首页
登录
职称英语
From its birth, three powerful images have coloured ideas of what the United
From its birth, three powerful images have coloured ideas of what the United
游客
2025-01-11
14
管理
问题
From its birth, three powerful images have coloured ideas of what the United States was and what it stood for. One was "a city on a hill", a model commonwealth for the rest of humankind. Another, in Walt Whitman’s phrase, was a "teeming nation of nations": a near-empty continent of immigration and fresh starts. A third, given currency by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1831, was of a new and exceptional kind of society not bound by prevailing rules of history.
Each picture stresses what makes America different from other countries. Thomas Bender, a professor of history and humanities at New York University, wants us to focus instead on what makes the United States the same. More exactly, he is urging us to re-think key episodes in America’s past by relating them to what was happening elsewhere in the world. The United States, he suggests, is less of a nation apart than super-patriots or America-haters might want to believe. His aim is not to belittle the American achievement but to break the habit of treating it as a virtually isolated feat of self-creation. National histories, he argues, are always local responses to broader trends, and to that rule the United States is no exception.
Five episodes form the core of this challenging essay. "The Ocean World" contrasts the conventional account of American beginnings, which stresses political ideals, religious freedom and economic opportunity, with a wider view that brings in sea-borne trade and slavery. Next, Mr. Bender treats the American Revolution as a by-product of the "great war" mat France and Britain fought off and on throughout the 18th century until the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The American civil war (1861-1865) becomes part of the democratic era of nation building that began with the European revolutions of 1848.
The United States did not join Europe’s scramble for empire at the end of the 19th century as a colonising power. But it fought a terrible war to control the Philippines, set a pattern of intervention in its own hemisphere and in Asia, and established a doctrine of untrammeled sea power that survives to this day. For his fifth episode, Mr. Bender likens the progressive social reforms of the 1890s onwards to changes Europeans also made to temper the free market.
The breadth of view is exhilarating, and the reading daunting in scope. Mr. Bender dots his essay with awkward reminders that the American past was not a smooth, inevitable rise to superpowerdom and moral beaconhood. Yet "A Nation Among Nations" suffers from an ambiguity of aim. At several points Mr. Bender talks of a global story in which the United States has a local part. What is that story? He does not say. This is not his fault. Only the rashest of historians would nowadays dream of telling us, Hegel-wise, where the spirit of world history had come from and where it was headed.
Nor is gesturing towards "global trends" much help: ocean trade, nationalism and democracy, for example, are such broad categories they explain little of the local variation that puzzles us, especially when the locale is the United States, with its oddities—a high birth rate and strong religions, for example—that modern states are supposed not to have.
For the rest, Mr. Bender is more modest, and more successful. American failures and successes are usually so large it is easy to forget that they are seldom unique or insulated from events elsewhere. The simple-sounding truth that the United States never was, and never could be, isolated from the world is worth repeating, and Mr. Bender repeats it well. [br] The five episodes quoted do NOT include the episode that______.
选项
A、lays emphasis on political ideals, religious freedom and economic opportunity, with a wider view that brings in sea-borne trade and slavery
B、compares the civil war to the European revolutions in 1848
C、describes Philippine war
D、likens the political reforms of the 1890s onwards to Europeans adoptions of tempering the free market.
答案
B
解析
转载请注明原文地址:https://tihaiku.com/zcyy/3908704.html
相关试题推荐
Fromitsbirth,threepowerfulimageshavecolouredideasofwhattheUnited
[originaltext]1.TheUnitedNationsplaysanequallyimportant,butlargelyuns
[originaltext]SentenceNo.1IntheUnitedStates,bigshoppingmallsandmajor
[originaltext]SentenceNo.1IntheUnitedStates,bigshoppingmallsandmajor
[originaltext]SentenceNo.1IntheUnitedStates,bigshoppingmallsandmajor
IntheUnitedStates,workinglongerhoursis______.[br]Whichofthefollowin
IntheUnitedStates,workinglongerhoursis______.[br]Accordingtothethir
JapanandtheUnitedStatesarenow[br][originaltext]ReportssayJapanan
JapanandtheUnitedStatesarenow[originaltext]ReportssayJapanandUSh
Accordingtothenews,AmericantroopsinPanama[originaltext]TheUnitedSt
随机试题
[originaltext]M:Excuseme.Areyougoingtobuyconcerttickets?W:Yes,Iam.
[originaltext]Afewmonthsago,[22]ateamofinterviewersweresenttoschool
组织管理能力
针刺胸椎、腰椎棘突下穴位A.向下斜刺 B.直刺 C.平刺 D.斜刺 E.
集料在混合料中起()作用。A.骨架与分散 B.填充与堆积 C.骨架与填
下列何种检查可以明确先天性喉喘鸣诊断A.纤维喉镜 B.血气分析 C.血清电解
绒癌最常见的转移部位依次是A.肺、盆腔、脑、肝、阴道 B.盆腔、阴道、肺、肝、
下列关于资产支持证券的说法正确的是()。 ①资产支持证券是投资者享有专
以下药物中含哌啶环结构的药物是A:氟尿嘧啶 B:可乐定 C:加巴喷丁 D:
某医师欲采用横断面调查研究的方法,调查急性胰腺炎在人群中的分布情况,选择最合适的
最新回复
(
0
)