The Rest Is History - 29. Americanisation

Episode Date: March 8, 2021

Has America taken over the world? Did the dollar and Hollywood enable the US to replace the British empire as the dominant international influencer? And is that power now waning? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook discuss Americanisation on the Rest is History. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. our star spangles union jack flutters so proud over the dancing heads of the merry patriotic crowd yeah tip your hat to the yankee conquerors we've got no reds under the bed with guns under our pillows we're the 51st state of america yeah we're the 51st state of America. Well, so said the British rock band New Model Army back in 1986, capturing the sense, very memorable to those of us who lived through the 80s, that America was taking over the world and we were all turning into little Americans. Well, welcome to The Rest Is History with me, Dominic Sambrick,

and my own little American, Tom Holland. Yeehaw! Hey, Dominic. american tom holland yeehaw hey dominic hello so tom are you um do you are you an americanophile or americanophobe would you say like everybody i'm both i love america i uh of course everyone everyone loves america america culture but there are times where i feel slightly resentful about how much i love it i guess that's a hard frame. I was about to say that's a very British thing, but of course the French, I mean the French are both, I always think the French are both

the biggest Americanophiles and the biggest Americanophobes. So they're the people who go on about Anglo-Saxon culture and all this, but they're also the world's biggest McDonald's consumers. Yeah, I guess for the French, I mean in the word Anglo-Saxon, for the French, they bundle Britain in with America. They do, don't they? To a degree, in the word Anglo-Saxon, for the French, they bundle Britain in with America. They do, don't they? To a degree. So it's Anglo-Saxons.

Whereas for us, there's the kind of nagging sense that, you know, we began it and now they've taken over. It's a bit like us with sport. You know, we invent the sports and then everyone comes and beats us. And slight feeling like that, I think, with America. It's the slightly staid older brother with the much cooler younger brother, isn't it? I always think. Of course, not something you'll be familiar with, Tom.

Yes. Yeah, that is very much where I am. That's where I am too. Okay. So Americanization. Do you know where the word Americanisation comes from? I hope you don't because I want to tell you. I don't, Dominic, and I'm not interested, so let's move right on.

Go on. You've obviously been saving it up, bless you. I have, I have. So there's a book published in 1902 called The Americanisation of the World by the British newspaper editor W.T. Stead. And he basically said the United States is going to replace the British Empire. And, you know, we're all going to end up speaking American and all that kind of thing. And of course, he was right, wasn't he?

I mean, we have become Americanized. I mean, you and I are both of that generation that I think our parents would have looked at us and said, oh, you're using a lot of American slang. You know, you wear Americanized. I mean, you and I are both of that generation that I think our parents would have looked at us and said, oh, you're using a lot of American slang. You know, you wear American clothes, you watch American TV, too much American TV, all that kind of thing. And we have to some extent grown up as little Americans, or at least people in the shadow of America, haven't we? Yeah, because we grew up in the 80s when we were the kind of unsinkable aircraft carrier for for america and so we were s-trip one so um i think that um after you know after the after the second world war through the cold war american power military power economic power the cultural power was a kind of crucial in i mean it was it was both a part of of um of Americanization but it was also served to disguise

the hardness of American power yeah if you were if you were kind of into jeans and coke and American music then you might be slightly less worried about the large number of American um planes you know sovereign territory on your own country or um the economic power that uh the dollar exercises all that kind of thing and i think that that's i mean that's that that's been a kind of a feature of the ambivalences towards america certainly since the since the second world war but actually i don't i'm just interested though the so the word americanization dates back to the beginning of the 20th century yeah it it's a word that is being applied to something that

existed before that presumably in the 19th century yeah so the take up so actually i think most of the traffic was one way pretty much one way for most of the 19th century so you know dickens goes to america um british music hall um goes to america it does come back a bit but but we are the we are the big the big daddy and they are the kind of recipients of our culture um but then i think there's a sense probably about around about you know 1900 or so that um it's starting to come back the other way that we are reading american books uh we are becoming familiar with cowboys and so on. Yeah, so Buffalo Bill. Buffalo Bill and his Wild West show coming round and huge success.

And also American heiresses coming over. Yeah, that's right. I know that because that's in Downton Abbey. So it must be true. And so here's a funny thing for you. In 1914, T.S. Eliot, who's from Missouri, is in Oxford and he spoke in a debate at the Oxford Union, 1914,

so before the First World War, about the Americanisation of Oxford. And what was he saying? He said, he was speaking for it, you know, the motion was, you know, this house deplores the Americanisation of Oxford. T.S. Eliot was speaking for it, and he said, we see ourselves as cultural missionaries, taking the gospel of America out to the world. I mean, he said it in a teasing way. It's hard to imagine tsl it being that being that funny actually but um yeah

hey guys whoa that's a brilliant tsl impersonation tom i i mean worth the the um the entrance price for the podcast alone just to hear you do your my my famous cheers april is the cruelest month way to go guys yeah okay but but what was he saying what was he thinking that oxford how was he thinking oxford had been americanized uh clothes music you know um expressions so pg woodhouse's early books have a lot of the mixture of kind of upper class slang and kind of american slang as well that's one of pg woodhouse's big things and then i think i think if i'm going to pick one moment that i think marks americanization it's 1927 it's the jazz singer because that's the first time the al jolson film that people actually large numbers of people

millions of people are hearing american accents and it's from that point in the 20s and 30s that you have i mean you have people discussing this in parliament about the fact that english kids are using american slang that they are or they're modeling themselves on movie stars and um with the first british the first british film with sound was done by hitchcock i think and the way they marketed it they said you can hear English as it should be spoken so instead of um instead of listening to all this kind of American timeless marketing phrase yeah well that's why I choose a film based on the quality of the spoken English um so I think from the 20s onwards I mean it's no coincidence that comes in the aftermath of the first world war and I think from the 20s onwards, I mean, it's no coincidence that comes in the aftermath of the First World War.

And I think from the 20s onwards, you have this persistent anxiety, specifically in Britain. I mean, there are different kinds of anxiety elsewhere, but I think we have a very particular anxiety that we have been infiltrated, I guess, by American-ness. And you have that now when the demand the arguments about the culture wars and so on that we're actually we've just imported unthinkingly these American ideas and we're arguing about them and they don't apply to us I think that's true um but I think that that it's interesting that you know in terms of the culture wars which I think is actually the way that America is being most influential on us at the moment. Yeah. I'd agree with that. What's interesting is that that again is a kind of flip from when we were

growing up, when really it was the right that was very pro American. Yeah. All the debate around, you know, again, going back to us air bases in Britain, Greenham common campaigners,

um, CND, uh, America was seen as the enemy. Thatcher was disliked, not just for her own sake but because she was seen as reagan's mole yes yeah the the the the kind of the explosion of finance in uh in with the big bang and everything in london was seen as a process of americanization yeah so canary wolf you know it had the look of amer, skyscrapers and things like that. So the sense that Americanisation was a kind of right-wing project,

I think that's now flipped because I think that the debates, the passions in Britain at the moment are massively coming from America. So now I think it's the left that's been Americanised. So we're talking about Anglo-Saxons. The sense that that is a problematic phrase. Yeah, the word problematic. Absolutely, but you're no longer supposed to use the word Anglo-Saxon to describe the period between the end of the Roman Empire in Britain and the Norman conquest,

because Anglo-Saxon is seen as being an inherently racist, white supremacist phrase. But that's only the case in America. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen that. You've been involved in that argument, haven't you? Well, it's infuriating. It's infuriating because, you know, they want, they say we should use, you know, early, early medieval England or early English, but it's the English Defence League. It's not the Anglo-Saxon Defence League. Anglo-Saxon doesn't have that connotations here in Britain. It's a purely American connotation, but because it's American academics leading it,

British academics, or some of them, kind of obediently say, oh, well, we must abolish this phrase. And ignoring the fact that, of course, as we've already discussed, Anglo-Saxon has a quite different connotation for the French or the Germans. So I think that that is

that that's been the kind of the intriguing change is that now it's the left that's been Americanized I can actually get a kind of strain of suspicion in the on the on the right about America yeah I completely agree with you and I think that's because it's partly been driven by the internet hasn't it so that um if you're a sort of engaged liberal sort of academic intellectually kind of person then you're part of a sort of you see yourself as part of a conversation that's dominated by Americans simply because there are far more of them speaking your language than there are of you. teaching undergraduate courses about white supremacy in America and white supremacy being a very specific thing to do with slavery and the sort of incomplete legacy of reconstruction at the end of the Civil War and the creation of these kind of white supremacist regimes in the American South. And it was a very distinct, specific American thing. And now, now of course white supremacy is a is a sort of concept that is banded

around in a very vague undefined way and people talk about white supremacy in britain and and european countries and so on and it's not the same thing at all what they've basically done is just taken an american term and that's true almost all these cultural battles the statue toppling started in america well i mean some of it started in south africa but a lot of the the most notable examples are confederate statues in america and people copy effectively been copying what they see in the states and translating it to the sort of british cultural landscape and i think that is a big change because that's not something that left liberal people would have done when we were growing up in the 70s and 80s is it i mean they would have recoiled from the idea of america so so the question is um is this it does

it happen simply because um we speak the same language and so we are prone to think that that phrases that are banded about in america have a relevance here or does it go further than that is there a desire to kind of be american um so in a sense the the desire to to feel that you're fighting white supremacy or whatever here in the way that radicals are in in in america that presumably is kind of drawing it's part of a continuum that reaches back through people in the 60s being inspired by hippies or whatever, the example of music there, into the 50s through rock and roll. I guess ultimately, again, going back to the 30s and the 20s through Hollywood, that America just kind of provides the template for kind of, you know, what it is to be cool, to be cutting edge, to be on the zeitgeist. There is a bit of that. Actually, a great example, you mentioned the 60s,

is the British protests against the Vietnam War. I mean, we weren't in the Vietnam War. But people have protested about it anyway. Yes. So that's pure Americanisation. I mean, that really is just copycat, kind of. We've seen it, so let's do it in Grosvenor Square in 1968. Yeah, I think there's also a deeply buried sense, I think,

that America is the kind of fulfilment of Britain. And that obviously goes back to the 18th century, when in the US War of Independence, that America was the kind of summation of the British kind of, you know, the liberal experience, I suppose, the good old cause of the English Civil War, that America was the realisation of that, and that we were moving, you know, we're sort of moving towards becoming America. But that's also there in France, isn't it? So you have, I'm kind of thinking, you know,

one of the very first, not exactly Americanisation looking to america as as an example there's a famous meeting in i think 1778 something like that where benjamin franklin is the ambassador to paris um of the of you know the newly founded american republic and meets voltaire and introduces his grandson to voltaire and voltaire kind of blesses him in English and basically says yeah America you're great yee-haw equivalent Yee-haw Voltaire with an American accent this is spiralling off

in directions that I had not anticipated but there's a sense I mean kind of just at the right at the beginning that Voltaire is kind of handing over the torch of the enlightenment to Franklin who is you know the embodiment of a republic before France has become a republic or anything like that and and the sense that you know it's a new world and new worlds are good yes it's America being the future and I think that's actually it's a new world and new worlds are good yes it's america being the future and i think that's actually what's really interesting about the last few years is that that's the it's the first point that i can really think of when america has not felt like the future when um so so all

through the 20th century when people were arguing about america or when people said reagan is a you know nixon is a nazi reagan a fascist, all this sort of stuff, they still never doubted that America was ahead of Europe to some extent. I mean, America was literally ahead. They got their films earlier. They, you know, pioneered Coke and McDonald's and Levi's and rock and roll and all this sort of stuff. But I detect in the last sort of 10 years or so, especially with the Trump sort of imbroglio,

a sense that America is no longer seen as humanity's future or the West's future, that America, you know, there's this real sense of having taken a wrong turn or taken a... And you can sense the yearning that people have, actually, in the West for america to represent an ideal by the fact that so many people you know who i'm sure we both know when biden was elected and when he was inaugurated and all that sort of stuff they sort of said oh isn't it great isn't it now they don't say that when there's the changing of the guard in belgium you know america has this

special place but isn't there also a kind of paradox that um that that although america is no longer a kind of moral exemplar it it is a kind of an it's become an exemplar of um of evil um so if you were the victim of uh you know an oppressive state apparatus do it be one in america because then your name will appear on placards, on posters. You know, in Europe, people will campaign and march and give speeches about George Floyd. But you look at what's happening in China, where... And you're going to say that, you're absolutely right. Yeah, but it's, I mean, it's not a kind of not not dealing with the kind of the moral issues of whether an American life matters more than, you know, someone in a Uyghur life. But it's it's although China is now, you know, we've talked about this, that China is kind of coming up.

It feels like it's you know, it's now a bipolar world. world in a sense it isn't as long as the death of an american matters more in the streets of of europe than you know the incarceration of an entire people yeah because i think that that it's it's an expression of the whole that america has and you know again going back to kind of the idea of white supremacy and all that kind of stuff it in a sense saying that this is uniquely evil, it's uniquely terrible, is a manifestation of Americanization. It's kind of saying America matters more, it matters more what happens in America than what happens in China or whatever. I'd agree with that. And I think there's also a sense, both for Americans and for people writing or talking about America, that America is always the center, the story is always about America. Soica so you know there's a coup somewhere in latin america or or there's um you know there's a

revolution somewhere in in east asia and it you know you know you can bet your bottom dollar there'll be people marching against the u.s government's role in it and writing books to say it was all plotted by the cia and all that thing. America is always the centre and the centre of the story and America is always held to different expected, it's held to different standards. Don't you think it's held to... Yeah, I do. But again, just kind of moving on from that and slightly

twist the argument. So we've been talking about the relationship of Britain particularly and the Anglophone world and perhaps those parts of Europe that speak English very fluently, so the Netherlands andlands and scandinavia whatever um in france there's a the whole kind of you know the low work is the guy there's really it's that that that's kind of you know there's a there's a major national debate going on about whether um american what they see as kind of alien ideological approaches are suitable to france but i would say

further going beyond the bounds of europe and what we might traditionally describe as the west i think that actually america is no longer the center so i think in the middle east where you know it's been blundering in and starting wars all over the place actually america is now just one actor among many you know in you know in lots of ways china and russia are just as significant players and i think that in in um you know in asia where there's the feeling that you know america is kind of on retreat it doesn't matter and i do think that they're you know all the stuff you know the past year it's it's it's irrelevant to them. But not culturally, though, Tom, right? So to start getting into some questions,

Jacob Hawkins says, was Americanization possible because English was already the lingua franca? Which is actually a really good question. And then he says, and will a language barrier prevent Sinozation or whatever the Chinese equivalent of Americanization is? So let's pick up your point. Clearly, Chinese money and Chinese kind of political clout matters in Africa and in Eurasia

in a way that it never did before, and that is arguably eclipsing America. There's no doubt about that. But nobody looks to Chinese moral examples or to Chinese cultural examples, do they? I mean, nobody swoons before Chinese pop stars or Chinese films or, or indeed, you know, even Chinese kind of cultural habits and stuff. It's still America, partly because of English, because the British Empire had kind of done a lot of the heavy lifting for it and turning English into the language of business and commerce and stuff. Don't you think that America still plays that part because of the language in a way that China perhaps never will? Yeah, maybe. I mean, I think that if you speak a language, of course, you then see the world through a particular prism. And,

you know, the very words that you use kind of determine how you understand the world. And I agree that, of course, if you speak a language, then you're going to be more open to that country's films and music and so on. But having said that, I think that my sense is that ideologically and culturally, America matters less in Asia now than it did 10, certainly 20 years ago. And I wonder whether that weathering process is going to accelerate over the next decades. I would guess that it probably would. And I would imagine that certainly in areas that it's important to speak to the Chinese, inevitably people are going to start learning Chinese because language is an index of cultural and economic

and often military power. That's why they spread. That's why the British Empire managed to spread English around the world. And it's why America spread English around the world. And we may, I suppose you're right, that we're only at the beginning of that process, aren't we? So although nobody speaks Chinese now, other than Chinese people, and nobody watches Chinese TV or anything like that,

maybe in 50 years' time it might be a different story. Well, I've certainly started watching more Chinese films over the past two decades. I don't think I've ever seen a Chinese film. I know that's very shaming. Well, I love all the brilliant Chinese films where they all jump through bamboo shoots and fight each other. It's, it's all great stuff. I'm aware that I'm not... Is that a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon? Is that a Chinese film?

Yes, and there's a wonderful film that we mentioned... So I have seen one. Yeah, and there's a wonderful film that we mentioned in the podcast with Michael Wood called Hero, which is all about the first emperor and the unifying of China, which is the most arrant state propaganda imaginable. I mean, it's basically saying it's brilliant,

millions of people die, but it's all for the cause of China but i said i assumed i assumed you were just sucking up to michael wood i didn't i didn't think you'd actually i really had um uh should we have a break at this point i think we should commercial break yeah right to hear from our sponsors while we enjoy some candy and coke i'm marina hyde and i'm richard osmond and together we host the rest is entertainment it's your weekly fix of entertainment news reviews splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early

access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com welcome back to the rest is history with me and my partner um tom holland my partner i was sort of thinking cowboy but not in the brokebackback Mountain sense of cowboys. Very, very much not, listeners. Okay, Tom, let's do some questions. Let's get into some questions. I'm going to kick off with, I'm just going to do them in order. So the first two, the producers written read together, which I will. Anthony Sanders says, how much of Americanization has been the accident of Hollywood and Silicon Valley both being from there?

And how much is it because of their sort of hegemony? So is it just coincidence? Americanization has been the accident of Hollywood and Silicon Valley both being from there and how much is it because of their sort of hegemony so is it just coincidence and Margaret Eyde said says another Americanization question um to what extent is the great Americanization in Britain compared to elsewhere in Western Europe and is this because of the accident of language so I guess two kind of accident questions so Tom well I think saying Americanization is simply an accident of Hollywood and Silicon Valley um I mean both of them are expressions of American power yeah you need the money you need the infrastructure you need the intellectual capital that enables you to set these incredible, massive, century-defining industries on two legs. And then, of course, it's a virtuous circle because if you are sending out your films, if you're sending out software and hardware or whatever for computing, then you're embedding your cultural power, aren't you?

Yeah, I think that's true i mean i think there's probably a tiny element of contingency with hollywood in that hollywood was very fortunate because of the first world war so the first war basically ripped out its competitors so the french film industry particularly um the french film production collapsed basically in the first world war and afterwards in the 20s when there was an appetite for cinema in the 20s and 30s and 40s already the hey World War. And afterwards in the 20s, when there was an appetite for cinema, in the 20s and 30s and 40s, already the heyday of cinema, it was American films that filled the gap.

So, you know, had it not been for the First World War, Hollywood would have faced more competition. But I think you're probably right. It's the biggest domestic market, isn't it? And the most dynamic market in the 20th century. So of course it was going to create Hollywood. And of course Silicon Valley was going to happen in America, simply because the demand, the potential consumer base, is so much greater than anywhere else.

And the military. Yeah, of course, the military. The contribution of the military to the internet and everything. Again, you need, so that's a kind of crucial aspect of it as well. Yeah, it couldn't have worked out any other way. You wouldn't have had Silicon Valley in the Netherlandsetherlands i mean that was never going to happen well i'd say that that brings us to the the issue of language uh and i'd be interested to i mean maybe if we've got dutch or scandinavian listeners who you know whose english is better than us

basically um you know do you do you feel that uh your facility with english means that you are more exposed to american influence than but here's a big difference tom an interesting difference is that um different school systems teach different kinds of english so okay you're um so my wife once had a norwegian house housemate when they were students who speaks very upper class English. Because in Norway, that's the form. But in some countries, they speak with an American accent. Which countries? Villainous countries.

Villainous? I don't know. Maybe the Dutch? Do the Dutch speak English, Americanised English? I always thought the Dutch spoke with a Dutch accent. i don't know maybe the dutch to the dutch speak english i americanized english the dutch accent well they can't lose the dutch yeah they can't lose the dutchness that's for sure but just to turn this on the head i mean i suppose the one positive for us is that um it does also make it easy for us to then invade america so in the 60s you know in the 50s yeah popular music invades britain um and in 60s the beatles and so on invade america and that's purely because of the language right because they

can go over to america they're singing in america but they can do interviews they can and and the the englishness gives them a calling card that no american band can match so it gives them an exoticism and it makes them different. So all the things that we think of, I mean, American bands, when they come here, they have the American-ness, which is a calling card. But our band's very British-ness. If they play it right, it's quirky, it's funny, and if they press those buttons,

they can enjoy success that a similar American band couldn't. Or a French band. Yeah, it couldn't. Or a French band. Yeah, it would be impossible for a French band because they'd open their mouths to talk and people would start laughing at them. But even Daft Punk have to, you know, it's all in English. Yeah. Which merely confirming French suspicions of the Anglo-Saxons

rather than specifically Americans. And perhaps it's telling that the first big, the first European band to really go global, I suppose, is ABBA. And they spoke very good English from a country where people did speak excellent English. Okay, Dominic, our next question is from Jack Davenport, who in fact is our producer. So cheers, Jack. Thanks for this.

How Americanised has the world really been when only american teams take part in the world series it's a great question jack loves his sport yeah um so that's a good question isn't it because american sport nobody's interested in american sport are they no it's unless you're american it's a really strange thing isn't it that america has been so good at exporting everything else it's food it's taste it's a really strange thing isn't it that america has been so good at exporting everything else it's food it's taste it's cultural habits it's clothing but sport is the one thing that is it's basically completely failed i mean how many people in england which is probably the most pro-american country you know of all western european countries how many people know can name all the nfl teams or

even know who was in the super bowl or certainly baseball i mean who cares about baseball um and that's a really strange i guess their domestic market is big enough that they almost don't need to worry about tailoring it for an international audience but also i guess it's in international sport was created by the brit Empire, wasn't it? I mean, football was exported, cricket, obviously, rugby, and America maybe entered too late. Would you buy that? When American power became big enough to export their sport, the British sports were already too well established.

But you could say with football, and I know we're going to have Jonathan Wilson on in a couple of weeks to do an entire episode on the history of football but but you could say that um british power and influence in the 19th century early 20th century you know spread it around the world and then britain's relative decline meant that it wasn't it was no longer identified as a british sport so it could become a global sport yeah whereas whereas everything american is kind of american you know in america it's american we call it american football um baseball is a kind of icon of america and perhaps um you know perhaps it's just too culturally tied in with america i don't know i

don't know i think that's a really good point actually i mean that's one way that britain so um british popular culture started to be exported at the point at which the british empire lost its potency. So in other words, you could embrace, you could listen to the Beatles without, you know, betraying yourself as irredeemably pro-British and being slagged off by your contemporaries, your nationalistic contemporaries or something. But American sport, you're right. If you're, you know, in, I don't know,gypt or something and you're a great nfl fan and you're

you're devoted to the cleveland browns i mean that that carries so much cultural baggage doesn't it that it would be yeah you know politically it's a sort of it's a brave decision and it did you know it did in the after after the war you know teams would turn up to wembley and beat england and that would be a kind of rite of passage. And then England would cease to register. You know, England was just another football-playing country. It had no great significance at all. Whereas America, it will always be, I guess.

And I guess because football, what we call football, is so popular, perhaps there just isn't room for a'm going to tell you a sporting ecosystem a sporting story a sporting anecdote so i was in the 1998 world cup in france in i think montpellier in a square and they put up a big screen and they showed all the games there and all the fans watched you know mingled it was this sort of fifa's dream of people all drinking beer and mingling happily and being friends wearing benetton yeah so we'd fallen in with a group of colombians at one point i remember and we were in this crowd maybe i don't know 2 000 people 3 000 people or something and the match was iran versus the united

states this long-awaited showdown the iranians all gave flowers to the they did the iranians turned up with flowers right and there were two men next to us. They were basically Bill Bryson and Steven Spielberg. They were American soccer friends who traveled with their fanny packs, and they were there all prepared, and they were like soccer devotees, and this was their...

And it was awful because everybody in the square supported Iran very passionately. And as the Iranian goals went in, these two Americans looked more and more disconsolate. And it wasn't the fact their team were losing, it was just they realised how much the rest of the world desperately wanted Iran to win.

But that's, we have the same. I mean, everybody wants England to lose. Do they? I'd never believe that. I don't believe that. In rugby they do, I think. Do they? Yeah, I suppose they do. In cricket, do they? I mean, they? Yeah, I suppose they do. They always want England to lose. Do they?

I mean, are England the big baddies in cricket? No, not anymore. Sadly, that's because we're not good enough. And I don't even think that's true of football. I think everyone in Scotland wants England to lose. But I don't think people in Europe say, oh, anyone but England. I mean, I think they just think we're slightly a comic turn

that crash out in the quarterfinals every year. Yeah, so we've lost our notoriety. I mean, imagine if America won the World Cup. Imagine if that happened. That would be awful, wouldn't it? It would be awful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, here's a question from James.

It's an excellent one. Hi guys, love the pod. Say we like that. To what extent is Americanisation and American exceptionalism influenced by the widespread belief within the US.s that it's a nation blessed by god it's a gift to you this question dominic uh what's your view on that i think i can answer this with no need for any um input from you no i think this absolutely um so american exceptionalism is clearly

a very religiously infused idea the idea of the shining city on the hill. And that's an idea that they've got from 17th century English Puritanism, obviously. But I think Americans, irrespective of their religious identity, share that sense, don't they? They share the sense that America is a nation chosen by God, even if they don don't believe in god they think they're a chosen people um and that their nation is special it represents an ideal rather than just a sort of a story of shared belonging um and that it represents i mean even people who are the most sort of radical critics of the american government within america will often then go on to say because our country should mean something more than that because we've failed to live up to our ideals this isn't the real America right this isn't America this is what everybody said after that Trump riots wasn't it this is not America this is not who we are and everybody else outside America saying no no this is who you are we've seen the films

we've done the game the video games we know we know this but absolutely and i think it is completely religious this in inspiration this idea don't you yeah and i but i think that from our point of view i think that it's part of a common stock of kind of anglo-american protestantism uh and again i think that that means that it's not just one of the reasons that we're so kind of susceptible to it, open to it, ready to accept the justice of it, is because we share a common kind of seedbed of theological assumptions. So the idea that people should be awakened, that people are steeped in sin, that the spirit should descend and that people should be awakened, that people are steeped in sin, that the spirit should descend, and that people should be awakened. And you have this thing, the Great Awakening, that begins in Britain and spreads to America in the 18th century. And then you have a succession of them, because of course, you have an awakening, people are born again, they have their eyes

opened, the spirit descends on them them and then they return back into sin. And, you know, it's a kind of truism to talk about the great awakening. But I think that it's it's manifestly in that tradition. And I think that that's why it's it's had the impact that it's had here is because we also are heirs to that kind of essentially protestant yeah sense that we're lost in sin and we need to be awakened to our moral responsibilities and the kind of and also the biblical narrative of exodus of a people in slavery who are chosen by god to be redeemed from the evil oppressor the imperialist oppressor um is is you know this is in its overtly biblical form is something that

martin luther king absolutely enshrined as the kind of the heartbeat of the civil rights movement now with black lives matter that's not overtly christian indeed often it's it's in overt terms anti-christian but it's still manifestly drawing on those traditions and i think that again that's why it's kind of you know transplanted so easily here. The interesting thing is that we've lost, what we have lost in Britain is the sense that did exist in the 18th century, that Britain was that country, that Britain was chosen by God, and that Britain was the city on the hill.

No one believes that now. No, but I think that what you see in Britain, what you also see in America, which is a sense that we are kind of unique in our evil. Oh yeah, we definitely see that. That dignified by by by our wickedness by you know we we are the the enslaver we are that we are Babylon we are you know the evil empire and therefore we need to repent of that um and and only by repenting can we be brought into the light um and and I think that you know the the the sense that both America and Britain,

that both Americans have and the British have, that somehow there's a kind of deep stain of evil there that needs to be purged and repented for. It's a kind of arrogance almost. It's a kind of solipsism. It's a narcissism. It's a narcissism. It's placing us at the center of

history at the fulcrum of history even if you know 100 years ago it's because the british empire was great now it's because the british empire was uniquely evil um it it's a kind of narcissism i agree with you i mean that's something that britain and america definitely share there's no conflict in the world that there won't be somebody who says it was either the british empire's fault for misdrawing maps, or it's the CIA's fault plotting in the name of international Americanised capitalism. And it's always putting themselves at the centre of the story, and their own

moral failings. I don't think you get the same thing in France, for instance, which would be the obvious parallel to us. The French don't think that, and of course, as we discussed in a previous episode, people like the Dutch are delighted by their own empire. To be fair to the Dutch, not all of them because the dutch also were part of this anglo-american atlantic world of protestantism so i think that that the dutch also are to that extent perhaps

am i not right as well the big yugo survey shows the dutch are prouder of their own imperial past than anyone else i think they said that 40 of the dutch were but also that means 60 aren't and they're huge kind you know there's huge debates in uh in in the netherlands about than anyone else i think they said that 40 of the dutch were but also that means 60 aren't and they're huge kind of you know there's huge debates in uh in in the netherlands about was it black pete who is uh that's um a festive figure who turns up wearing blackface and i think that's a kind of you know very much yeah the kind of debate that that is informed by american cultural concerns um so anyway yeah interesting stuff do we have another question oh here's a great one here's a great one this is very much for you um tim carter was mtv and

friends more instrumental at exporting americanization than u.s foreign policy okay so i've actually never seen i've never seen an episode of friends and i never will i'll tell you that um why why why the hostility to friends i just look i just hate the the thought it's what you are it's the syrupy isn't it it's all sentimental kind of it's i don't know kind of no but it's very facts is it you like for you you're a big fan of friends i was i certainly watched friends when it was on yeah this is this is poor stuff okay so were they more instrumental in exporting Americanisation than US foreign policy?

Yes, undoubtedly. Talking about them more broadly. So as far back as the 1920s, Will Hayes, who was the sort of head of the American motion picture industry, said, you know, the film, the cinema, is to us what the gunboat and the flag and the kind of the manufacturing were to Britain. So these are going to carry American values all across the world. And of course they have. And the American governments and indeed the CIA actually put a lot

of money in the Cold War into backing the arts and into backing American culture because they were well aware that soft power was often much more important than than hard power there'd be resistance to hard power but not soft and i think yeah mtv um funny thing about mtv of course is that mtv at first was british bands because they had got they've done videos and american bands were very slow to do it but america but rock and roll more broadly and i don't know about american television about but certainly american film i think tv they were you know american tv when i was growing up was seen as slightly cheap and nasty when you agree that it was kind of you know it's a bit itv dallas well dallas yeah dallas i mean it was that

was so that was all about the kind of evils of American capitalism, basically. Because that's what that was doing. That's America's answer to Downton Abbey, isn't it? It's basically selling a stereotype of itself that people want to eat. It's basically pandering to the kind of cowboy hats and Texas oil men.

I mean, that's what we do when we make country house dramas. It's just the lowest common denominator version of your own brand yes um which is kind of an interesting example of americanization perhaps is uh what's it that one on um netflix bridgerton yeah i've never seen that that's very americanized version of a no i'm very happy to talk about it because i haven't seen it either so i don't really want to talk about something i haven't seen but yes that does seem to be a very American... Never stopped you in the first. No, that's very harsh.

Anyway, let's move straight on from that incredibly unfair aspersion to a question from Stephen Clark, good friend of the show, who asks, is the teenager the greatest legacy of the period of Americanisation? So teenagers, it's definitely Americanized. It's an American PR man's creation, the idea. It comes from, I think, the 30s. And it's partly because American kids had money and independence

earlier than their European equivalents, basically because the American economy, if you were doing well, was doing better. So it's all about the market, and it's all about the consumer goods open to you. Is it the greatest legacy of the period of Americanisation? It's an interesting question. I mean, the teenager is definitely an American creation. You know, there have been adolescents, but there haven't been teenagers.

And, yeah, is it the greatest legacy? I mean, it's one of the great ones, isn't it? It's so great to see you genuinely thinking. Happens so rarely. A huge historical question, and to see your mighty brain. Well, you know, I'm sifting through so many alternatives. And I think that on that note, we should come to an end

because you can go away and have a ponder on that. And we can gear ourselves up for our next podcast, which will be coming back to Europe. We're looking at Prussia and the birth of Germany with the writer and historian Katja Hoyer. That's a very good one. We've done it already. And it's actually a very good one. Dominic! I recommend it to the listeners.

Dominic, you've totally spoiled the illusion. Now we're in a kind of back to the future. I think people will like that. I think they like the sense of uncertainty. Have they recorded it or haven't they? Yeah, we've already recorded it, guys. Dominic's totally

torpedoed that attempt to try and create a sense of coherence. A sense of urgency and jeopardy. You kind of introduced European post-modernism

there and totally ruined it. Anyway, on that note, bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.