A National Culture Emerges
Three ingredients, combined
- A new national culture emerged that combined American elements, European influences, and regional cultural sensibilities.
- Combined is the operative verb — the culture is a mixture, not an invention or an import.
- And the third ingredient is regional, which means the national culture contains its own internal differences by design.
Select all three ingredients the CED says the culture combined.
'Combined' — a mixture, not an invention or an import.
Two intellectual imports
- Liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture.
- Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility is the phrase to carry: it is the intellectual engine of 4.11's reform movements.
- Four fields are named, and 3.11 already had three of them — the list is a continuation, extended by philosophy.
Select all four fields the imported ideas influenced.
3.11 had three of them; philosophy is the addition.
Perfectibility is the opposite of 6.5's conservatism
- A belief that human nature can be improved licenses schemes to improve it — temperance, education, abolition.
- The opposite premise, that human nature is not perfectible, is what grounds conservative resistance to such schemes.
- So naming the premise explains why this period produced so many reform movements at once.
An ingredient, an imported idea, or a field it touched?
Sort each element of the new national culture.
The phrase that drives 4.11's reform movements is...
If people can be improved, schemes to improve them are rational.
"Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility" is the engine of the next subtopics. If human nature can be improved, schemes to improve it are rational — which is exactly why 4.11's temperance, education and abolition movements appear together in one generation.
4.9's claim is stronger than 3.11's because the regional is...
The national culture combined regional sensibilities.
National and regional at once, again
- 3.11 said new national forms developed alongside continued regional variations.
- 4.9 says the national culture itself combined... regional cultural sensibilities.
- That is a stronger claim: the regional is not merely alongside the national but inside it.
Independence created a need for ____ while transatlantic exchange kept supplying material.
The 'why' of the objective.
How and why a national culture developed
- The objective is how and why a new national culture developed from 1800 to 1848.
- How: by combining American, European and regional elements across literature, art, philosophy and architecture.
- Why: because independence created a need for distinctiveness while transatlantic exchange continued to supply material.
A generation that believes people can be made better will found societies to make them better, and will disagree bitterly about which improvement comes first. A generation that believes the opposite founds nothing and defends what exists.
A new national culture emerged that combined American elements, European influences, and regional cultural sensibilities, and liberal social ideas from abroad and Romantic beliefs in human perfectibility influenced literature, art, philosophy, and architecture. Combined makes the culture a mixture, and the inclusion of regional cultural sensibilities puts the regional inside the national rather than merely alongside it.