UNITED STATESIANS Público Deposited
The E-Sylum: Volume 7, Number 4, January 25, 2004, Article 21
UNITED STATESIANS
Regarding Chick Ambrass' comments from last week,
Ray Williams writes: "Although I agree with Chick's
points in his article, I think he actually meant to say British
Colonies instead of American colonies."Doug Andrews writes: "I had to re-read Chick Ambrass's
comments several times to make sure I wasn't seeing things!
He asserts: "In 1688 when the letters in reference were
written... Canada was part of the American colonies."Nice try, but his account of Canadian history is a little off
to say the least. In 1688, in fact, what is now Canada was
governed as four separate entities. Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland were colonies directly under the British
Crown, New France (comprised of much of central Canada)
was a French colony and remained so until 1759, and the
areas around Hudson's Bay were in fact the exclusive
property of a private company, The Hudson's Bay Trading
Company.The last was by far the largest, covering most of present
day northern Ontario and Quebec, as well as Manitoba
and the Territories, and it wasn't a colony of any country.
The remainder of present day Canada was either a British
settlement governed separately from the "Thirteen Colonies,"
or a French overseas possession. Their relationship with the
British colonies stretching from New Hampshire to Georgia
thus was tenuous at best.If his inference was that Canada somehow fell into the orbit
of the Thirteen Colonies, he is mistaken.Mr. Ambrass's reference to whether inhabitants of North or
South America outside of the US are "Americans" raises a
valid point, however. The issue is resolved by clarifying that
Canadians and Mexicans are "North Americans;" Brazilians,
for example, are "South Americans." The more difficult
question of the day is whether the British consider themselves
"Europeans."Ted Buttrey replies: To put the thing in its geographical and its
historical context: All of the Americas (that name itself is an
accident), North and South, were infested with colonies from
various European nations; and all of those nations, as far as
I'm aware, referred to their colonists as "Americans",
regardless of where they came from or where they settled.
The colonies themselves bore names that were either
European in origin (New Galicia) or indigenous (Guatemala).When 13 separate British colonies got out from under British
rule they were each an independent nation -- "state" --, and
each had its own name -- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, etc.
When they subsequently agreed to form a federate union they
had no common name for the federation and had to make one
up. So "United States" must have been obvious, though
personally I would have preferred "States United" or "States
in Union", emphasizing that each was still maintaining its own
sovereignty. But I wonder whether the term "United States"
wasn't modeled on the "United Provinces" of the Lowlands.As to "of America", it's clear from all the sources that the
separation from Britain was more than political. Over the
decades the people of the British Colonies came to feel that
they were their own kind of people, no longer just Europeans
who had moved elsewhere. (And of course it was that
growing feeling that the British tried to suppress, e.g. by
requiring the trade of each colony to move via the motherland,
and restricting trade among the several colonies.) So
"of America" made clear both where this was happening,
geographically, and politically the severance from Europe.Remember too that at the time the USA was the only
independent nation of the Western Hemisphere. Everybody
else inhabited a colony that was an arm of some European
nation. So in that sense the inhabitants of the USA were
the only people that could be described politically, nationally,
as Americans.The problem that bugs Chick, and indeed continues to annoy
many south of the Rio Grande, is our habit of referring to
ourselves, exclusively, as "Americans", as against "Mexicans",
"Guatemalans", etc. But really this is a problem that grows
out of language -- as he notices -- not out of a superior
cultural or historical or political attitude. "United States of
America" is more a label, a description, than a name, and the
fact is that the English language does not lend itself to
"United Statser".The adjectives derived from place names are various in form
yet can be very specific. I remember a political cartoon of
years ago when Bobby Kennedy moved his legal residence
from Massachusetts to New York so that he could run for
the Senate from there: he was sketched addressing his new
political audience, "Fellow New Yorkites..."That makes its point: there are proper and improper ways
of doing this. But there is simply no way to derive a proper
adjective from "United States of America". It can be done
in other languages: in Spanish each of us is an
"Estadounidense", in Italian, "Statunitese". We're stuck with
"American", I'm afraid. It was never intended to be offensive,
but it has come to be so with some folks, and you can only try
to get them to understand."- 2004-01-25
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