In 1949, the Norwegian historian Halvdan Koht opened his book The American Spirit in Europe: A Survey of Transatlantic Influences (from which the title for this review article is borrowed) with the following lines:

With slight alterations, these lines could have been part of the preface for any of the three volumes under review here. Mel van Elteren, Victoria de Grazia and the contributors to Alexander Stephan's edited volume in different ways, and from different points of departure, all deal with the above mentioned effect of the United States on Europe in the twentieth century. Directly or indirectly they also address the scholarly challenge this impact represents, in the sense that they discuss our ways of analysing and understanding the meanings and characteristics of these transatlantic influences. Whilst Koht in 1949 did state that ‘it is scarcely possible to point to a single aspect of modern civilization in which America has not exerted a certain degree of influence’ – but still hesitated to use the term ‘Americanisation’ to describe this set of influencesFootnote ² – these three recent publications either use the term as a common denominator for the processes of influence taking place in the post-war era (Stephan et al.), discuss its meaning and content (van Elteren) or come as close as possible to using the term without actually doing so by speaking of America's advance in Europe as the spread of an irresistible ‘Market Empire’ (de Grazia).

In all three volumes the processes under scrutiny are (with some exceptions) seen as emanating from the United States, but still treated as something that mainly affects and takes place in Europe. Like Koht, the authors also share the ambition of giving a comprehensive account of transatlantic influences. But their approaches and their ways of dealing with the subject differ. The volume edited by Alexander Stephan consists of eleven chapters on the same number of countries, plus an introduction by the editor and a concluding chapter by Rob Kroes that distinguishes itself from the other chapters by having an all-European rather than a nation-state approach. The chapters, according to the editor, are not only supposed to cover the whole post-1945 period, but also to deal with a set of four separate themes, namely the role of US public diplomacy, the influence of American high culture in each country (often, but not necessarily linked to public diplomacy), the spread of American popular or mass culture, and the rejection of American cultural products and other things American – that is, anti-Americanism in the various countries dealt with. Some of the contributors manage to integrate all of these aspects into their chapters – and in some cases they can be difficult to separate – others have a more eclectic approach to this list of subjects, not necessarily to the disadvantage of their texts. Victoria de Grazia's main subject is how the United States, or the ‘Market Empire’, built its hegemony on European soil. She describes ‘the rise of a great imperium with the outlook of a great emporium’, an empire without frontiers, rising steadily from the beginning of the twentieth century and reaching its high point after 1945, characterised, among many other things, by ‘the insatiable ambitions of its leading corporations for global markets’ and ‘the persuasiveness of its models’ (p. 3).

Whereas de Grazia and the authors represented in Stephan's edited volume present historical narratives that in some cases include or touch upon questions of a more conceptual kind, Mel van Elteren invokes historical debates in order to lay the foundation for an interpretive framework for the study of Americanisation that, according to van Elteren, is more balanced than current research trends. In other words, van Elteren deals with the concepts of Americanisation and Americanism – and with our understanding of these concepts. More than just a presentation of research results, his book is also a comment on the state of the debate as well as a programme for future research.

Van Elteren's point of departure is the following: ‘Americanization, in all of its manifestations and interpretations, refers to the real or purported influence of one or more forms of Americanism on some social entity, material object or cultural practice’, with the concept ‘Americanism’ heuristically being defined as ‘a characteristic feature of the United States’, referring to ‘principles and practices believed to be essential or inherent to the American “national culture”’ (p. 2). This is followed by four chapters that discuss the uses of the terms ‘Americanism’ and ‘Americanisation’ both in Europe and in the United States from the first half of the nineteenth century until the present. Van Elteren gives a good presentation of different ways of regarding America and the challenges posed by American influences within various social groups in the larger European countries. In addition to exploring the influences of America or Americanism as such, he also stresses the importance various forms of imagined Americas had for the impact of these concepts in Europe.

The history of the terms ‘Americanism’ and ‘Americanisation’ within different domains in the United States is also thoroughly explored (in chapters 3 and 4), dealing for instance with questions concerning the assimilation of immigrants (and Native Americans). In other words, this part of the book presents both the shaping of a US national identity from the nineteenth century onwards, as well as the domestic debates concerning these developments. It is my impression that the inclusion of these subjects in the book is motivated by the thought that, in order to analyse and understand the Americanisation of Europe (or other parts of the world), it is necessary to present how the Americanisms being exported are conceived of by the exporters themselves. But, as van Elteren himself states, the debates in Europe on these questions took place ‘in relative isolation of those in the United States’ (p. 50). His discussion of the domestic engagement with these concepts nevertheless is of interest, even if the link between them and Americanisation abroad might have been spelled out in some greater detail.

These historical overviews lay the foundations for the book's main aim, namely to address current interpretations of Americanisation, to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and to arrive at a new framework for understanding the relevant concepts and for analysing the impact of Americanisation abroad. After having sketched out such a framework, van Elteren spends his final chapter addressing more current tendencies which see ‘globalisation’ as replacing or overriding Americanisation, arguing that these processes are intertwined, and that the ongoing globalisation from the outset has had a strong American imprint. The first step in van Elteren's effort to arrive at a new framework, however, is presented in the shape of a conceptual overview (in chapter 5) of ‘Americanisation in its various manifestations’ (p. 101). This he does by introducing a broad definition of Americanisation as ‘a process in which economic, technological, political, social, cultural and/or sociopsychological influences emanating from America and Americans impinge on values, norms, belief systems, mentalities, habits, rules, technologies, practices, institutions and behaviours of non-Americans’ (p. 103). This process takes place by, for instance, an importation into ‘foreign contexts’ of things or thoughts that either originate from or are commonly associated with America or Americans. This definition, according to van Elteren, differs from what he sees as a tendency to narrow the term to being relevant only within a strictly defined cultural sphere. He also stresses that the term implies that there is a ‘highly directional flow that is primarily running outward from the United States’. In its common use, ‘Americanisation’ covers neither the ‘cultural mingling’ nor the ‘processes of signification – by human actors positioned at the juncture of the local and the transnational – through which the various cultural impulses are transformed into something new’ (p. 107). Van Elteren's ambition is not to exclude altogether a focus on local adaptations, ‘transculturation’ or ‘creolisation’ in the study of America's impact on the rest of the world. He is, however, preoccupied with the possible effects of a move away from an understanding of Americanisation as meaning ‘imperial, hegemonic or dominant influence’ (p. 115), a tendency brought about by what he sees as a premature rejection of the cultural-imperialism thesis. He acknowledges that both the critique of this thesis and a focus on the reception of American influences have lead to an improved understanding of American cultural transfers in many ways. Nevertheless, he is of the opinion that a too one-sided focus on the receptions and modifications of things American, an ‘overemphasis on the selective borrowing and active appropriation of cultural forms at the expense of interests in the political economy and cultural constraints set by power inequalities’ (p. 118), will both deflate the US momentum present in these processes, and lead researchers to miss the bigger picture of Americanisation, including asymmetrical power relations.Footnote ³ Van Elteren's claim is that the cultural exchanges often referred to as some form of hybridisation do have a hard core of images, products, technologies and practices that are or have been closely identified with the United States, and that this point will be overlooked if an assimilationist or deconstructionist approach is taken too far.

His alternative approach is outlined in chapter 6, where he promotes a scholarly perspective that ‘incorporates indigenization and transnational developments but does not lose sight of projections of power and possible imperial influences’ (p. 129). Americanisation as an analytical concept should contain both an ‘imperial dimension’ – that is, pay attention to projections of US power – and at the same time see American cultural transfer abroad as a process where American influences are both taken up and (sometimes) transformed by local recipients (p. 132). In chapters 7 and 8, van Elteren presents a framework for further analysis, based on the discussions in the two preceding chapters. His ambition is that this theoretical framework will enable researchers to

His position thus seems to be a synthesis of a modified cultural-imperialism thesis and a variety of ‘assimilationist’ approaches, and there is much to recommend in a perspective that both includes analytical categories such as hegemony or domination and at the same time acknowledges the potential for (and meaning of) human agency also at the receiving end. Some of his criticism of an all-out assimilationist perspective is warranted, but at times van Elteren's apprehension of this approach seems slightly exaggerated. My reservations here concern the limits of ‘Americanisation’ as an analytical concept or, rather, whether all the processes dealt with in this book actually are to be seen as ‘Americanisations’, or if they should rather be interpreted as something else. Some aspects of this discussion are touched on by the author, for instance when he refers to so-called modernist interpretations of the development of nations and nationalisms. These interpretations argue that national cultures are not to be understood in an essentialist way, but do contain ‘traces of previous cultural borrowings or influences that have been part of a thorough assimilation process . . . What the people of a given nation consider to be their own culture at any time is the result of a process of “totalization” of cultural memory up to that point’ (p. 167).Footnote ⁴ Van Elteren admits that this makes ‘Americanisation’ as a concept more complicated, but not to the extent that the concept should be rejected. I agree that such a rejection would be to exaggerate the problematic aspects of the insight just presented, but nevertheless I do wish that the author had pursued this question a bit further. For instance, I find it to be a paradox that the domestication of foreign influences in the United States, the inclusion of something of foreign origin into the ‘national culture’ of the United States, is described as a process of domestic Americanisation (p. 103), whilst similar processes involving American influences in Europe are to be understood as Americanisation abroad. I guess the argument for using the term(s) in this way would include references to power balance and the role of the United States as a hegemonic power, but nevertheless this paradox, and the point on how cultural development and the development of identities take place, makes it possible to rephrase the question as to what is the sub-plot and what is the main narrative. And in the search for an answer, conceptual discussions will need to be supplemented by empirical analyses.

To do van Elteren justice – his discussion of the relevant concepts is based on such empirical analyses and on a historicising of the terms ‘Americanisation’ and ‘Americanism’. This in turn is supplemented by a periodisation of US influence abroad (in chapter 7) and brief discussions of specific cases in the chapter on the reception of American influences (chapter 8). The two other books up for review, however, are empirical studies in a more traditional sense. At the same time their content is highly relevant to the conceptual discussions that are so central in van Elteren's text. Take for instance the ambitious title of Stephan's edited volume – The Americanization of Europe. The tone set by the title is followed up in the editor's introduction, where he states that ‘The history of American culture in Europe after 1945 has not been written. The same is true of the story of European resistance against the spread of U.S. culture, often labeled anti-Americanism’ (p. 1). Obviously, the subjects mentioned here are so vast that there is still a large scholarly potential in working on them, but nevertheless this statement raises a few paradoxes. The most obvious one is that quite a few of the chapters in the volume are heavily based on previous scholarship concerning American influences and local reactions to them in the relevant countries, to a certain extent scholarship carried out by the very authors represented in the book. Such an opening statement also gives the impression that the ambition of the following pages is to present exactly these histories. This being the case, the choice of format is somewhat puzzling, as the individual chapters are supposed to cover a large number of subjects over a rather long time-span within the space of twenty to thirty pages. This task seems impossible, but could have been facilitated by a common definition of the main concepts up for discussion. Such a common analytical framework also could have laid the foundation for more explicit comparisons between the individual cases within the actual volume. Since this is not the case, it becomes fairly obvious to the reader that this volume as a whole unfortunately does not quite fulfil its potential.

This being said, The Americanization of Europe has its qualities, and in many ways serves as a good introduction to the different experiences of Americanisation and anti-Americanism in Europe in the post-Second World War period. The individual chapters are in themselves interesting; they either give a good impression of the historiography on the subjects dealt with in the relevant country, or represent introductions to the field concerning countries where the amount of scholarly writing on these issues is not yet very extensive. The editor's ambition of combining analyses of public diplomacy and the spread of American mass culture is in principle an interesting approach, even if it seems slightly overambitious to carry this out within the limited scope of each chapter. The choice of perspective inherent in not seeing anti-Americanism solely as a rejection of transatlantic influences, but also as a factor of relevance for cultural transfers, a factor in shaping the ‘Americanisation’ of the relevant country, adds a very interesting dimension to the individual analyses. This point is most clearly spelled out in Günter Bischof's chapter on Austria, obvious already in its title, ‘Two Sides of the Coin: The Americanization of Austria and Austrian Anti-Americanism’, and is also explicitly dealt with in Dag Blanck's chapter on Sweden. Bischof's point goes beyond the kind of relationship between Americanisation and anti-Americanism that follows from a development in which increased American presence or influence provokes negative reactions locally. It also addresses a duality in the European images of the United States, with pairs of concepts that presuppose each other: America has always been seen as both ‘paradise’ and as ‘barbarian outpost’. ‘The corresponding European views of America as fact and fiction, utopia and dystopia, of Traum and Alptraum, have always been intimately related’ (p. 147).

Günter Bischof, like a number of the other contributors, also addresses conceptual and theoretical issues concerning Americanisation that are less coherently dealt with in the editor's introduction. The possible advantage of leaving such discussions to the individual authors might be that the most relevant aspects of them are applied to each single case, and that room is left for the different contributors to disagree and discuss with each other. A less positive implication, in addition to the point on comparison mentioned above, is that it is left to the reader to single out and assess the different viewpoints represented in the volume. Nevertheless, it is my impression that many of those contributors who do spell out and integrate such analytical and conceptual issues into their chapters have a fairly similar approach to the processes under scrutiny.Footnote ⁵ This includes, for instance, the already mentioned chapters on Austria and Sweden, but also Hugh Wilford's chapter on the United Kingdom, Marsha Siefert's piece on the USSR and Russia, Andrzej Antoszek and Kate Delaney's on Poland and David W. Ellwood's chapter on the domestication of America in Italy. These authors tend to see ‘Americanisation’ as the result of cultural encounters, where imports and the indigenous are being blended, where some influences are being accepted – and domesticated – whilst others are not. Does this focus mean that these authors represent the kind of receptionist approach problematised in van Elteren's writing? To a certain extent, this might be the case. On the other hand, none of these chapters (or the other ones in this volume) neglect the sender-perspective and the implicit understanding of power relations which had such a central place in van Elteren's argument. In addition, the preoccupation with adaptations, translations and receptions in these chapters seem to follow as the result of empirical studies of the relationship and encounters between the countries in question and American culture, more than being the result of predetermined analytical perspectives. One important insight is spelled out by Antoszek and Delaney in their description of the Americanisation of Poland as a ‘nuanced mixture of acceptance and rejection’ (p. 242), resulting in a number of cultural hybrids. Furthermore, the ‘paths of Americanization . . . have been varied and tangled, with what is received often no longer recognizable to the sender’ (p. 244). In my opinion, this description covers at least aspects of the ‘Americanisation’ of the other countries dealt with in this volume, again raising the question of where ‘Americanisation’ ends and where ‘Europeanisation’ begins.

Speaking of which: this volume's analyses of the American impact on single European nation-states are, as mentioned above, supplemented by a concluding chapter that has an outspoken European perspective, a perspective that also is present in the introduction. This combination of limited case studies with a broader outlook has some clear advantages, among them the fact that the volume as a whole reflects some of the variations in the impact of American culture abroad, and thus offers an understanding of Americanisation as meaning different things in different contexts. The perspective also makes it possible to differentiate between countries and their relationships to the United States. This is particularly relevant for the treatment of the United Kingdom as being ‘In Between’ and thus acting as a mediator between America and the rest of Europe, points that are well treated in Hugh Wilford's chapter. The role of the United Kingdom is also of importance in Nils Arne Sørensen and Klaus Petersen's chapter on Denmark, in which they deal with different forms of ‘Americanisation by proxy’ that they see as important for their case: the term can be used to describe how American influences came by way of another country (such as the United Kingdom), but also as a term to describe the practice of local producers of various consumer goods to produce ‘look-alike products for the Danish and European markets’ (p. 128). The role of the United States as an occupying power in Germany and Austria, as the main adversary for the USSR and its satellites during the Cold War, its role in the domestic politics of Greece and the special position of Spain in post-war Europe – all these and other factors warrant an approach that differentiates between the different nation-states. Nevertheless, the volume would not be complete without the European outlook of the concluding chapter. Through a survey of different ‘Imaginary Americas in Europe's Public Space’ (pp. 337–59), Rob Kroes illustrates how these images might have worked to Americanise Europe, but also how they certainly have contributed to Europeanise Europe – not only because American mass culture transcended national borders, but also – and mainly – because it was the Americans, and not the Europeans, who initially conceived of Europe as a whole, and thus laid the foundation for transcending European patterns of cultural particularism. If this cultural particularism has not yet been discarded, Kroes's perspective reminds us that even if the processes studied here take place in Europe, the presence of a significant other does influence our receptions – even if they are translations.

The role of American influences on the ‘Europeanisation of Europe’ is of importance also in Victoria de Grazia's book on the spread of the values of the ‘irresistible’ American empire. She makes the same observation as the one mentioned above, that the Americans were the first to see Europe as one large –not many, small – entities,Footnote ⁶ and identifies a realisation on the part of the Europeans that if they were to resist the ‘irresistible’, they needed to be united. De Grazia's book, however, represents Europeanism also in another way, namely that she herself seems to adopt the perspective of the representatives of the Market Empire in seeing Europe as generic entity. This approach might be justified, since one of the main perspectives of the book is a focus on the forces pushing out from the United States, and since the encounter between these forces and European practices and institutions are seen as a transatlantic ‘clash of civilisations’, however supplemented and later replaced by a ‘transatlantic dialectic’, resulting in a ‘New Europe, but a close ally of the Market Empire rather than the exact image of the United States’ (p. 11). On the other hand, this European perspective has certain limitations: in several of her chapters de Grazia consciously uses the developments in one country to illustrate a common European development, or what she calls ‘more general patterns of complicity or resistance’ (p. 14), but in at least some of the cases I would have liked to get a more thorough discussion of whether the chosen case is representative.Footnote ⁷ It appears to me that national and regional differences in Europe are not only under-communicated, but to a certain extent also underestimated. As a result, the multitude and the variations in the reactions to the forward-moving Market Empire become less visible, leaving space for a focus on the most extreme forms of resistance – represented mainly by the Third Reich but also by the Soviet Union. The importance of these cases is of course obvious, but one is left with a feeling that there must have been more to the European efforts at resisting the irresistible than what they represent.

This being said, let me turn to the positive achievements of de Grazia's narrative, which definitely outnumber my reservations. In the light of the conceptual discussions referred to above, de Grazia's perspective seems to me an excellent example of how to integrate an understanding of the United States as a dominant power seeking to spread its practices and institutions in order to increase or consolidate its global position with a realisation of the importance of what happens also at the receiving end, for instance by invoking earlier theories on the characteristics of the United States as being an ‘empire of invitation’ or an ‘empire of fun’ (p. 6.).Footnote ⁸ As mentioned above, de Grazia sees the outcome of the American advance in Europe as a transformation of Europe into an ally, and not into an exact copy, of the Market Empire. To arrive at such a conclusion, de Grazia takes as her point of departure the questions of how the United States turned its ‘edge in innovations in the realm of consumer culture’ (p. 3) into imperial power. She goes on to identify a set of features characteristic of the Market Empire and its means of power, including the ability to export its civil society either in tandem with or ahead of its economic exports, and its power of norm making – in favour of ‘best practice’ and not based on formally or informally established rules or codes. This gave the ‘empire’ flexibility both in terms of eluding resistance and in opening up for the inclusion of local knowledge and local adaptations.

The dialectic between the forces pushing out of the United States and the reactions in Europe – and its outcome – is pursued by means of each chapter focusing on one social invention and its consequences. At the outset there is a treatment of how a new service ethic spread from the petty-bourgeois Midwest to the highbrow circles in western and central Europe. The book moves on to deal with the spread of the idea of a decent standard of living (as opposed to more old-fashioned ideas on ‘ways of life’), treats developments within distribution, marketing and the entertainment industry, and finally arrives at a description of the high point of the consumer society represented by the Mrs Household Consumer of the 1950s and 60s. The study ends with a discussion of the possible (and expected?) decline of the Market Empire. It is through approaching these developments as a dialectic that de Grazia succeeds in rendering a narrative that is sensitive both to power relations and hegemony and to the importance of local resistance and reception. Along with the book by van Elteren and Stephan's edited volume, Irresistible Empire adds to our knowledge and understanding of transatlantic cultural relations, in a wider sense of the word, and thus represents an important contribution to a historiography that is already fairly large – and growing.

In his publication in 1949, Halvdan Koht, like the authors represented in the three publications discussed here, not only looked backwards towards the historical interaction between the United States and Europe, but also had an eye on contemporary and future transatlantic relations. Koht's understanding of the preconditions for and the dynamics of cultural transfer was heavily influenced by his understanding of nationality as a central factor in cultural development. As a result, he had a rather pessimistic view of the potential of tracing and studying ‘mental’ influences from one country towards another, as these influences were intimately mingled with domestic elements, making it ‘well-nigh impossible to discern the definite limits between foreign and native’.Footnote ⁹ The books being reviewed here do, in different ways, contribute to a similar discussion. They are therefore of interest, whether one sets out to explore the limits between ‘foreign and native’ or wishes to see the results of such transatlantic intermingling as ‘translations’ or cultural hybrids.