American Imperialism, American Exceptionalism, and the Politics of Internationalizing the United States History Survey

While liberals claim that the notion of American exceptionalism is nothing more than a dangerously ethnocentric myth that justifies an American-centered view of the world and glosses over much of America’s imperial past, conservatives disparage those who do not believe in the cultural superiority and divinely ordained destiny of the American nation. In Texas, those conservatives are making headway in their effort to ensure that a largely triumphal narrative of American history is being taught in public schools. Among other claims, the state’s recently revised social studies curriculum posits that American “expansionism” (not imperialism) in the late nineteenth century was an aberration, or a “turning point,”” rather than a continuation of policies of conquest and domination of non-white peoples dating back to the European settlement of the Americas. Heated interpretative battles such as this offer fertile ground for internationalizing the teaching of the history survey. In concert with the mission of the History Survey Project, an undertaking that engages with the scholarship of teaching and learning in order to improve the teaching of the U.S. History survey course, an international approach to America’s westward expansion can be particularly fruitful.  By looking at the U.S. from the outside in and comparing imperialisms throughout the globe to America’s aggressive growth in the first half of the nineteenth century, students are forced to grapple with the distance between America’s noble principles and its self-serving aggressiveness at the expense of the self-determination of others. In many ways, this comparative approach makes America’s Manifest Destiny seem rather unexceptional. Moreover, internationalizing the survey course offers students an opportunity to recognize the interpretative and politicized nature of history in the present.