British - Historian | September 13, 1949 -
Much of how Americans have always understood their history, culture, and identity depends on positioning Europe as the 'other,' as that 'old world' against which they define themselves.
Linda Colley
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American prejudices about Europe rarely surface in headlines, but they are real, pervasive, and ingrained.
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In the past, rulers led their troops into battle and, even in peacetime, called themselves fathers of their people. And modern politics retains abundant masculine rituals. Prime minister's question time in Britain, for instance, is a stylised duel and tournament redolent of testosterone.
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Anyone who has spoken to experienced combat troops knows that they rarely brag about their exploits. Strong and silent is the preferred style.
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Partly because women in the U.S. are better represented in the hierarchies, the culture wars over gender there have been particularly fierce.
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Britain, like other European states, is not and never will again be in the top-world-power league, so its male leaders can afford to play subtler, more variegated roles. Leaders of the U.S. don't have that option.
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It is hard to convince people that you mean them well if you are looking at them down the barrel of a gun.
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Instead of exporting what they perceived to be rational, modern, humane government to their colonies, the British often found themselves propping up deeply unattractive and corrupt princelings and client rulers because this was the cheapest way of maintaining control.
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The gulf between imperial ideals and empire on the ground has customarily proved disillusioning not only for colonial peoples but also for some in the occupying power.
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In the past, the imperialism of the West, like that of the rest, was often difficult - for the doers as well as for their victims - but western states were, nonetheless, usually able to dispatch forces overseas against non-western peoples without any fear of being attacked themselves. That kind of immunity is probably now a thing of the past.
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A society that feels itself to be flourishing is likely to interpret everything that happens to its own advantage and in its own image. By contrast, a society that feels confused or in decline often converts any event - however innocuous - into a weapon of self-laceration.
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I was in Boston, Massachusetts, when Princess Diana died.
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