American Exceptionalism

Examples of American Exceptionalism in the following topics:

• The White City, Chicago, and the World Columbian Exposition

  • The World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago was an international fair whose grandeur symbolized emerging American exceptionalism.
  • The fair's unprecedented scale and grandeur became a symbol of emergent American exceptionalism in much the way that the Great Exhibition became associated with the Victorian-era United Kingdom.
  • This area, developed by a young music promoter, Sol Bloom, concentrated on the Midway Plaisance and introduced the term "midway" to American English to describe the area of a carnival or fair where sideshows are located.
  • Nearby, "The Cliff Dwellers" featured a rock and timber structure that was painted to recreate Battle Rock Mountain in Colorado, a stylized recreation of an American Indian cliff dwelling with pottery, weapons, and other relics on display.

• An Overview of U.S. Values

  • Despite certain consistent values (e.g. individualism, egalitarianism, freedom, democracy), American culture has a variety of expressions.
  • Achievement and success are typical American values.
  • These values may explain why so many Americans pursue higher education in order to get better jobs and earn more money, as well as why Americans are given so few vacation days compared to other countries.
  • The flexibility of U.S. culture and its highly symbolic nature lead some researchers to categorize American culture as a mythic identity, while others recognize it as American exceptionalism.
  • Many fundamental American values are derived from the Declaration of Independence.

• From Political Values to Ideology

  • Core American political values are vested in what is often called the American creed.
  • American exceptionalism is the view that America's successful development as a nation has contributed to its special place in the world.
  • The American creed also encompasses the public's high degree of respect for the American system of government and the structure of its political institutions .
  • Capitalist economic values are also a part of American values.
  • While there are various components to fundamental American political values, not all Americans agree on which exactly the most important values should be .

• American Imperialism

  • "American imperialism" is a term that refers to the economic, military, and cultural influence of the United States internationally.
  • Polk, the concept of an "American Empire" was made a reality throughout the latter half of the 1800s.
  • American imperialism is partly rooted in American exceptionalism, the idea that the United States is different from other countries due to its specific world mission to spread liberty and democracy.
  • Pinpointing the actual beginning of American imperialism is difficult.
  • The American Anti-Imperialist League was an organization established in the United States on June 15, 1898, to battle the American annexation of the Philippines as an insular area.

• The Open Door Policy

  • After winning the Spanish-American War of 1898, and with the newly acquired territory of the Philippine Islands, the United States increased its Asian presence and was expecting to further its commercial and political interest in China.
  • As a response, William Woodville Rockhill formulated the Open Door Policy to safeguard American business opportunities and other interests in China.
  • The Doctrine was issued in 1823 at a time when nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved, or were at the point of gaining, independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires.
  • Inherent in the Monroe Doctrine are the themes of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny, two ideas that refer to the right of the United States to exert its influence over the rest of the world.
  • Under these conditions, the Monroe Doctrine was used to justify American intervention abroad multiple times throughout the nineteenth century, most notably in the Spanish-American War and with the annexation of Hawaii.

• African Americans in Southern Politics

  • A few African Americans were elected or appointed to national office.
  • African Americans voted for white candidates and for blacks.
  • As a result, states with a majority African-American population often elected only one or two African-American representatives in Congress.
  • Exceptions included South Carolina; at the end of Reconstruction, four of its five congressmen were African American.
  • Because he preceded any African American in the House, he was the first African American in the U.S.

• The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960

  • Many Americans feared that the end of World War II and the subsequent drop in military spending might bring back the hard times of the Great Depression.
  • But instead, pent-up consumer demand fueled exceptionally strong economic growth in the postwar period.
  • More and more Americans joined the middle class.
  • The American work force also changed significantly.
  • Other Americans moved, too.

• Disease in the New World

  • Soon after, observers noted that immense numbers of indigenous Americans began to die from these diseases.
  • After the epidemics had already killed massive numbers of indigenous Americans, many newer European immigrants assumed that there had always been relatively few indigenous peoples.
  • The diseases brought to the New World proved to be exceptionally deadly to the indigenous populations, and the epidemics had very different effects in different regions of the Americas.
  • While epidemic disease was by far the leading cause of the population decline of the American indigenous peoples after 1492, there were other contributing factors--all of them related to European contact and colonization.

• Manifest Destiny

  • It is rooted in European nations' early colonization of the Americas, the establishment of the United States by white Anglo-Saxons from England, and the continued wars against and forced removal of the American Indians indigenous to the lands.
  • The term described the very popular idea of the special role of the United States in overtaking the continent—the divine right and duty of white Americans to seize and settle the continent's western territory, thus spreading Protestant, democratic values.
  • The term combined a belief in expansionism with other popular ideas of the era, including US exceptionalism and Romantic nationalism.

• The Upper Middle Class

  • According to his definition, the middle class consists of an upper-middle class, made up of professionals distinguished by exceptionally high educational attainment and high economic security; and a lower-middle class, consisting of semi-professionals.
  • Among modern sociologists, the American upper-middle class is defined using income, education, and occupation as primary indicators.