¶ … Origins of American Anglo-Saxonism This article discusses how American Anglo-Saxonistic superiority began in the United States, and how Americans have consistently rejected other nationalities' superiority. The author's intent is to show how American ideas of superiority began, what fostered them, and how they have affected the country ever since. Obviously, the country's relationships with "inferior" races from "inferior" countries have long been tainted by our view of ethnic superiority. The section on Anglo-Saxons and Mexicans clearly illustrates how our feelings of cultural and racial superiority have clouded our relationships with Mexico for centuries. As the author notes, "The use of 'Anglo-Saxon' in a racial sense, somewhat rare in the political arguments of the early 1830s, increased rapidly later in the decade and became commonplace by the mid-1840s" (Horsman 209). Thus, as Americans became more comfortable with their own democracy and way of life, they urgently wanted to perpetrate their successes on those "lesser" individuals like the Mexicans who populated the...
Americans did not question their own superiority, and they did not question the idea that other "inferior" races were destined to give way to American superiority in return for the protection of clearly superior guardians.
Works Cited Baumgarten, Linda. (2002). What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America: The Colonial Williamsburg Collection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Bilhartz, Terry D., and Elliott, Alan C. (2007). Currents in American History: A Brief History of the United States, Volume 1. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Crunden, Robert Morse. (1996). A Brief History of American Culture. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Fisher, John Hurt. (2001). "British and American, Continuity and Divergence"
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