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ANTI-AMERICANISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY EUROPE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2011

EGBERT KLAUTKE
EGBERT KLAUTKE*
Affiliation:
University College London
*
School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 16 Taviton Street, London, WC1H 0BW[email protected]
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Abstract

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, European observers and commentators have frequently employed the term ‘Americanization’ to make sense of the astonishing rise of the USA to the status of a world power. More specifically, they used this term to describe the social changes brought about by industrialization and urbanization. In this context, European intellectuals have often used ‘America’ as shorthand for ‘modernity’; across the Atlantic, they believed, it was possible to learn and see the future of their own societies. Criticism of ‘the Americanization of Europe’ – or the world – easily led to outright anti-Americanism, i.e. a radical and reductionist ideology which held the USA responsible for the economic, political, or cultural ills of modern societies. The war in Iraq in 2003 and the alienation between the USA and France and Germany that followed provided a new impetus for studying the history of European perceptions of America. A large number of studies have since been published that deal with the history of the ‘Americanization of Europe’ and anti-Americanism, and several monographs, which are based on original research and promise new insights, will be the focus of this historiographical review.

Type
Historiographical Reviews
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 1125 - 1139
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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