I spoke with an academic friend at a cookout, discussing American blue jeans and their popularity around the world for many years. He immediately went to the assumption that Americans must have taken the idea from someone else and then made money off it. He is younger than I am, and may not remember or even heard of the value of brand-name American jeans behind the Iron Curtain and in developing countries decades ago. Governments banned them. His is a stunning default to go to. It is certainly true that Americans have "appropriated" ideas - and in fact have appropriated so many and made them worldwide popular that one has to wonder how international the whole world might even be without us. It depends strongly on what you consider taking an idea from another country. "Dungaree" cloth was from India, and indigo dye was as well. It meant solid workman's clothes. Denim was "from Nimes," France and jeans were from Genoa, also meaning strong workers cloth.In England, miners and other workers used strong cloth, especially for trousers. So if you want to stretch a point and say that the Americans stole foreign ideas when they decided they needed durable work cloth for their own miners in the mid 1800s, you could call it that.
Except that's pretty crazy. Solid work clothes from Bulgaria were not banned in Romania in the 1980s. It's really just looking to pick a fight with Americans at that point, and he's an American. We have more patents and more new ideas than pretty much the whole rest of the world, all by ourselves. Our only competitors are the rest of the Anglosphere. NE Asia is making its bid on the basis of sheer numbers, devotion to technologic education, and incremental improvements, but still not there. This should be basic information, not only about current Americans, but certainly about America in the 1800s and 1900s. We invent stuff. We make stuff that takes over the world. We're happy to take European ideas especially and rework them, but its more than just putting a different colored bow on it.
He's a history professor. Helluva default.
3 comments:
Specialized history?
Dissertation about slavery, emphasis on 19th C American. Solid generally on American history. Go figure.
He's a history professor. Helluva default.
Just being true to his tribe, the Arts and Humanities folk, whose oikophobia is used as a putdown of the not-Arts-and-Humanities folk. You people are so ignorant, so bigoted, so stupid, and we of the A&H tribe are so great, so wise, so etceteraetcetera.
While the A&H tribe puts down school spirit and all that, their loyalty to their tribe outweighs the loyalty of the school spirit types.Be True to Your School Don't be true to your school, but if you are not true to the political narrative de jour, you are going down. Cancelled and all that.
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