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The Emergence of the American University: An International Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Adam R. Nelson*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Extract

In 1979, fourteen years after publishing his landmark work, The Emergence of the American University, Laurence R. Veysey wrote a forward-looking article for the American Quarterly tided “The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered.” In this article, he suggested that the time had come to rewrite American history from a more international point of view. “The increasing global awareness of our age enables us to view national differences with a new sophistication,” he observed in terms that now seem remarkably prescient:

The powerful sense of a common outcome to modern history across a substantial part of the planet forces us to reexamine many long-held notions about the peculiar development of national cultural traditions. In particular, it is clear that earlier interpretations of American history and cultures aggressively put forth as recently as the 1950s and emphasizing ‘uniquely’ American experiences and habits of mind, served largely to mislead us. American history has been viewed far too often as if it were autonomous, a theme entirely unto itself, rather than in enormous measure a reflection of forces operating throughout the modern world.

Type
Retrospective: Laurence R. Veysey's The Emergence of the American University
Copyright
Copyright © 2005 by the History of Education Society 

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References

1 Veysey, Laurence R.The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,American Quarterly 31: 4 (Autumn 1979): 455–456.Google Scholar

2 In the late 1970s, it appears Veysey was influenced in particular by the world-systems theories of Immanuel Wallerstein. See Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System I: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century; The Modern World System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750; The Modern World System III: The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730–1840s (New York: Academic Press, Inc., 1974). On the issue of American exceptionalism, see Glaser, Elisabeth and Wellenreuther, Hermann, eds., Bridging the Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). On the parallel emergence of nationalisms, some of the classic works include Hobsbawm, Eric J. The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848 (New York: Mentor Press, 1964) and Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Anderson, Benedict Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso Press, 1983); Seton-Watson, Hugh Nations and States: An Enquiry into the Origins of Nations and the Politics of Nationalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1977); Gellner, Ernest Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Bhabha, Homi K. ed. Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990).Google Scholar

3 Veysey, The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,456. For other interpretations of American nationalism, see Greenfeld, Liah Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1992); Rossiter, Clinton The American Quest, 1790-1860: An Emerging Nation in Search of Identity, Unity, and Modernity (New York: Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1971); Wilkinson, Rupert The Pursuit of American Character (New York: Harper and Row, 1988); Zelinsky, Wilbur Nation into State: The Shifting Symbolic Foundations of American Nationalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Kramer, Lloyd Nationalism: Political Cultures in Europe and America, 1775–1865 (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1998); and Waldstreicher, David In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). For a recent consideration of American history in transnational perspective, see The Nation and Beyond, a special issue of the Journal of American History (December 1999).Google Scholar

4 Rodgers, Daniel Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998). In some ways, historians of higher education have been working along the same lines as Rodgers for many years. Examples include Herbst, Jurgen The German Historical School in American Scholarship: A Study in the Transfer of Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1965); and Bonner, Thomas N. American Doctors and German Universities: A Chapter in International Intellectual Relations, 1870–1914 (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1963). A work Veysey called “learned” but flawed is Carl Diehl, Americans and German Scholarship, 1770–1870 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978). See Veysey's review of Diehl in the Journal of American History 66:1 (June 1979), 141.Google Scholar

5 Bender, Thomas J. ed., Rethinking American History in a Global Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).Google Scholar

6 Veysey, The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,474.Google Scholar

7 As Veysey put it, “the most important sources of variation—between rich and poor, white and black, men and women—do not usually lend themselves to analysis along neatly national lines. We go on studying such topics as the working class within particular countries because the customary forms of graduate education channel us in nationally defined directions, but it is the intrinsic state of being poor, female, or socially excluded … that primarily serves to excite our attention.” Veysey, “The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,” 470-471.Google Scholar

8 Veysey, Laurence The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965).Google Scholar

9 Veysey, The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,460. Among the histories of American higher education that fit the category Veysey criticizes are Frederick Rudolph, The American College and University: A History (New York Alfred A. Knopf, 1962); Brubacher, John S. and Rudy, Willis, Higher Education in Transition: An American History, 1636–1956 (New York: Harper, 1958); Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); and Hofstadter, Richard and Dewitt Hardy, C., The Development and Scope of Higher Education in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952). Somewhat more comparative but also inclined to “exceptionalize, the American university are Storr, Richard J. The Beginnings of Graduate Education in America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, English, German (New York: Teachers College Press, 1930); Thwing, Charles F. The American and the German University: One Hundred Years of History (New York: The MacMillan Co., 1928); and Thwing, Charles F. The American College in American Life (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1897).Google Scholar

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11 See Gilman, Daniel Coit The Life of James Dwight Dana: Scientific Explorer, Mineralogist, Geologist, Zoologist, Professor in Yale University (New York: Harper and Bros., 1899); Williams, Frederick Wells The Life and Letters of Samuel Wells Williams, LL.D., Missionary, Diplomatist, Sinologue (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1889); and Ring, Martin Robert “Anson Burlingame, S. Wells Williams and China, 1861–1870: A Great Era in Chinese-American Relations,” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Tulane University, 1972). For more on William Dwight Whitney, see Altert, Stephen G. William Dwight Whitney and the Science of Language (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005) American Congress of Philologists, “The Whitney Memorial Meeting” (Boston: Ginn and Co., 1897). See also Stevenson, Louise Scholarly Means to Evangelical Ends: The New Haven Scholarsand the Transformation of Higher Learning in America, 1830–1890 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); Cmiel, Kenneth Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); and Andresen, Julie Tetel Linguistics in America, 1769-1924: A Critical History (New York: Routledge, 1990).Google Scholar

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13 For examples of the relationship between nationalism and internationalism in various fields, see, for example, Lucier, PaulCommercial Interests and Scientific Disinterestedness: Consulting Geologists in Antebellum America,Isis 86: 2 (1995), 245267; Olender, Maurice The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992); McCaughey, Robert A. International Studies and Academic Enterprise: A Chapter in the Enclosure of American Learning (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); and Stafford, Robert A. Scientist of Empire: Sir Roderick Murchison, Scientific Exploration, and Victorian Imperialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1989). See also Lind, Michael ed., Hamilton's Republic: Readings in the American Democratic Nationalist Tradition (New York: Free Press, 1997).Google Scholar

14 For examples of the kind of work Veysey might have praised in the history of higher education, see Reingold, NathanGraduate School and Doctoral Degrees: European Models and American Realities,“ in Reingold, Nathan, Science, American Style (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991). For examples of such work from the history of science, see Reingold, Nathan “Between American History and History of Science,“ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 27:1 (1996), 115–129; or “The Peculiarities of the Americans, Or, Are there National Styles in the Sciences?” Science in Context 4 (1991) 347–366. See also Stephen Shapin, ‘Discipline and Bounding: The History and Sociology of Science as Seen Through the Externalism-Internalism Debate', History of Science 30 (1992), 333–369; Thackray, Arnold “History of Science in the 1980s,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (1981)., 299–314; Wilson, Leonard G. Lyell in America: Transatlantic Geology, 1841–1853 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998); or Crawford, Elizabeth Nationalism and Internationalism in Science, 1880–1939: Four Studies of the Nobel Population (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).Google Scholar

15 Veysey, The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,469.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., 466.Google Scholar

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18 See, for example, Dorsey, John M. The Jefferson-Dunglison Letters (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1960); and Jeanne, Mary Jones, A. and Laughlin Gammil, Chalmers, “Journal of Dr. Robley Dunglison,” Journal of the History of Mediane and Allied Sciences 22:3 (1967), 261–73. See also Long, George and Dunglison, Robley, Introduction to the Study of Grecian and Roman Geography (1828) and FitzHugh, Thomas “The American Letters of George Long,” University of Virginia Alumni Bulletin (October 1916, January 1917, April 1917); supplement in Alumni Bulletin (October 1924). Jefferson's emissary in Europe was Francis Walker Gilmer. See Davis, Richard Beale ed., Correspondence of Thomas Jefferson and Francis Walker Gilmer, 1814–1826 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1946). For more on the early history of the University of Virginia, see Bruce, Philip Alexander History of the University of Virginia, 1819–1919: The Lengthened Shadow of One Man, 5 vols. (New York: MacMillan 1921); Dabney, Virginius Mr. Jefferson's University: A History (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1981); Patton, John S. Jefferson, Cabell, and the University of Virginia (New York: Neale Publishing Co., 1906); Adams, Herbert Baxter Thomas Jefferson and the University of Virginia (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1888); and Cabell, Nathaniel Francis Early History of the University of Virginia, As Contained in the Letters of Thomas Jefferson and Joseph C. Cabell (Richmond: J.W. Randolph, 1856).Google Scholar

19 For more on Everett, Edward see Frothingham, Paul Revere Edward Everett: Orator and Statesman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1925); Reid, Ronald F. “Edward Everett: Rhetorician of Nationalism, 1824–1855,” Quarterly Journal of Speech (1956), 273–282; Read, Allan Walker “Edward Everett's Attitude towards American English,” New England Quarterly 12:1 (March 1939), 112–129; Gill, George J. “Edward Everett: Minister to the Court of St. James, 1841–1845” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1959); Horn, Stuart Joel “Edward Everett and American Nationalism” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 1973); and Everett, Edward “American University,” North American Review 10 (1820), 20–42. For more on White, Andrew Dickson see White, Andrew Dickson Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White (New York: Century Co., 1906); Glenn C. Altschuler, Andrew Dickson White: Educator, Historian, Diplomat (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979); Rogers, Walter P. Andrew D. White and the Modern University (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1942); and Drechsler, Wolfgang Andrew D. White in Deutschland: Der Vertreter der USA in Berlin, 1879–1881 und 1897–1902 (Stuttgart: Hans-Dieter Heinz Akademischer Verlag Stuttgart). For more on James Burrill Angell, see Smith, Shirley Wheeler James Burrill Angell: An American Influence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954); Angell, James Burrill The Reminiscences of James Burrill Angell (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1911; reprinted 1971); Angell, James B. “Patriotism and International Brotherhood: A Baccalaureate Address” (1896); and Creutz, Alan “From College Teacher to University Scholar: The Evolution and Professionalization of Academics at the University of Michigan, 1841–1900” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1981).Google Scholar

20 Quoted in Chester Squire Phinney, “Francis Lieber's Influence on American Thought and Some of His Unpublished Letters” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1918).Google Scholar

21 For more on Karl Folien, see Spevack, Edmund Charles Follen's Search for Nationality and Freedom: Germany and America, 17961840 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); and Folien, Eliza L. The Life of Charles Follen (Boston: Thomas H. Webb and Co., 1844). Little has been published on Karl Beck. See, for example, Newell, William The Christian Citizen: A Discourse Occasioned by the Death of Charles Beck, LL.D., Delivered on March 25, 1866, Before the First Parish in Cambridge (Cambridge, MA.: Sever and Francis, 1866).Google Scholar

22 For Veysey's thoughts on similar questions related to immigrant (or refugee) scholars in the twentieth century, see his review of Lewis A. Cosner, Refugee Scholars in America: Their Impact and Their Experiences (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984) in “The Refugee Intellectuals,” Reviews in American History 13:2 (June 1985), 245–250. See also his review, “From Germany to America,” History of Education Quarterly, 13:4 (Winter 1973), 401–407. See also Kohn, Klaus-Dieter Intellectuals in Exile: Refugee Scholars and the New School for Social Research, trans. Rita and Robert Kimber (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993) and Robbins, Bruce ed. Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics, Academics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990).Google Scholar

23 See also Maximilian Scheie de Vere, Studies in English, or Glimpses at the Inner Life of Our Language (New York: C. Scribner, 1867). Among linguists, the study of “Americanisms” became a popular pastime in the mid-nineteenth century. John Russell Bardett, long-time director of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, was the first to issue a Dictionary of Americanisms: A Glossary of Words and Phrases Usually Regarded as Peculiar to the United States (1848- reprinted 1859). See also Babcock, C. Merton The Ordeal of American English (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1961).Google Scholar

24 Veysey, The Autonomy of American History Reconsidered,477.Google Scholar