Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Winter 1998
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 1, Winter 1998, pp. 60.
Abstract
As an Americanist, I needed to adjust my perspective as I was reading Nordholdt's The Myth of the West. Much of this book by a Dutch scholar is about European views of Empire, particularly about the various permutations of the heliotropic view of empire-the belief that empires progress from east to west. The subtitle America as the Last Empire is somewhat misleading, since much of the book presents how the European literati throughout the centuries viewed various empires within and near their own continent, though naturally the heliotropic view does lead west over the Atlantic. (It also leads west over the Pacific, but Nordholt claims that the myth stopped in the US.) Even when the book's focus shifts to the United States, Nordholt sets the discussion within a traditional European framework.
While The Myth of the West: America as the Last Empire does not offer any groundbreaking new theories, or even much of a new spin on the progression of empires, Nordholt does provide his readers a service by drawing together centuries of thinking about his topic. And while the writer's style is somewhat dry, the links between philosophy and changing desires that Nordholt presents are intriguing such as the seventeenth-century shift in viewing God as an "unfathomable power" to perceiving him as a "benevolent collaborator" who would support earthly progress.
While Nordholt's approach does enable him to present much information about the history of thought in regard to the dominant culture's views on the progression of empire, I was struck by the restriction of his perspective. African Americans are a minor blip in this text, and their role in the development of the US is unvoiced; the same is true of women in general. Nordholt discusses seventeenth century popular beliefs as being held by "pious and reasonable men." In reading on, I expected to learn what women believed, but was disappointed. While Mercy Warren and Harriet Beecher Stowe are briefly mentioned (Stowe very briefly), Nordholt's assertion that Philip Freneau was "the first accomplished poet in America" belittles the work of Edward Taylor and the poetic giantess, Anne Bradstreet. In the same vein, the author's claim that colonial America had "arisen as if out of nothing" discounts the vital presence of Native Americans.
While The Myth of the West offers meaningful information on a myth that influenced the history of the Western world, in the future Nordholt's work would benefit by more cultural breadth and circumspection.
Comments
Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln