Main Points:

First Kind of Comparative History

 Hartz’s Founding of New Societies, wherein the purpose is to explain the differences in the social
character of several new countries, the emphasis is truly upon comparison in order to illuminate
differences.
 Barrington Moore’s, can also be taken as genuinely comparative, since it asks why some nations
arrived at a democratic society in the twentieth century while others followed the path of
dictatorship into modernization.
 Crane Brinton’s well-known Anatomy of Revolution, the purpose is to find uniformities, not
differences, in the experiences of several nations with revolution.
 Marc Bloch, the principal use and value of comparative history is to find differences, for in them
are to be uncovered the problems that require historical examination. History written within
national boundaries encourages the historian to slide into the error of assuming that the
explanations he arrives at are natural and self-evident, that his evidence drawn from national
sources is sufficient to throw light upon the causes for human action. It is comparison between
national experiences that reveals how “unnatural” some events and developments are.

Second Kind Comparative of History

 Comparative History is that in idea or concept, like the Enlightenment, democracy, or

Puritanism, which is common to several countries, is examined. The words are the same, it is
easily (naturally assumed that the concepts have similar meanings or manifestations in the
several national experiences. The aim of comparative history is to reveal to what extent
these words or concepts do in fact carry the same or different historical content.
 Some of the essays by the Americanists barely make comparisons at all, though in some
instances such comparison is essential if the point of the essay—the uniqueness of the
American experience—is to be established.
 Gerorge Pierson’s essay on mobility assumes the importance of that force in the shaping of
American society without making any comparison with other societies to establish the point.
 Richard Hofstadter asserts the uniqueness of the American party system and then goes on
to characterize it without any further reference to political parties elsewhere.
 George Mowry admitted the need for a comparative approach to the era of social
democracy at the beginning of the twentieth century, but he fails to provide it except by a
passing reference to Campbell-Bannerman and Lloyd George in England.
 William Leuchtenberg’s essay on the Depression ranges widely beyond the United States,
but its principal concern is the influence of foreign ideas and esperiments on the New Deal
and the New Deal’s Effect on other societies rather than a comparison of the Depression’s
impact on countries other than the United States.
 John Higman, makes some brief if important comparisons between the amount of
immigration into the United States and their impact on this country. No comparisons, for
 instance, are made between the political, industrial, or social impact of immigrants on
United States history with that in the rest of the Americans or other new countries.
 John Hope Franklin, he says nothing however, about the uniqueness of the United States
concept of a genetic definition of the Negro as compared with a socially based definition in
the regions south of the Rio Grande.
 Eric McKitrick makes some brief comparisons between Reconstruction after the Civil War
with other postwar settlements, but he concerns himself almost entirely with characterizing
Reconstruction without reference to other nations’ experiences.
 Natural comparison between Jacksonian democracy and liberalism in Europe is not
canvassed at all.

Third Kind of Comparative History(Great Value of the Comparative Approach)

 David Shanon, failure of the United States to develop an important socialist movement as
compared with Europe, goes on to provide one of the most incisive and fresh explanations for
American exceptionalism in print.
 Robin Winks, taking the world as his province, asks whether American imperialism is like or
unlike that of other nations. Here a broad knowledge of national histories outside the United
States results in a balanced and persuasive examination of the kind of question that only
comparative history raises and is capable of answering.
 Peter Gay, ranging freely between the Unites States and Europe, he shows the debt of
Americans to Europe while emphasizing the lateness of the apogee of the Enlightenment in the
New World as compared with the Old.
 Robert Palmer, comparison of the American Revolution with other revolutions in the past and
with modern colonial revolutions in the past and with modern colonial revolutions is judicious
yet convincing in demonstrating the special character of the American Revolution.
 Ray Billington’s comparison of geographical frontiers compels him to recognize the need for
taking into consideration cultural inheritance when using the concept of the frontier as an
explanation for the American character.
 David B. Davis, uses a comparative approach to slavery in the Americas to show that the United
States experience was substantially like that elsewhere, thereby seriously questioning the
conclusions of those who have been impressed with the alleged uniqueness of North American
slavery.