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Four centuries on, Matthew Jones, Chair of American Foreign Relations at Nottingham University, traces what has become of the aims and values of the first European colonists who settled with such high hopes on America's eastern shores.
In 1630, a short time after the settlers featured in the Channel 4 series, Pioneer House, arrived to found their new community, Massachusetts governor John Winthrop delivered a sermon invoking an image that was to be central to the American experience. He said: We must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill; the eies of all people are upon us…
The Puritans, like subsequent generations of American immigrants, were fleeing from the tyranny and strife that was afflicting the rest of the world in order to establish a new community founded on all that was most virtuous in a free human spirit. They came to consider themselves a chosen people inhabiting a promised land, where dreams of material wealth, spiritual security and political freedom might be realised.
Almost 400 years later, as the 21st century opened, Americans had grounds to believe their experiment an unbridled success, and could look to their future prospects with optimism. On the world stage, the United States enjoyed the delights of being the sole superpower. During the 1990s, the economy had experienced a period of sustained growth, buoyed by new technologies and expanding global trade, which gave many the impression of easy affluence. Immersed in a culture of consumption, Americans could look away from continuing evidence of poverty and social decay.
The Cold War, where Soviet power had balanced American power, was becoming a faint memory. Ronald Reagan's 'evil empire' had been reduced to a rotting, sullen and toothless 'mafiocracy'. Only a fast-growing China appeared as any kind of threat on a still distant horizon.
Problems at home and abroad
In a few short years, any complacency Americans may have felt was shattered. The presidential election of 2000 showed up some glaring problems with the democratic system, and revealed an electorate split down the middle.
George W Bush's arrival in the White House also coincided with a sharp economic downturn and rising unemployment. Already a controversial figure, and despite his disputed victory over the Democrats, Bush chose to govern from the right, speaking to issues that excited Christian evangelicals, such as school prayer and abortion.
Then came 11 September 2001. Americans felt a new sense of vulnerability. The long-term historical background to the terrorist attacks was little discussed, as radical Islamists were caricatured simply as resenting the freedoms attainable only in the United States. A 'war on terror' was quickly pronounced. Only then did difficult questions arise. Who was the enemy? And how were they to be defeated? The Bush administration chose to direct its wrath against states which harboured, or were suspected of harbouring, terrorists.
America at war
In a swift campaign in late 2001, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was quickly routed and al-Qaeda's training camps broken up. The Bush administration, however, went on to identify an 'axis of evil' composed of Iraq, Iran and North Korea – a group of so-called rogue states which combined dictatorial governments with aspirations to acquire weapons of mass destruction. The war on terror was changing into an attempt to remove regimes which did not conform to American values and which were hostile to US interests.
In then moving to target Iraq, the Bush administration shunned the established norms of the international community as it prepared for the 2003 invasion. The United Nations, already an object of derision in conservative American circles, was bypassed, and unilateralism embraced. A 'coalition of the willing' was formed, principally of those, such as Great Britain, who were ready to accept the American case for war in uncritical fashion. Military victory was, however, followed by the uncertainties of occupation and alien rule of a country riven by ethnic and religious divisions.
Already alarmed by the Bush administration's abandonment of such instruments of multilateralism as the Kyoto Protocol on control of greenhouse gas emissions, anti-Americanism became pronounced in many erstwhile friendly societies around the globe. The talk now was of a new American empire based not on formal colonies, but composed of a network of political and military power and influence that spanned every continent of the globe, and where the US intelligence services could tap into any e-mail exchange or mobile phone conversation.
Within the United States, the bitter aftermath of the Iraq War, as American troops became the targets for insurgent attacks and the budget deficit ballooned to pay for huge increases in defence spending, once again divided the nation. Many Americans were also alert to the dangers to hard-won civil liberties raised by the new powers adopted by the federal government in the form of the USA PATRIOT Act.
Nevertheless, Bush's victory in the 2004 election was felt to be a vindication to those who championed a new foreign policy based on the assertion of national will through military power and who welcomed the burdens of 'liberal' empire. To the neo-conservatives who held influence in Washington, bringing democracy to the world was thought the best means of assuring US security and global primacy, and fulfilling the promise of America's mission.
Manifest destiny
From their settler and colonial origins, Americans had considered themselves blessed by providence with a special task to spread their values. In the later 18th century, Americans had rejected the sovereign power of the English crown, and asserted instead that they had been endowed by their creator with the right to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. In 1776, Thomas Paine stirred the readers of his famous pamphlet, Common Sense, with his words: 'We have it in our power to begin the world over again.'
Defeat of the English in the War of Independence, and the success of the Constitution launched at Philadelphia in 1787, gave Americans the confidence to extend the domain of their Union. Continental expansion was a great theme of 19th-century American history, as native peoples were subdued and dispossessed. War with Mexico in 1846 pushed the boundaries of the United States down into Texas and westward to California and the Pacific coast.
It was at this time the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' was coined to describe the way Americans felt that their 'nation of many nations' had been preordained to stand at the vanguard of human progress – a belief fuelled by the millions of immigrants who made their way to US shores.
By the end of the 19th century, and with the closing of the land frontier of settlement, an expanding industrial economy and the search for overseas commercial opportunities had led the United States on to a path of Caribbean dominance and trans-Pacific adventure, as Hawaii was annexed, the Philippines taken as a colony and the China market developed.
During the 20th century, as involvement in two world wars drew the US into an unprecedented role on the international stage, many Americans came to feel that coexistence with an imperfect world was tolerable only if they could act to reshape the world in their own image.
Woodrow Wilson entered the First World War in 1917 to 'make the world safe for democracy', believing that only a post-war international system founded on principles of self-determination, democracy and free trade could offer peace, freedom and security for all. In 1941, Franklin Roosevelt offered his domestic and global audience the 'Four Freedoms': freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. During the Cold War, the 'slave society' represented by the totalitarian rule of Communist systems was contrasted with the freedoms enjoyed by ordinary Americans (which made the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s all the more embarrassing for the US government).
Democracy promotion
The United States has often needed to portray its overseas 'crusades' as conducted for high-minded reasons, whatever the baser motives. Neo-conservatives now talk of 'democracy promotion' in the Middle East as being part of a long tradition of a moralistic US foreign policy (though this time backed with force), at the same time as serving America's self-interest by fostering peace, stability and prosperity in a vitally important region.
Behind such engagement, though, as several influential American commentators have also warned, lurk deep dangers for the Great Republic. In his Fourth of July address of 1821, John Quincy Adams (Secretary of State, and later President), set out his view that, 'America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion only of her own.' Adams predicted that the United States had the power to become 'the dictatress of the world' but, in doing so, would 'be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.' In other words, the pursuit of empire would distort and undermine those very values of democracy and freedom at home that made America special and different.
While many Americans exult in their moment of imperial power, the costs of an expansive foreign policy, as the budget deficit mounts and the military suffers from over-stretch, are also becoming apparent to some. Moreover, the erosion of civil liberties in the pursuit of an elusive 'victory' in the 'war on terror' makes one mindful of Adams' prophetic warning of what might be lost along the way.
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