Editorial

Read The Historian 157

‘This will be the American century’, declared the celebrated publisher Henry Luce in 1941. Luce, the son of missionaries, was brought up in China. As a child, he had witnessed the collapse of the Qing dynasty, and the subsequent disintegration of the country. He would probably have been startled by modern-day assumptions that the twenty-first century would be the Chinese one. But whether it turns out to be or not, it already seems clear that his era of unquestioned American dominance is over.

American cultural power, however, is likely to remain highly influential, and this alone would be enough to justify a continuing interest in the history of the United States.

In this edition of The Historian, we have focused on different aspects of the American experience, from the impact of the Revolution on minority groups to the decision-making that led the United States into the quagmire of Vietnam. We follow the career of a great American musician, and take a fresh look at the assassination of the country’s thirty-fifth president. We also learn something about the phenomenon of anti-Americanism in Britain during the Second World War. Winston Churchill might have extolled the New World, with all its power and might, but some Britons, it seems, were much less enthusiastic.

In our regular features, we partly continue the American theme: the Association’s very own chief executive tells us why her favourite history place is the Tenement Museum in New York, and we go out and about in Washington DC. But we also look at the real life of Beatrice Alexander, whose world changed abruptly when she was found ‘incapable’ of making her own decisions. And in other articles, we examine how historians and history-teachers have been portrayed in fiction – rarely in a positive light – as well as the sometimes surprising role of women in the French Revolution.

This edition of The Historian is the first in some time to contain a Letters page: the magazine can surely only benefit from more interaction with its readership. Our hope is that this becomes a regular feature, but this will only happen if readers also become writers, however briefly. We hope that you will use the opportunity to comment on articles, raise questions and put your own point of view. Please write and tell us what you think.