I'll show you mine if you show me yours

The Puritans, to American studies majors, seem to be an utterly American phenomenon. After all, the Puritans chartered a boat and escaped to the rocky coast of Plimoth, where they established the first "permanent" American colony. They were driven out of England, and eventually the Netherlands, to the big, wide-open continent of North America. Ours.

Funny thing about being in Scotland, then. On the first day of my "Literature and Politics in Early Modern Scottish History" my professor cited an American definition of Puritans (one I have heard since roughly second grade, every November like clockwork) with reverence and astonishment. As if she could hardly believe that an American scholar could provide a clever and succinct definition for what was surely a British phenomenon.

(The quote, by the way, is roughly paraphrased here: A Puritan is a person who is very afraid that somewhere in the world, someone is happy.)

I had forgotten that before being driven out of England by the King's religious restrictions, or severe lack thereof, and even after settling in Plimoth, that they considered themselves English, still. That it wasn't a burden for them to have to send lumber and goods to the King, because he was their king. So too had my elementary school teachers. (Sorry, Mrs. Dorsky, I don't mean to throw you under the bus for doing your job.) Which isn't fair, I suppose, since we all knew in the backs of our minds that these were British folks who wrote up the Mayflower Compact and ostracized my beloved Hester Prynne (the most empowered fallen woman in literature and I love her for it). Even the Puritans born in America didn't consider themselves "American" and legally, they were still subjects of the King. Which makes them, legally, and technically, British history.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. Hey, remember Squanto? Lets make hand-turkeys and collect leaves. What is the definition of a "cornucopia"? (This, I believe, truly is fundamentally American, like baseball and Fenway Franks. But I'll keep surveying people.)

But it gives rise to some serious soul-searching. What is American history and when does it begin? When does America become "America," no longer under the domain of England? (The easy answer might be "1776, duh," but even that isn't really true. Because many of the colonists saw themselves as a free people before that, which is part of what led to the tension prior to the Greatest War Ever. Some people saw themselves as English right through the war. Our own history is never as unified as we'd like to think. But that's a different entry) Why is it that both British scholars and American scholars lay claim to the same group of people as falling into their exclusive historical domain, and to what degree is all history universal, in the sense that we are all people and history is communal property? ("We are all connected to each other, in a circle, in a hoop that never ends.")

But John Smith really is a part of this discussion. Just look at his portrayal in Pocahontas, yeah? He is blonde, blue-eyed, and voiced by Mel Gibson, who at the time seemed as golden and American as Tom Brady. That's like Brad Pitt playing Vasquez or Ponce De Leon with an American accent, or Tom Cruise playing a Nazi without a German accent...

John Smith wasn't an American. He didn't even settle in America; he went back to England. Is he a part of "our" history or a part of "their" history? And is this possessiveness of history really a good thing at all? Probably not. But it exists, this concept of "my history" and "your history." Isn't one of the great things about history that anyone can study it? That it belongs to the people who want it? When countries acknowledge their shared history, such as both World Wars and the Reformation, the study of that history becomes that much deeper and richer. When you accept that the nailing of the Ninety-five Theses to the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral marked a crucial turning point not just in German or Italian history but also in English and French and Spanish history, and not just in religious history but in political and social as well, then you can come to a much fuller and rounder understanding of what Martin Luther did. The Reformation is something everyone in Europe shares. From Henry VIII to Martin Luther to Pope Julius.

So Scotland, England, all of Britain, hell, let's throw the Netherlands in there for good measure. I want to know what you can tell me about the Puritans, about the Pilgrims. And I'll show you mine if you show me yours.



Note: It seems the British don't want John Smith. I asked my flatmate yesterday what she learned about John Smith, and her response was, "John who?"