Comparative history, which goes against the grain of this increasing academic specialisation, often points up the fact that nationalist exceptionalisms, whether of the American, Canadian, or Australian varieties, is problematic. While the American, Canadian, and Australian variants of English and British settler societies may think they are unique and may believe that they have been called to evangelise the world with their good news of exceptionalist utopianism, comparative analysis often shows that such messianic ideologies are more cultural myths than reality.
One of the classic texts of comparative history is The Founding of New Societies by Louis Hartz, Kenneth McRae, Richard Morse, Richard Rosencrance, and Leonard Thompson (New York: Harcourt Brace World, 1964). On one level Founding shows that the settler societies of the United States (Hartz), Latin America (Morse), South Africa (Thompson), Canada (McRae), and Australia (Rosencrance) are not unique. They are all, Hartz and his contributors argue, fragments of Europe. On another level it argues that the European settler societies they briefly explore are somewhat unique. Latin America and French Canada were, Hartz and his collaborators argue, feudal reactions to French Revolutionary era Europe. The Dutch Calvinist fragment of South Africa was a reaction to liberal modernity. The British fragment of South Africa, the United States and English Canada were eighteenth century liberal fragments of Europe. Australia was a radical and reformist fragment of nineteenth century Britain. It was, Hartz and his contributors contend, around these reactions and cultural influences that each of these fragments coalesced if in somewhat different ways to produce several of the new societies of the modern era.
The Founding of New Societies is an interesting corrective to perspectives, like that of Frederick Jackson Turner, which emphasise the newness of, in Turner's case, the American settler society. As for the eternal and infinite chicken and egg question both European backgrounds and frontiers contributed, along with a host of economic, political, cultural, demographic, and economic factors, to the making of new societies. Though Hartz is often seen as a member of the school of history that emphasises the economic, political, and cultural consensus of new societies like the United States this collection of theoretical essays and case studies is aware of conflict within nations, whether between Toryish elitists and those of a more democratic orientation, between colonial imperialists and natives and slaves, or between grazers and urban dwellers. And though the book is in need of updating, thanks particularly to the revival of and current hegemony of neoliberalism, a neoliberalism that has changed the cultural character of the US and Australia and brought with it a series of ideological culture wars, it remains a worthwhile and groundbreaking attempt to look at the new societies born out of "tradition" and modernity in comparative terms, something that is absolutely essential if we are to fully understand the new societies that arose out of Europe.
