Simon Tisdall: Explaining Anti-Europeanism
[Simon Tisdall is an assistant editor and foreign affairs columnist at the Guardian.]
...Seen from Europe, of which Britain is (arguably) a part, the roots of American anti-Europeanism appear many and varied. At one end of the spectrum, there is the widely shared view that Europe does not pull its weight in a world that Washington would like to order according to its lights. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the unpalatable fact of widespread American ignorance, exacerbated by indifference, of all things European.
Examples of the latter abound. While covering the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, in 1993, a European reporter was asked in all sincerity: "Is Sweden a country or a city?" In Richmond, Virginia, a cab driver congratulated a visiting Briton on not having to bother about voting or elections "because you've got the Queen." And then there was the waitress in Arkansas who asked an unsuspecting Englishman: "What language do you speak in your country?"
But historically, anti-Europeanism is hardly a new phenomenon. America's first president warned against "permanent alliances" after successfully conspiring in an alliance with the French against the British in the Revolutionary War. President James Monroe issued his famous doctrine expressly to keep the European powers out of a New World to which a then much weaker Washington presumptuously laid claim. (Monroe neglected to mention that it would for the most part be the British Royal Navy tasked with enforcing his doctrine.)
Fear, envy, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, cultural inferiority-superiority complexes, trade, political and military rivalries, and America's quest for identity all fed anti-European feeling as the new country sought to differentiate itself from the old countries whence most of its people came. Many of these phenomena remain relevant today....
Read entire article at Foreign Policy
...Seen from Europe, of which Britain is (arguably) a part, the roots of American anti-Europeanism appear many and varied. At one end of the spectrum, there is the widely shared view that Europe does not pull its weight in a world that Washington would like to order according to its lights. At the other end of the spectrum, there is the unpalatable fact of widespread American ignorance, exacerbated by indifference, of all things European.
Examples of the latter abound. While covering the siege of the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, in 1993, a European reporter was asked in all sincerity: "Is Sweden a country or a city?" In Richmond, Virginia, a cab driver congratulated a visiting Briton on not having to bother about voting or elections "because you've got the Queen." And then there was the waitress in Arkansas who asked an unsuspecting Englishman: "What language do you speak in your country?"
But historically, anti-Europeanism is hardly a new phenomenon. America's first president warned against "permanent alliances" after successfully conspiring in an alliance with the French against the British in the Revolutionary War. President James Monroe issued his famous doctrine expressly to keep the European powers out of a New World to which a then much weaker Washington presumptuously laid claim. (Monroe neglected to mention that it would for the most part be the British Royal Navy tasked with enforcing his doctrine.)
Fear, envy, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, cultural inferiority-superiority complexes, trade, political and military rivalries, and America's quest for identity all fed anti-European feeling as the new country sought to differentiate itself from the old countries whence most of its people came. Many of these phenomena remain relevant today....