Brian Steele
| Scholars
have long emphasized Thomas Jefferson's cosmopolitanism in ways
that obscure his nationalism. But simply recovering Jefferson's
particularistic nationalism and juxtaposing it to his well-known
universalist cosmopolitanism is too easy. These were not readily
separable elements of his world view. Jefferson frequently
expressed his nationalism in capacious terms precisely because
he understood the universal to be exemplified in his nation. |
1 |
| To be
sure, Jefferson relished his reputation as an Enlightenment
citizen of the world, and during his five years (1784–1789) as
American minister to the court of Louis XVI, he acquired an
association with France that his political enemies used ad
nauseam to question his patriotism. Historians, too, have
argued that Jefferson became a kind of internationalist, an
"Apostle of European Culture," while in France. His stint in
Europe, in other words, somehow "freed [Jefferson] from
provincial notions about the superiority of American life."1
That interpretation is not so much wrong as in need of
considerable qualification. While Jefferson was in France, his
aesthetic evolved appreciably, and he embraced cultural
refinements that his own nation lacked, becoming an enthusiastic
connoisseur of European architecture, sculpture, painting, food,
clothing, and music. He also enjoyed the pleasures of the salon
and the companionship of a circle of Frenchwomen (and
Frenchmen). Many of his letters from this period gush over the
pleasing sociability and refined manners of French society. He
was an enthusiastic participant in the transatlantic "republic
of letters," which he described in 1809 as "a great fraternity
spreading over the whole earth" whose "correspondence is never
interrupted by any civilized nation."2 |
2 |
| But, as
he was quick to remind anyone who would listen, there was more
to Europe than high culture. In Jefferson's imagination American
values and cultural practices uniquely embodied universal
standards. And that outlook frequently clashed with cultural
practices of other nations, practices that he took to be
"unnatural" and that heightened his skepticism about the ability
of other peoples to create enlightened societies. The
overwhelming burden of Jefferson's correspondence from his years
in France emphasized American difference from, and superiority
to, the Old World and his fears of the potential corrupting
effect of European mores on American people and institutions. |
3 |
| These
concerns manifested themselves in many areas, but in none more
strikingly than in discussions of gender. Jefferson's
correspondence from France suggests that his conception of
gender and sexuality was not merely tangential to his
republicanism or to his understanding of America's uniqueness.
Jefferson's ideal society embraced female domesticity as part of
the natural order of things—an order, he came to believe,
realized only in America. The shock of his encounter with
difference in France clarified this conviction and compelled
Jefferson to make explicit the gendered underpinnings of his
nationalism.3 |
. . . |
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