The American Image of the Old World

Cushing Strout

• Publisher: Bonhopai Books
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781779792150
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

 In  The American Image of the Old World , Cushing Strout offers a penetrating intellectual history of how Americans from the late 18th to early 20th centuries perceived Europe—the so-called "Old World." Strout explores how Europe was alternately revered and rejected by Americans as a cultural mirror, moral contrast, and ideological foil. Through careful analysis of essays, travel accounts, sermons, and political treatises, he examines the evolving attitudes of prominent thinkers and writers—including Emerson, Hawthorne, Henry Adams, and others—toward European traditions, monarchies, and intellectual life. These reflections shaped a distinctly American identity, rooted in ideals of democracy, progress, and individualism, but shadowed by envy, ambivalence, and cultural longing. Strout skillfully charts this transatlantic tension, revealing how American thought was both nourished and challenged by its European heritage. Part literary analysis, part cultural history, this book is a vital study of the philosophical debates that shaped American self-perception in contrast to Europe's enduring legacy. 

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• CHAPTER 1 — OF PURER ENGLISH BLOOD
• CHAPTER 2 — A MERIDIAN OF PARTITION
• CHAPTER 3 — GROUNDS OF HOPE FOR OTHERS
• CHAPTER 4 — THE PURE FOUNTAINS OF WISDOM
• CHAPTER 5 — THE SHADOWY GRANDEURS OF THE PAST
• CHAPTER 6 — TROUBLESOME ENJOYMENTS
• CHAPTER 7 — THE INNOCENTS ABROAD
• CHAPTER 8 — THE OLD SWEET ANGLO-SAXON SPELL
• CHAPTER 9 — THE PARTNERSHIP OF RIGHT
• CHAPTER 10 — WHERE THE TWENTIETH CENTURY WAS
• CHAPTER 11 — THE HELL-BROTH OF EUROPE AND THE AMERICAN HEMISPHERE
• CHAPTER 12 — THE TIES OF AN INDISSOLUBLE HISTORY
• CHAPTER 13 — AN ATLANTIC COMMUNITY
• CHAPTER 14 — THE PLENIPOTENTIARIES
• CHAPTER 15 — NEITHER OMNIPOTENT NOR OMNISCIENT