Peopling the portholes: National identity and maritime museums in the U.S. and U.K.

Public Historian

Volumn 26, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 23-48

  Leffler, Phyllis ^a,b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA   (United States)

^b Department of History ^*

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949749681     PISSN: 02723433     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/tph.2004.26.4.23     Document Type: Review

References (93)

1. Arthur Marwick, The New Nature of History: Knowledge, Evidence, Language (Hampshire: Polgrave, 2001), 32.
2. For a thorough discussion of American museums, see the special issue of Daedalus: America's Museums 128, no. 3 (Summer 1999);
3. useful essays can also be found in special publications of the Smithsonian Institution, such as Amy Henderson and Adrienne L. Kaeppler, Exhibiting Dilemmas: Issues of Representation at the Smithsonian (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997).
4. For analyses of museums in the United Kingdom, see David Boswell and Jessica Evans, Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999);
5. Gaynor Kavanagh, ed. Making Histories in Museums (London: Leicester University, 1996);
6. Gaynor Kavanagh, Dream Spaces: Memory and the Museum (London: Leicester University, 2000);
7. Nick Merriman, Beyond the Glass Case: The Past, the Heritage and the Public in Britain (London: Leicester University, 1991).
8. Lists of maritime museums can be found at: http://www. councilofamericanmaritimemuseums.org/; http://www.bb62museum.org/usnavmus.html; http://www.cus.cam.ac.U.K./mhe1000/regions.htm.
9. Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600-1850 (London: Biddles Ltd., 2002), 11.
10. Graeme Davison, "National museums in a global age: Observations abroad and reflections at home," Negotiating Histories (Canberra: National Museum of Australia, 2001), 13.
11. Robert Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen, 1987), 9.
12. Ralph Samuel, Island Stories: Unraveling Britain. Vol. II of Theatres of Memory (London: Verso, 1998), xii, 21.
13. Interview with Sharon Ann Holt, Senior Historian, South Street Seaport Museum, February 4, 2003, New York City.
14. There is now a vast literature on this topic covering both issues of nationalism and national identity. See, especially, Liah Greenfeld, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1992);
15. Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999);
16. Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwells, 1986);
17. Anthony D. Smith, National Identity (Harmoundworth: Penguin, 1991);
18. Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983);
19. E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Pogramme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990);
20. John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993),
21. Yehoshua Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964).
22. The concept of "imagined community" has been made famous by Benedict Anderson. See Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, Verso, 1983).
23. See also Eric Hobsbawm and T. Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
24. Perhaps the best-known book tracing the connections through folkways is David Hackett Fisher, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
25. See also Russell Kirk, America's British Culture (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1993);
26. J. R. Pole, Political Representation in England and the Origins of the American Republic (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966).
27. Paul Langford, Englishness Identified: Manners and Character, 1650-1850 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 314ff.
28. See also Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837 (London: Pimlico, 2003), 30-33, 368-69.
29. Anthony Smith, in Myths and Memories of the Nation, points out that the concept of ethnic election, or chosen-ness, has been used by many peoples to establish identity. See pp. 125-40.
30. and R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1926).
31. A recent work which challenges these relationships is Liah Greenfeld, The Spirit of Capitalism: Nationalism and Economic Growth (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001).
32. David Cannadine, Class in Britain (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 1.
33. See also Andrew Adonis and S. Pollard, A Class Act: The Myth of Britain's Classless Society (London: Penguin, 1998);
34. Patrick Joyce, ed., Class (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995);
35. Stephen Brook, Class: Knowing Your Place in Modern Britain (London: Gollancz, 1997);
36. Gordon Marshall et al., Social Class in Modern Britain (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988);
37. Stuart Hall, "Whose Heritage? Unsettling 'The Heritage', Re-imagining the Post-nation," Third Text 49 (Winter 1999-2000): 6.
38. Representative titles include Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968);
39. David Brion Davis, In the Image of God: Religion, Moral Values and our Heritage of Slavery (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001);
40. Alden T. Vaughn, Roots of American Racism: Essays on the Colonial Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998);
41. Paul Wachtel, Race in the Mind of America: Breaking the Vicious Circle between Blacks and Whites (London: Routledge, 1999);
42. Andrew Hacker, Two Nations (New York: Charles Scribners, 1992);
43. Jennifer Hochschild, Facing Up to the American Dream: Race, Class, and the Soul of the Nation (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995);
44. Donald Kinder and Lynn Sanders, Divided by Color: Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996);
45. Joe Feagin, Racist America (London: Routledge, 2000);
46. Cornel West, Race Matters (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993);
47. Shelby Steele, The Content of our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990).
48. Arieli, Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology, 21, 344.
49. See, for example, David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1966);
50. J. R. Pole, The Pursuit of Equality in American History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978);
51. Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (London: Papermac, 2000).
52. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma, (New York: Harpers, 1944), 5.
53. Myrdal, American Dilemma, xliv, 3. Myrdal juxtaposes this idealistic creed with the experience of the "Negro" in America.
54. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1945), Vol. 2, 36-37.
55. Seymour Martin Lipset, American Exceptionalism: A Double-Edged Sword (New York: Norton, 1996).
56. Other works which address exceptionalism include Jack P. Greene, The Intellectual Construction of America: Exceptionalism and Identity from 1492 to 1800 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993);
57. David M. Wrobel, The End of American Exceptionalism: Frontier Anxiety from the Old West to the New Deal (Lawrence, Kans.: University Press, 1993).
58. John Harmon McElroy, American Beliefs: What Keeps a Big Country and a Diverse People United (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999), 24.
59. For works that offer descriptions of British tastes or traits, see Langford, Englishness Identified;
60. Jeremy Paxman, The English: Portrait of a People (London: Penguin, 1998);
61. Mike Storry and Peter Childs, eds., British Cultural Identities (London: Routledge, 1997);
62. Craig Storti, Old World New World: Bridging Cultural Differences: Britain, France, Germany, and the U.S. (Yarmouth, Maine: Intercultural Press, 2001).
63. Storti, Old World, New World, 274-76.
64. For classic studies of American character, see Henry Steele Commager, The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character since the 1880s (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950);
65. David M. Potter, People of Plenty: Economic Abundance and the American Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954);
66. Max Lerner, America as a Civilization: Life and Thought in the United States Today (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1957);
67. Michael Kammen, People of Paradox (New York: Knopf, 1974);
68. Margaret Mead, The American Character (New York: Penguin, 1942).
69. Colley, Britons, 17.
70. Laura Feller and Page Putnam Miller, "Public History in the Parks: History and the National Park Service," Perspectives, American Historical Association, (January 2000), http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2000/ 0001/0001pub1.cfm
71. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/NPSThinking/thematic.htm. The eight themes are Peopling Places, Creating Social Institutions and Movements, Expressing Cultural Values, Shaping the Political Landscape, Developing the American Economy, Expanding Science and Technology, Transforming the Environment, and Changing Role of the United States in the World Community. Notice the order in which these themes are presented.
72. http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/hisnps/index.htm
73. http://www.english-heritage.org.U.K./. See Policy, Inclusion and Diversity.
74. http://www.resource.gov.U.K./index.html
75. http://www.nps.gov/sama
76. Tours by Martin Fucio, 11 January and 13 January 2003.
77. "Voices of the Immigrant Past," in Voyages: Stories of America and the Sea, Mystic Seaport, Conn.
78. Shanon Holt, senior historian, and Peter Neill, president, South Street Seaport, interviews with Phyllis Leffler, 4 February 2003.
79. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1991), 641.
80. Kevin Robins, "Tradition and Translation: National culture in its global context," in David Boswell and Jessica Evans, Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), 17-18.
81. http://www.pem.org/overview.html
82. "Interpretive Themes" document provided by Rae Emerson, Park Superintendent, Salem National Maritime Historic Site.
83. A new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, America on the Move, and the South Street Seaport exhibit World Port New York emphasize themes of diversity, cultural and economic exchange, and globalization. I am grateful to curators at both sites for providing exhibit planning documents which illustrate this.
84. http://www.nmgm.org.U.K./maritime/slavery/slaveryframeset.html
85. Anthony Tibbles, "Against Human Dignity: The development of the Transatlantic Slavery Gallery at Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool," Proceedings, IX International Congress of Maritime Museums, 98.1.
86. "Transatlantic Slavery Gallery: Summative Evaluation," Prepared by Creative Research Ltd., 24 March 1995. Unpublished report, Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives.
87. Roger Knight, "Planning the Future of the U.K. Maritime Heritage," unpublished paper.
88. See, for example John Carroll, Guilt: The grey eminence behind character, history and culture (London: Routledge, 1985);
89. Elazar Barkan, The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001);
90. Luigi Zoja, Growth and Guilt: Psychology and the limits of development (London: Routledge, 1995).
91. Paxman, The English, 115ff.
92. Storti, Old World New World, 271-72, 274-76.
93. McElroy, American Beliefs, 228.