It’s estimated that somewhere between 500 and 1,000 travel diaries — possibly the most popular literary genre of the 19th century — were written by foreign visitors to the United States in our first century of existence. The Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” written after his visit to these shores in the 1830s, was and remains the most popular. Hundreds of others, from Charles Dickens’ “American Notes for General Circulation” to Fukazawa Yukichi’s “An Encouragement of Learning,” are still in print.
America’s distinctiveness on the world stage drew observers from all over the world seeking to understand what this “new order” meant. Not all the reviews were positive. More aristocratic tourists criticized the directness of our manners, while others were bewildered at the emotionalism of some church services. Most all hated the American man’s addiction to tobacco-chewing — and spitting.
I must confess to reading over 50 of these books, which is probably why I’m reminded of them as a witness to soccer fans from around the world coming to America for this summer’s World Cup. In ways we should be thankful, we don’t have to wait many months or a year to read a book about their experience. With a quick scroll through social media, one can see video after video from Germans, Ghanaians, Japanese, and Norwegian soccer fans as they express their overwhelming shock at life in these United States.
Videos are plentiful of Dutch fans eating barbecue and Japanese fans dumbstruck while walking through Bass Pro Shops. Scottish fans in Boston were stunned by how frequently Americans would buy them drinks. But it’s the interviews with fans who are asked about their views of Americans that are the most revealing.
Norwegian soccer star Erling Haaland went to an NHL game where he witnessed the Americans’ full-throated singing of our National Anthem. He said, “They have so much pride for the country. They love their country so much. It’s everything about it. The national anthem was incredible. Amazing. I had goosebumps all over.”
Nineteenth-century visitors could be forgiven for their amazement at what they saw in America. There was literally nothing like us in world history — a thriving, if contentious, multiethnic republic. What’s the excuse now, two centuries later?
The answer, of course, is found in what these fans have been told about America (and Americans) by their media, governments, and schools. Many of those criticisms, from our supposed xenophobia to our greedy self-centeredness, appear to be collapsing upon contact with reality.
In this there’s an obvious reconnection with many of the themes you’d see from the travelogue writers in the 1800s:
- Americans are good-natured: As the Englishman, Charles Latrobe, wrote when visiting in 1832, “The people of the United States may truly be said to be a gregarious race. The truth of this is exemplified in their summer enjoyments, when, in spite of the inconveniences entailed upon collecting together in large numbers, during a season when the heat is truly oppressive.”
- Americans love big things: The Parisian clergyman, Jean Grandpierre, observed during his visit in the early 1850s, “In America everything takes gigantic proportions.”
- Americans are innovators: “The great glory of the Americans is in their wondrous contrivances, in their patent remedies for the usually troublous operations of life,” said Englishman Anthony Trollope, in 1861.
- Americans are infectiously energetic: During her visit in 1849, the Swedish novelist Fredrika Bremer described, “Nothing strikes me so much as the youthfulness of this people — I might almost say childish fervor and love of adventure. They hesitate at nothing, and regard nothing as impossible.”
- Americans love their country: The British medical missionary, Isabella Lucy Bird, described the typical American man she met in Chicago in 1854: “their very appearance says to you, ‘Stranger, I belong to the greatest, most enlightened and most progressive nation on earth. I may be the President or a millionaire next.”
I could go on, but you get the picture. The difference now is that these past visitors are stunned by what they’re learning about America for the first time. Today’s visitors are having to unlearn what they’ve been told.
Of course, it’s also true that we as Americans have also been surprised by the overwhelmingly positive reactions by these World Cup fans, and this speaks to what we’ve told ourselves (or been taught) about this country. The decline in American patriotism is evidenced in several recent national surveys.
It’s logical to wonder how these travelers will impact views of America upon their return to their native lands. For our part, on this 250th year, we’d do well to consider the wonder these fans continue to express, and be grateful for the place we call home.
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Pete Peterson is dean of Pepperdine University School of Public Policy and its Braun Family Dean’s Chair.
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