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Book Review
| The Rise and
Fall of Anglo-America. By Eric P. Kaufmann. (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2004. x, 374 pp. $49.95, ISBN 0-67401303-4.)
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| In his new book,
The Rise and Fall of Anglo-America, Eric P. Kaufmann offers
an original answer to an often asked question: Why did American
Anglo-Protestants fall from their dominant perch during the period
from the seventeenth century to today? Kaufmann finds unsatisfactory
the argument that fertility differentials, the arrival of diverse
immigrants, and minority movements of resistance overwhelmed
Anglo-Protestants. As confidently he dismisses the assertion that
Anglo-Protestants have actually maintained a superior position by
incorporating other Euro-Americans and morphing into a white racial
group. Taking a comparative, international perspective on the
history of ethnicity and nationalism in the United States, Kaufmann
contends that the decline of Anglo-Protestants was of their own
making. Characteristic ideas of the ethnic group—expressive
individualism and egalitarianism—were ultimately incompatible with a
position of dominance. |
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In three chronologically arranged sections,
Kaufmann reinterprets the fate of Anglo-Protestants. As the most
numerous early settlers and the first to create written records and
lasting political institutions, Anglo-Protestants became
economically, politically, and culturally dominant over the course
of the seventeeth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Their
self-defining commitment to Enlightenment ideals meant they tried to
assimilate newcomers from beyond the British Isles, but few embraced
"the idea of the American nation as truly global melting pot, much
less a pan-European one" (p. 37). After 1900, however, liberal
progressives, ecumenical Protestants, and New York modernists from
within the ethnic group brought a more inclusive idea of nationalism
to the fore. Although a less educated, traditionalist population
continued to rely upon the myth-symbols of an Anglo-Protestant
ethnicity, the elite turned away from these representations in favor
of universalism. After World War II, cosmopolitanism was
institutionalized, ethnic boundaries relaxed, and "once marginalized
ethnic groups gained rough institutional parity with
Anglo-Protestants" (p. 243). Kaufmann tops off his historical
account with a prescription for national identity and ethnicity in
today's multicultural world, proposing "a reformed multiculturalism"
that "allows for the retention of both ethnicity and individuality,
all within the context of equality" (pp. 283, 296). |
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In his rush to recover the reputation of
Anglo-Protestants, Kaufmann undervalues dissent that originated
among ethnic minorities. In his conviction that the ideas of the
elite are the principal source of social power, he largely misses
the role of non-elite Americans in the development of national
identity. But these problems of emphasis may be the justifiable
outcome of a work willing to spotlight a group that has fallen out
of favor. Kaufmann's uncertain treatment of racial difference,
however, is more difficult to defend. While he acknowledges that
"racial minorities were not as successful as white Americans" in the
second half of the twentieth century, he pays too little attention
to the sustained sociopolitical distinctions across groups (p. 5).
Ethnic relations may be more equal than they once were, but the
persistence of racial inequality raises doubts about the depth and
breadth of American cosmopolitanism. Skeptical of American
exceptionalism, thoroughly researched, and ambitious in its reach,
Kaufmann's work is an important contribution to the scholarship of
American nationalism, immigration, and ethnicity. |
3 |
| Allison
Varzally |
California
State University
Fullerton, California | |
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