the American way, right?

[John Cole]

I once worked with a student from Columbia who would hone his English skills by watching television and pick out various idiomatic expressions, which I would try to explain to him. One day, he came in shaking his head and asked, "I heard this line but can't understand it: 'Your once fine rhetorical skills have degenerated into mere hucksterism.'

Please, John, what is this "hucksterism?'" It took some explaining.

For one of the best treatments in American literature of the con man, read Herman Melville's The Confidence Man.

[Phat Mack]

What was the population of North America in 1600? Does anyone know where to look it up? I remember seeing estimates in college, but that was a long time ago...

[Zeno]

An interesting theory about, 'The American Character'.

The Gilded Age: 1600 to? (Whenever we flame out).

[ QUOTE ]
But we have more con men and hucksters than other nations not because we have a different nature or are worse than other peoples. It is just that "Americans have enjoyed more opportunity to pursue their ambitions, by foul means or fair, than any other people in history."


[/ QUOTE ]

The more or less unique combination of various factors, of a new vast land easy to conquer or swindle away from the native inhabitants, with the great natural untapped resources, and the growing industrialization of the world, culminated in making the American Character what it is. I think Opportunity is the main word that really stands out.

-Zeno

[Chris Alger]

Early estimates basedon settler observations put the population around 1-2 million, even less. A "second round" that emphasized the effect of disease prior to Native Americans even seeing Europeans put the population above 15 million, which is almost certainly very high. More recent estimates put it at 5-7 million. The population south of the Rio Grnade was much larger.

[adios]

[ QUOTE ]
Of course, there were honest righteous people, religious and high-minded people, who spoke out against excesses and abuses. But their idealistic voices only made Americans feel good about themselves without seriously diminishing the overall scramble for profit.

[/ QUOTE ]

The scramble for profit is neither totally bad nor totally good. People can be honest righteous and high-minded; speak out against excesses and abuses; and scramble for profit and vice versa.