Dear Non-American Veeky Forumstorians

What's the demand, or even interest, in United States history in non-American countries and academia? How many universities have positions for American historians? How well does American History sell in the world, and if well, what specific fields are most popular?

A lot of people on here maintain that no one outside of the states has any interest in it. The only reason American History is so prominent on this board, I assume, is because it's mostly browsed by American posters. I'd figure the histories of Europe and Asia would be the most popular among foreign institutions and casual readers.

I read somewhere that there's a little demand in Japanese colleges, but students there like the history of American conservation more than its military or political histories, which are probably the most popular state-side.

Fuck. That guy is John Keegan. I got my images fucking mixed up. I was going to say that he's the only notable, foreign historian I can think of that really liked American History, particularly military history, though that's self-evident considering his expertise.

...

I guess there just aren't too many non-Americans on here, eh?

American History has always been interesting to me, though I can see where others might not necessarily agree.

Personally, I never thought that anybody was really too interested in American history other than Americans themselves.

Welp, this thread looks like a failure.

Are you American?

Other than American history abroad nobody in my country is that interested in American domestic history.

You can gather that from the fact that your average foreigner believes that fat man and little boy constituted genocide

Australian here, most of the sandstone universities teach American history, though the professors are typically imports.
Personally I love American history and literature, particularly from the 19th Century.

Yes.

Based Teddy

in canada it's not mandatory but besides early north american colonial history in middle school but it's highly available. In some high schools you can take courses and lots of unis offer north american or just american history courses

Here in sweden we basically stop teaching children swedish history when they turn 12. Sucks since i really dont see the reason why early US history is relevant to us swedes at all. Most of my countrymen dont even know that we used to be quite the power house. In short, the demand is low, but we learn us history anyway.

Shame about you guys getting BTFO by Russia

very little, I'm australian and nobody here other than me cares about any US history. Nobody academic cares about anyone pre wilson, nobody knows any civil war battles apart from gettysburg etc. I think its quite interesting though

America itself is a very specific topic as far as history is concerned, and there's simply a lack of specialists compared to more general historians that hop around from major event to event. American history is only really a thing from the last three centuries (Assuming you're talking about the USA and not the Americas in general), and for a large chunk of it was sparsely inhabited compared to the old world. Even more, compared to Mexico and other nations to the south, the settlers arrived comparatively late and can't claim a multitude of explorers, such as Cortes and Ponce de Leon, as part of their history either.

For example, while the Napoleon Wars were going on in Europe, America was just recovering from the revolutionary war and the only major happenings occurring were internal state politics. And even after those wars died down, there was still a ton of international intrigue happening between the various nations of Europe, liberalism was taking root, and institutions were busy jockeying for their piece of the pie. Meanwhile, America was a backwater that was still getting on its feet, with the occasional spat like Texas flaring up. They didn't even really have a whole lot of European intervention like Mexico did.

So while America has interesting bits in its history, they're fewer and further in between and aren't as significant to the larger picture until after the civil war for starters and for certain not until after the first world war. It's understandable why someone might not want to limit themselves to such a narrow topic.

>Most of my countrymen dont even know that we used to be quite the power house.
Sucks to be you, Mohammed. Proper Swedes have to spend 3 goddamn years in school doing nothing but wanking over the time Sweden was a "great power".

That's a shame.

As an Australian I've always had an interest in American history. Sometimes I think its because Australia lacks much interesting history of its own, so I plunder other countries for interesting things to read about.

20th century mainly for supposed easier access to your archives
mosty your participation in ww1 and 2

contributing to our education on world history, american history itself is not in high demand

I don't know, it's interesting to see a country just chugging along, trying to make its way in the world while the rest of the west is burning itself to the ground.

Indian here. Nobody here cares about it on an academic level, but plenty of people find it interesting, especially the relation to the UK, WWII, and the history of science.

I suppose you might have greater academic freedom in a non U.S. country?

American history is not much in demand.
In fact at the American Studies department at my university I think few students could actually tell you correctly when the Civil War happened.

However, since American Studies only revolves around Race, Class and Gender it's actually quite trendy right now

I suppose American universities are rather restricted in terms of course load. I had to take a minimum number of hours in specifically American history courses to meet degree graduation requirements. I guess maybe it has to do with the fact that the United States is very limited in its number of foreign historians. Most are American History focused.

I only minored in History while at university so my perspective is limited. I'm Irish.

Generally I'd say focus on the united states is either:

A: Focused on its place in wider world affairs, so 90 percent of it is focused on WW2 and afterwards. There's probably tons of classes on the cold war era and stuff like that, but I never had one. Probably some classes on postwar US race relations and culture.

or

B: Focused on the Irish Diaspora, including America, as well as America's involvement with Irish Nationalism. The most likeable history professor I ever had was from the US and was an expert on IRA members who fled to the states to avoid capture.

To give you an idea, I had 8 classes in History over the course of 4 years, one a semester. Half of those were about Ireland, the other half about Europe in general. I encountered a fair bit of diaspora stuff, as well as a bit on US-Ireland diplomatic relations. I highly doubt, however, that anyone in that school is learning about the American Civil War or anything like that.

>the settlers arrived comparatively late and can't claim a multitude of explorers, such as Cortes and Ponce de Leon, as part of their history either.

I'm from Florida, we consider Ponce de Leon as a unique part of our states' history, and we still learn about Cortez because European exploration is considered an important part of early American history.

In Texas history, we cover a lot of the same, seeing as we were once a part of Mexico and have a large base of Mexican-Americans. That said, I'd be willing to bet the east coast as a whole is missing some of that history until you get in to the original 13 colonies.

Lots of non-American browse this board but american history is pretty boring so..

Brazilian here. In the school I learnt a small bit of American history encompassing the process of independence, the concept of settler and exploitation colonialism, and the Civil War (usually called War of Secession here.)

I've met a few Brits that were majoring in "American Studies," although from what they described, it was more of a subject that combined history with literary studies. I assume the professors were also Brits, because I got a lot of weird questions from those guys, who seemed to haven't known many American people in real life.

They were from different universities, so I guess there's a market there, although I imagine it's not very big.

What part of India do you live in? Also, what do they teach in Indian history classes? I mean it must vary so much from region to region no??