Irresistible Empire: America's Advance through 20th-Century Europe

Abstract

The deep anxieties shared by a majority of American Founding Fathers about the role of democracy in government are well understood, as is Jefferson's profound contempt for merchants, a disloyal and parasitic element in society. By the second decade of the twentieth century, perception of both elements had substantially reversed. America, awash with progressive ideals, readied itself to become the progenitor of western democracy, while cautiously assuming a role as the west's great emporium. What ensued was ‘soft policy’,though until the aftermath of a second world war its successes were restricted. Victoria de Grazia has focused on Woodrow Wilson's flourish of trumpets in 1916 to signal the advance of both elements, yet, while America's commitment to global democracy faltered at the peace, breaches in Europe's trade walls were subsequently repaired, and in the case of Nazi Germany effectively strengthened. Thus opportunities for the skilful and many-faceted assault on Europe's culture and economy traced here were signally delayed. In Professor Grazia's perception the vital opposition to America's bi-polar drive was an aristocracy itself already threatened in Europe by a rising middle class, and soon alarmingly overpowered in Soviet Russia. Apart from the assault of American cinema on a broad front which before 1939 swept aside largely ineffective national resistance, much American activity here charted was in the form of skilful tunnelling by key commercial figures, such as Edward A. Filene, an educative process which linked ‘material comforts with inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’. The burgeoning Rotarians expanding from a North American base were initially highly successful—Thomas Mann joining hands with a janus-like Sinclair Lewis. Grazia follows Foucault's advice in seeking to ‘map the hidden and unexpected connections in an emerging North Atlantic civilization’—hence a number of absorbing biographical studies within the major chapters palpably central to the theme yet straying occasionally from it. Many such ‘American’ figures were recent Jewish immigrants, globalists keenly alert to European opportunities. Through a series of interlocked histories centred on principle (such as the service ethic, as also a decent standard of living), on institutions such as the chain store and the supermarket, and on devices such as corporate advertising, including the role of big brand goods, the writer has surveyed, probed and chatted about American penetration of Europe: overwhelming by the 1950s, but resisted where possible on a variety of fronts. Grazia is too good an historian to be totally committed to an arresting title. Scholarly method and wise comment are evident throughout, particularly in the afterthought, yet the very structure of the work suggests a topic less than fully worked. Examples are drawn from mainland Europe, Germany being the main focus, a magnet by reason of the firm stand of the Nazis coloured by their ludicrous compromises on minor issues. A solitary sentence in the Introduction fails to explain the marginalisation of Great Britain: most fully dealt with in the case of the Rotarians, virtually ignored with respect to the challenges faced by the film industry. Elsewhere there are occasional reference to Britain's leading entrepreneurs, artists and social bodies, though often merely as one among a list of countries. A restricted remit, predictably liable to challenge, deserved to be argued rather than merely stated. Yet it is doubtful whether this book is aimed at the academic world alone. Only the abler students are likely to profit from the work as a whole: the weaker from selected chapters. The titillating dust cover, with its ambiguous sexual message, suggests a much wider market (as perhaps do the separate chapters), though this is crudely at variance with aspects of the contents which contribute significantly to gender history. As Michael Schudson observed twenty years ago, in his valued study of advertising here noted, ‘the proper study of markets is Woman’. This was an early perception of J. Walter Thompson, head of an American firm whose immense influence is clearly demonstrated, yet which, ironically, succumbed to a British take-over in 1987. American imperialism is seen as sui generis, though it is unlikely that the prior manipulation of Britain's informal empire in Latin America by the traders of both countries failed to offer some instruction.

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