Not Like Us: American and European Cultural Exchange Reviewed

Overview of Pells' Thesis and Structure

In Not Like Us, Richard Pells argues that although European countries have absorbed a great deal of material and culture from the United States, they have not become "Americanized," and that each country has incorporated what it takes from the United States into its own national identity. He further argues that American culture has itself been influenced by European countries, even as it has remained distinctly American. Finally, he makes the point that "Europe" is not one unified culture — and that the United States is equally made up of many cultures. While European countries are "not like us," Europe and the United States share the presence of multiple, coexisting cultures.

The book is organized into two sections. In the first three chapters, Pells provides a historical overview beginning before World War II and continuing through the end of the Cold War. He then examines specific cultural components affected by American influences in Europe, as well as European influences on America, before closing with a discussion of globalization and how it affects all parties.

Historical Roots of American Influence in Europe

Pells marks America's participation in World War II as the event that positioned the United States as a superpower and enabled it to have significant effects on the cultures of European countries (p. 1). While cross-pollination between the United States and Europe occurred before then, the influence reached a critical mass in the postwar years that caused widespread concern among Europeans. He notes, however, that some Europeans were already concerned about creeping American influence in the nineteenth century, citing a book written in 1901 titled The Americanization of the World as an early example of overseas anxiety about American influence abroad (p. 7). Pells traces the precursors of American economic domination to the aftermath of World War I, when American companies began expanding into other countries by buying European factories (p. 9). That, coupled with increased exports, established a pattern of strong U.S. influence on other nations.

The United States also actively exported its culture, both informally — as American artists and performers found venues abroad or moved to European countries as expatriates — and through the upheaval of war itself. Pells notes that World War II substantially broadened cultural exchanges, and especially in terms of people, made the exchange strongly two-way: the United States received war refugees, including not only Jews freed from concentration camps but also scientists who had fled Nazi influence before the war or chose to leave Germany afterwards (pp. 32–34). The book gives extensive examples of such exchanges. Scientists from other countries played an important role not only in the development of nuclear energy but in the rocket research that ultimately led to the American space program.

The author also draws attention to the effect of the Cold War on America's European influence. It could be argued that the Cold War began in earnest with the blockading of East Berlin and the construction of the wall separating East and West Berlin. Berlin had been divided into four zones of control at the end of World War II, including a sector controlled by the U.S.S.R. Germany itself had been devastated by the war and needed extensive help rebuilding (p. 43), and the United States was the leader in that effort. Part of that process involved restructuring the German educational system to resemble an idealized vision of American education (p. 45). This attempt to reshape German educational models is an instructive example of the U.S. government seeking to remake other countries in the American image — an effort resented abroad and successfully rebuffed in the case of German schools. Pells also notes that the U.S.S.R. was doing much the same in its own sector, eliminating all private schools as "elitist" (p. 47).

Europe became a cultural battleground of sorts during the Cold War due to a variety of factors, including the United States' need to cultivate allies both among the citizens and the governments of other countries. The U.S. government believed it was important to turn the populations of those countries against Communism (p. 66). Cultural events were folded into this anti-Communist propaganda campaign, including a month-long series of concerts in Europe that prominently featured Russian composers who were out of favor with their own government, as well as Russian émigrés to the United States such as Igor Stravinsky (p. 75).

Cold War Culture and Political Propaganda

Pells points out that by the mid-1950s, most of the major powers — including Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy — were using culture to export philosophies or political agendas (p. 83).

On page 136, Pells writes: "The Americans were everywhere, and everywhere they went in Western Europe they created tiny replicas of the United States… American newspapers and magazines; posters advertised American movies…" However, this observation may reflect nothing more than the straightforward reality that a market existed for American goods wherever Americans congregated. We see a parallel dynamic in the United States today: Chinatown in San Francisco offers newspapers, magazines, and films in Chinese and caters to the Chinese population. Marketing to one's customers — regardless of their language or origin — does not seem as insidious as a government effort to manipulate other countries into becoming more like the United States.

As Pells moves through the history of cultural exchange, he draws attention to specific industries. He notes that when a country becomes so prominent in world culture and economy, it becomes an easy target simply by virtue of its ubiquity (p. 162). The United States was blamed for all manner of things. If American movies sold better than a given country's own films, the American movie industry was accused of manipulating the market to engineer that result (p. 162). In fairness to those critics, the United States did sometimes bring such criticism upon itself, since the government did attempt to manipulate other countries on occasion. The American film industry did influence the film industries of other countries through selective investment (p. 226): American producers were interested only in funding films that would perform well in the United States, which had a direct effect on foreign cinema. American publishers were also criticized for aggressively marketing U.S. books overseas while doing nothing to make it easier for foreign authors to sell their work in the United States (p. 267).

Conclusion: The Nature of Cultural Exchange

Pells' book takes a long and careful look at the interchange of cultures between the United States and Western Europe, and presents a picture far more complex than the question of whether the French were affronted to see a McDonald's in the heart of Paris. Instead, the author traces an inexorable process of influence flowing, at least to some degree, in both directions. In retrospect, the reader should not be surprised by this. Greece and Rome each influenced the other's culture. The Phoenicians sailed throughout their known world and had profound effects on the cultures they encountered, yet that cultural exposure did not cause those other cultures to disappear. Perhaps it is the nature of human beings to meet, compare practices, notice how they differ, and then selectively absorb and modify what is useful from another culture — leaving the rest behind.