No History in the USA ?

25 comments

1. Open a US history book? How long ago before something can be considered history?

2. I mean, our recorded history obviously won’t go as far back as Europe’s. So what? There’s still a lot of rich history in the US, even if it’s far less than that of Europe.

3. American civilizations have thousands of years of history. Much of it was lost when Europeans destroyed it.

   And if we’re discussing Euro-centric white American history exclusively, I’d argue it necessarily includes thousands of years of European history as relevant context anyway.

4. It’s kind of a stupid statement. I mean, it’s not as though nothing was happening in what’s now the US before it was recognized as an independent country.

5. I mostly roll my eyes. If I feel like feeding the troll, I might ask what makes something history or point out that I’ve got just as many ancestors as they do, or that just because they don’t know any American history doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

   I’ve never heard this in the real world, where it’s possible to have a real discussion and I’d ask questions to make you defend your position. Online, people are mostly looking to get a rise.

6. I don’t answer them because those sorts of people are too entrenched in ignorance to bother wasting my time to correct.

7. If we’re talking Post-Columbus, it kicks off some time in the 16th century when the Spaniards ventured that far north. The English showed up in Newfoundland not long after, and then the East Coast of what is now the United States in the early 17th century. The French and Dutch came along around the same time.

   Does shit that happened in France in the year 1650 not count as ‘history’ to the French? How about 1789? That year was just a little bit eventful, and if we rule out vampires, nobody living was there to see it. And if anything from before 1776 doesn’t count, then the French can just forget about anything before the breakup of the Carolignian empire when the western part was hived off.

   So how far back does it have to go to be ‘history’? Or is there some other prerequisite that we are overlooking?

8. It’s a compliment and an insult since we are forward thinking but also have nothing to ground ourselves in, in the same way.

9. I ignore them. I can’t help that they think about us too much. That’s a them problem.

10. I ask them why they are still fighting each other over what happened hundreds if not thousands of years ago.

11. It’s hard to come up with an answer for somebody who openly admits breathtaking ignorance. Perhaps ask them what they consider history or maybe at what year they believe history begins.

12. People were here for 1000s of years before Europeans showed up.

13. Sounds dumb. European history *is* American history. Where does our government come from? None of it is from Asia or native Americans, it hails from the British system of common law, inspired by the Greeks and Romans, and influenced by English and French philosophers and writers. Note that all of these are Europeans.

    And where do they think we all came from? The vast majority of Americans descend from Europeans. They all came here, for one reason or another, because of events in European history. American and European history are intertwined and inseparable.

    And as far as the actual built environment goes, the northeastern US still retains nearly the same amount or even more of our historic architecture than some European countries. The northeastern US has a higher percentage of prewar structures than Germany does. Many places in Europe were rebuilt to look like what they replaced, but they’re new. Some Europeans probably don’t even realize this, they just think they’re living in an ancient neighborhood cause it was made to look like one.

14. People that say that whitewash the history of the Americas to only exist post European colonization.

    The history of the “New World” goes back so much farther than colonization and mainstream Euro-American history.

15. 1. Thousands of years of native American history- feel free to visit the burial mounds in the midwest and the cliff dwellings in the southwestern part of the country.

    2. European settlers arrived over 400 years ago. In 1565, St Augustine became the first European settlement. In 1607, Jamestown became the first permanent English settlement. Some colonies were largely self governing years before we gained independence.

    3. Many things have happened since 1776. There have been rapid changes within that time, and it all counts as history.

16. If someone is saying something that ignorant, they should be ignored because they are just looking for a fight/argument.

17. I don’t answer. Anyone that ignorant is not worth talking to

18. Americas have a ton of history starting with the native cultures who lived here long before Europeans came over.

    Then you have the settlement of the Americas, the entirety of the American Revolution, the expansion of the 1800’s, the Civil War, and then the emergence of America as a superpower through the 20th century.

19. anytime people are anywhere, there’s history. people have been living in the americas for a very very long time. there’s a ton of history.

20. The foundations of the US as we know it were laid in 1607. That means it dates to the Early Modern era, the time of the Reformation, two years after Guy Fawkes, before tea was in England, before the weird wig hats their lawyers wear, before “stiff upper lip” was a virtue.

    It dates to a time when feudalism was an acceptable economic system, star chambers were an acceptable legal system, when humors were the accepted medical understanding, and when kings could rule without parliament as long as they didn’t need money. In other words, an utterly foreign time to all of us. And yes you have Roanoke, as well as Indigenous and some Spanish stuff which predates even that within the geographic bounds of the country.

    Architecture aside, there are very few European cultural things that go back further than the early 1600s in a way that’s recognizable today. Even in Europe, history that predates the 17th Century has more of an indirect influence on how their cultures look today. And that same history indirectly affects us.

    It’s more accurate to say that the cultures split at the time of the English Civil War and Thirty Years War, rather than that we were some brand new thing that emerged (spontaneously? I guess?) around that time (or 150 years later).

21. If you are descended from Europeans, European history is also our history. The War of the Roses or the Norman Conquest or whatever is just as much a part of our history as the city of Cahokia.

22. History started on JULY 4TH,1776 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

23. Europeans will claim USA is just the most racist nation on the planet and then in the next sentence fail to acknowledge that civilization and history exist before European colonization.

24. A shorter history is still history. It’s just the normal snobbish attitude of a lot of euros towards America.

25. 1. I’m glad Europeans take pride in their long histories. Not sure why that would necessaritate Americans feeling insecure about having less of it, though. “My country/people/nation/whatever is a lot older than yours” just seems like a weird flex to me.

    2. History is more than just a succession of years; history is about the events thar happen during the succession of years. That being established, I think we’d all have to agree that the short 250 years since the founding of the USA have been quite eventful for us and the world at large. So “no history” is pretty disingenuous.

    3. The history of the USA is built on English, French, and Spanish history, as the land being colonized by them was informed by their historical realities. The USA can quite plausibly claim a few centuries of Westen European history as their own if they really wanted to.

    4. The Americas were populated for thousands of years before any Europeans arrived. Let’s not pretend like their history somehow doesn’t matter.