United States History: A Brief Introduction for Hungarian Students [antikvár]

PREFACE Teaching American history in Hungary, one quickly becomes aware that one of the persistent problems is the availability of resources, including textbooks. Those that do exist tend to be too expensive and too extensive for the needs of Hungarian students. We decided to solve that problem by writing our own brief overview of United States history with Hungarian students specifically in mind. We are well aware of the revolution wrought in the writing of American history, including textbooks, in the last quarter of a century by the coverage of such non-traditional topics as "the new social history" emphasizes: minorities, women, working people, etc.~in short, the "common" people, most people. Such history is sometimes meaningfully called "history from the bottom up," suggesting that for too long historians have focussed almost exclusively on presidents, kings, queens, generals, rich people, i. e., the people at the top, and failed to consider what most peoples' lives were like in different periods of history, and how their lives were affected by the actions of those at the top. We are aware of this revolution, and to a degree supportive of it; we hope, for example, that in advanced courses students will be exposed to much of this material. But our Sbjective here is such that we place primary emphasis on the political, economic, and diplomatic basics of the American past. One more comment, by way of introduction: The historian may take a high moral position and project his or her own set of values as well as those of the highest morality onto history. Thus, for example, the rather critical assessments of slavery and twentieth century US foreign policy (our hobby horses) do not necessarily correspond with official or contemporary interpretations, we simply offer our own views. Clearly, we would make poor politicians. Still, do consider this the beginning in your exploration of the richness of United States history, not the end. Davis D. Joyce bears primary responsibility for chapters 1-6, Tibor Giant for 7-13. However, we have read each other's work, made suggestions freely (sometimes followed, sometimes not), and are quite content to list ourselves as coauthors for the entire work. DDJ and GT, January, 1996