It is no doubt symbolically very appropriate that, in the Bicentennial year, all of the seven Nobel Prizes awarded should go to Americans. Of course there is more to it than that; it is also a signal of a decisive shift, evident over this century, in the international balance of intellectual, cultural and literary power. In the early years of the century, English and Irish writers were notable in the list of awards for literature; not until 1930 did the Prize for Literature pass to an American. Since that time, the number of awards to English writers has markedly faded (and some of the more recent, to Winston Churchill and Bertrand Russell, have indicated a generous view among the awarding committee of what literature is), while the number going to American writers (admittedly of somewhat varied quality) has markedly increased. The Prize is conventionally associated with writers not only of international reputation but also of international perspective, of a broad humanistic scale and scope; and both in the matter of reputation and moral capaciousness American writers have increasingly tended to become obvious candidates. But if, on occasion, the Prize has been strangely awarded, it would in fact be hard to fault the choice for 1976, Saul Bellow; difficult to find a contemporary writer who shows the same richness and variety, along with the same sharp modernity, of achievement.

Samuel Eliot Morison died in Boston in May 1976. He had been born there in 1887; he had spent much of his life in the Brimmer Street house his grandfather had built; and he could refer to Francis Parkman as “ my grandfather's friend.” I never met him; I have never discussed him with his colleagues and friends; and I do not propose writing a personal tribute. Rather, having re-read some four-fifths of the books he wrote, and perhaps nine-tenths of the words, I seek to describe his development, to explain why I judge him to be a great historian, and to show what manner of historian he chose to be.

Comparative history is as old as Herodotus, but only in the past quartercentury has it come into its own as an academic discipline. Yet historians, scholars of American history in particular, have generally fallen behind their colleagues in the other social sciences in developing and applying comparative methodology or models which could illuminate their teaching or open new vistas in their research. As a result, teaching and scholarship in United States history tend to be characterized by parochialism, ethnocentricity and an emphasis upon American uniqueness or “ exceptionalism.” Political scientists, sociologists and economists have increasingly studied the process of development and modernization since the end of World War II, doing more to stimulate comparative studies than all of their predecessors during the past century. While many of these social scientists have demonstrated only a superficial knowledge of history, leading them often to deal statically with the societies they are studying, some of them have at least made the effort, avoided by most American historians, to apply the comparative method to American history.

Shortly after Julian West awakened to Edward Bellamy's utopian Boston of the year 2000, he was given his first look at the city by his host, Dr. Leete. West nearly fainted at the “ prodigious thing which had befallen me.” Still in a daze, he was asked by Dr. Leete what surprised him most about the new Boston. “ I really think,” West responded, “ that the complete absence of chimneys and their smoke is the detail that first impressed me.” The city, as Bellamy went on to describe it, was an affair of fine buildings set in “ inclosures.” There were “ large open squares filled with trees, among which statues glistened and fountains flashed.” Julian West could see the Charles River, a “ blue ribbon winding away to the sunset,” and to the east was the harbor, “ not one of its green islets missing.” West's initial notice of the absence of smokestacks, coupled with Bellamy's first (and almost his only) physical description of the city, pointed up one of the most striking facts about Boston in the year 2000. The new city was park-like, even pastoral, in character. The entire apparatus of industrialism was kept sedulously out of sight, and the landscape, both physical and social, had come to look quite pre-industrial.

Revolution — both the American Revolution and the general idea of revolutionary change — is an important theme in Cooper's work. Several novels are set in, and deal with, the Revolutionary period; others approach the Revolution by indirection, offering redefinitions of the period and its significance as it were by analogy (I am thinking of novels such as The Waterwitch and The Red Rover which, while they are not set in the Revolutionary period, offer their subjects as images and judgments of the Revolution); still other novels treat the problem of revolution in Europe. The conditions for, and likely results of, revolutionary change in Europe are also discussed in the non-fiction; the American Revolution is continually redefined; and in the incomplete New York the desirability and possibility of a new Revolution are considered.

“ Tranquility is the first duty of every citizen ” has never been an American motto. “ What is impressive to one who begins to learn about American violence,” Richard Hofstadter once remarked, is its “ extraordinary frequency, its sheer commonplaceness in our history, its persistence into very recent and contemporary times, and its rather abrupt contrast with our pretensions to singular national virtue.” If, as Hofstadter complains, violence has been overlooked in American history, the maintenance of peace, particularly the significant role of the militia in public disorders — “ the most important single form of domestic violence in American history ” — has been almost totally ignored by historians. For example, Marcus Cunliffe's otherwise excellent study of the military mind in ante-bellum United States devotes two sentences to the subject, a rather surprising omission in view of the, quite correct, contemporary opinion that “the Militia are, after all … neither more nor less than an Auxiliary Police Force, and for the last forty-odd years that is the only duty they have ever been called on to perform.”

Why did large numbers of Northerners vote for the Democrats on the eve of the Civil War? This is a question which the most recent studies of Northern ante-bellum politics leave unanswered. Professor Formisano's pains-taking study of Michigan's party politics amply shows the eclectic character of the Republicans' appeal. Republicans combined a stern mixture of moral purpose and narrow puritanism with a powerful critique of the South. Republicanism emerges from Professor Foner's influential study as a species of stalwart, visionary parochialism quite irresistible to the northern electorate. It represented the self-satisfied affirmation that the proper maintenance of existing Protestant and entrepreneurial values in the socially harmonious North was essential to America's future growth. It also rested upon a belief in the need to resist Southern attempts to push slavery into the western territories. This belief stemmed from a defensive, slightly paranoid interpretation of the operation of federal politics. Congress and the federal administration in Democratic hands were, according to the Republicans, the merest tools of “ the Dominant Class in the Republic, ” the Southern slaveowners. Thus high faith in free society and deep fear of Southern expansion co-existed uneasily together. Republicans, in Eric Foner's view, articulated an ideology which merged together an over-arching notion of the good society (a basically non-class society, in which the ladder of status was short and its ascent easy, and in which the fundamental interests of labourers, farmers and small entrepreneurs were identical) with an immediate call to political action.

“ Liberal ” is a familiar term in contemporary American political debate. Like all political labels it is used in a variety of ways: pejoratively by liberalism's opponents, approvingly by its advocates, or simply as a descriptive term by political commentators and pollsters. The 1976 Presidential campaign offers numerous illustrations. George Wallace dismissed liberals as “ pointy heads … who couldn't ride a bicycle straight.” Georgia State Senator Julian Bond defined his position during the primaries in these terms: “ Liberal voters long tired of losing election battles may want to lay down their liberalism and convert to Carter. I'll stick to Udall.” Interestingly, Udall himself was hesitant about calling himself a “ liberal ” and attempted to dump the label, preferring “ progressive ” on the grounds that “ it seems to bounce off the people better.” The media obviously were not impressed and continued to rate him and his fellow politicians according to their “ liberal ” or “ conservative ” bias. Clearly “ liberal ” is a term we cannot do without, however great the confusions surrounding it.