Absolutely love this article, I have seen this in my own life and it is an accurate portrayal of the situation! Of course it had to be criticized by someone in a 10x10 cubicle and a Bolshevik education
You know nothing about my life, what I do, or how I was educated. Inventing a “10x10 cubicle” and a “Bolshevik education” is not an answer to any of the historical points I made. Thanks.
There is a compelling idea at the heart of this essay: the victor may ultimately be conquered by the very political and economic system through which he conquered others. The suggestion that the descendants of conquerors can themselves experience cultural dissolution, impoverishment and loss of belonging has genuine force. Nevertheless, I find the wider argument unconvincing.
The essay repeatedly defends historical particularity, yet its conception of America is remarkably selective. It remembers Scots-Irish, English, German and rural Anglo-American identities, but says virtually nothing about the Spanish and French worlds that shaped enormous parts of North America for centuries.
This omission is especially striking because, without the decisive intervention of France and Spain against Great Britain, the United States might not even have achieved independence. French military, naval and financial assistance was indispensable to the American victory. Spain also financed and supplied the revolutionaries, while Bernardo de Gálvez’s campaigns prevented Britain from attacking the colonies from the south. France and Spain did not merely occupy peripheral territories: they helped make the United States possible.
Nor were their cultural legacies marginal. Spanish and Mexican communities preceded Anglo-American settlement across much of the Southwest, while French influence extended from Canada and the Great Lakes through the Mississippi basin to Louisiana. These histories also produced relations with Indigenous nations that cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between Native peoples and Anglo-American colonisers.
The absence of Italians, Poles and other European communities is equally revealing. These peoples arrived with distinct languages, traditions and historical memories, many of which were eventually absorbed into a generalised American identity. Their experiences would seem to support the author’s argument about the destruction of particular cultures, yet they remain invisible.
There is therefore a central contradiction. The author rejects the treatment of Native Americans as an interchangeable mass, but then employs their dispossession as a general metaphor for almost every people defeated or alienated by modernity. Vercingetorix, Anglo-Saxon pagans, Scottish Borderers, Confederates, Afghans, the Viet Cong and Russian soldiers are connected through a vague “family resemblance” that overlooks fundamental historical differences.
The closing reflections on Edward Curtis and the disappearance of communities are affecting. But the article itself forgets much of the America whose disappearance it claims to mourn. An argument devoted to defending the particular should recognise the continent’s full historical plurality, rather than reducing American history to Indigenous tragedy followed by an essentially Anglo-Celtic decline.
and, im not here to talk of the french or spanish, they lost out, twas rhe anglos,ror beyyer or worse, who won and had a bigger role in their lives and on mine
That is perfectly fair as a statement of personal perspective, and it clarifies the article.
My point was not that you were obliged to mention every people, but that the essay advances broader claims about America, empire and the disappearance of particular identities.
In that context, saying that the French and Spanish simply “lost out” seems rather ironic: it dismisses forgotten peoples because the eventual victors displaced them, while the essay itself deplores precisely that kind of historical erasure.
France and Spain were also indispensable to American independence.
Your response reduces your thesis to something much narrower: “I am lamenting the decline of the people who mattered to me.”
That is honest, but it confirms that the essay is an Anglo-American personal elegy, as I thought.
I understand that it is a personal and symbolic lament, not a historical or anthropological treatise. My point is that its wider meditation on America, empire and disappearing peoples remains strikingly confined and limited to an Anglo-American perspective. An essay may be poignant and still reveal important limitations in the world it remembers. Poignancy does not place an essay beyond criticism. Thanks.
I understand what you are saying and I too am a very critical reader. But sometimes I think it’s important just to feel something to try to understand it not to criticize it. But it’s up to you of course how you treat it. I cried when I read it. Not because it’s historically accurate or complete, not because I don’t have plenty of criticism, but because it touched me deeply.
Amazing - thank you
Absolutely love this article, I have seen this in my own life and it is an accurate portrayal of the situation! Of course it had to be criticized by someone in a 10x10 cubicle and a Bolshevik education
You know nothing about my life, what I do, or how I was educated. Inventing a “10x10 cubicle” and a “Bolshevik education” is not an answer to any of the historical points I made. Thanks.
There is a compelling idea at the heart of this essay: the victor may ultimately be conquered by the very political and economic system through which he conquered others. The suggestion that the descendants of conquerors can themselves experience cultural dissolution, impoverishment and loss of belonging has genuine force. Nevertheless, I find the wider argument unconvincing.
The essay repeatedly defends historical particularity, yet its conception of America is remarkably selective. It remembers Scots-Irish, English, German and rural Anglo-American identities, but says virtually nothing about the Spanish and French worlds that shaped enormous parts of North America for centuries.
This omission is especially striking because, without the decisive intervention of France and Spain against Great Britain, the United States might not even have achieved independence. French military, naval and financial assistance was indispensable to the American victory. Spain also financed and supplied the revolutionaries, while Bernardo de Gálvez’s campaigns prevented Britain from attacking the colonies from the south. France and Spain did not merely occupy peripheral territories: they helped make the United States possible.
Nor were their cultural legacies marginal. Spanish and Mexican communities preceded Anglo-American settlement across much of the Southwest, while French influence extended from Canada and the Great Lakes through the Mississippi basin to Louisiana. These histories also produced relations with Indigenous nations that cannot be reduced to a simple opposition between Native peoples and Anglo-American colonisers.
The absence of Italians, Poles and other European communities is equally revealing. These peoples arrived with distinct languages, traditions and historical memories, many of which were eventually absorbed into a generalised American identity. Their experiences would seem to support the author’s argument about the destruction of particular cultures, yet they remain invisible.
There is therefore a central contradiction. The author rejects the treatment of Native Americans as an interchangeable mass, but then employs their dispossession as a general metaphor for almost every people defeated or alienated by modernity. Vercingetorix, Anglo-Saxon pagans, Scottish Borderers, Confederates, Afghans, the Viet Cong and Russian soldiers are connected through a vague “family resemblance” that overlooks fundamental historical differences.
The closing reflections on Edward Curtis and the disappearance of communities are affecting. But the article itself forgets much of the America whose disappearance it claims to mourn. An argument devoted to defending the particular should recognise the continent’s full historical plurality, rather than reducing American history to Indigenous tragedy followed by an essentially Anglo-Celtic decline.
and, im not here to talk of the french or spanish, they lost out, twas rhe anglos,ror beyyer or worse, who won and had a bigger role in their lives and on mine
That is perfectly fair as a statement of personal perspective, and it clarifies the article.
My point was not that you were obliged to mention every people, but that the essay advances broader claims about America, empire and the disappearance of particular identities.
In that context, saying that the French and Spanish simply “lost out” seems rather ironic: it dismisses forgotten peoples because the eventual victors displaced them, while the essay itself deplores precisely that kind of historical erasure.
France and Spain were also indispensable to American independence.
Your response reduces your thesis to something much narrower: “I am lamenting the decline of the people who mattered to me.”
That is honest, but it confirms that the essay is an Anglo-American personal elegy, as I thought.
Thanks.
I think you are missing the essence of this poignant essay - it is not a historical or anthropological analysis - it is much more.
I understand that it is a personal and symbolic lament, not a historical or anthropological treatise. My point is that its wider meditation on America, empire and disappearing peoples remains strikingly confined and limited to an Anglo-American perspective. An essay may be poignant and still reveal important limitations in the world it remembers. Poignancy does not place an essay beyond criticism. Thanks.
I understand what you are saying and I too am a very critical reader. But sometimes I think it’s important just to feel something to try to understand it not to criticize it. But it’s up to you of course how you treat it. I cried when I read it. Not because it’s historically accurate or complete, not because I don’t have plenty of criticism, but because it touched me deeply.
On this ‘2026’ U.S. Labor Day Holiday I ENJOYED this😊
Thank you.
maybe I search a whirling world for what is right inside