WHEN the American continent was discovered, it was symbolized as the New World with a new age which in turn was regarded as a new beginning and a new life for mankind.
Its discovery distinguished it from the Old World which represented a world full of corruption, sin, crime, hatred and prejudice. Those who migrated to the New World were those who were discriminated and persecuted, for example the Catholics of England and Protestants of France. Along with these two other sects and communities that were not tolerated in their respective countries found the New World as a God send opportunity to take refuge from the injustices and humiliation which they had to face in their native countries. Similarly, there were the thrill-seekers who wanted to take the risk and earn a good and dignified living there. As all of them arrived to the new world for a fresh beginning, their approach to the past was very negative.
They did not like to see back to their past, rather forward to the future. As most of them were victims, either because of their views or their social status, they did not have good memories of the past. What little they remembered those were mostly bitter memories.
Once in the new land, their main concern was how to get rid of this ugly past and not allow it to deter their present and their future. The intellectuals as well as the politicians have expressed, in their writings and speeches, these sentiments of the immigrants.
R.W.B.Lewis, a historian writes, “Our national birth was the beginning of a new history...which separates us from the past and connects with the future.”
“Therefore, the main desire of the newly arrived people was how to liberate them from the weight of dead men’s thought.”
Thomas Jefferson, who was also the President of the USA, once remarked that the present of the USA should be as independent of the past as the USA from Europe.
“We must consider each generation as a distinct nation. The dead should not be allowed to rule over living.”
The question is that why the newly arrived people in the New World were anti-past and not interested to make it a part of their life? The reason is that the majority of those who came to America belonged to the unprivileged classes and suffered by the rule of the autocrats and aristocracy. Therefore they had a past that had no pleasant memories and no inspiring events. That was the reason they wanted to scrap it all together and replace it with a bright future which they thought was waiting for them.
Secondly, the past was only useful to the nobility and ruling classes to get sanction of their authority on the basis of their birth, lineage and dynasty. It endowed elite classes a sense of destiny and a mission that subsequently led them to exploit weaker classes for their interest. These experiences of the past made the subordinate classes hostile and enemy of it. As there was no need for such sanction to improve their life or raise social status, the new comers relied on their merit and hard labour to achieve success. There was no need to be proud on lineage or family. Their status was going to be determined by their initiatives and work. That is why the past was useless to them. For as one historian aptly writes, “the past should be unaffected by the present. It is the duty of the historians to get rid of its inviolability rather than to invade it with present pre-occupations.”
Anti-past created an attitude of against history. What J.H. Plumb wrote about Europe, was correctly applied to America. “The past becomes...a matter of curiosity, of nostalgia, a sentimentality...The strength of the past in all aspects of life is far, far weaker than it was a generation ago. Indeed few societies have ever had a past in such a galloping dissolution as this.” Therefore, once the past became useless for the early Americans, they started their new life with a clean slate, without looking back.
Another reason for the hostility towards the past was to de-link the new country from Europe. As almost all of the immigrants came from Europe, they brought the European culture and values along with them that became a great hurdle in creating their own identity. The affluent classes used to send their children to Europe for education and to learn its culture. There was such a dominating influence of Europe that their politicians and intellectuals soon realized that without cutting their roots from Europe it was difficult for them to construct an American nation. These were the reasons that a new sense of American patriotism was created and conscious attempts were made to produce separate a American culture. A new group of historians rejected the European influence in making their political and social institutions.
F.J. Turner declared, “American democracy was born of no theorist’s dream. It came out of the American forest.”
It is said that those nations who have no burden of the past, look forward and develop with speed because they are motivated by a brilliant future in comparison to those that have a glorious past they dream of past greatness that subsequently make them passive. In such cases they always think in term of revival and not to invent, innovate and build something new. That is why we find, that in the early phase of the American history there was no conflict between the new or old traditions. They had to build their institutions and traditions according to their needs as they were not obsessed with the past traditions and freely made new experiments in political and social affairs.
However the process has taken a new turn. Now the Americans have their own past, a past which comes in their life with full force and warns them that the New World remains no more new; it is aging and becoming old.
WHEN the American continent was discovered, it was symbolized as the New World with a new age which in turn was regarded as a new beginning and a new life for mankind.
