Volker Depkat – författare

The idea that America is exceptional, whether because of its founding creed, natural abundance, or Protestant origins, has been the subject of fierce debate going back to the founding. Rather than argue for one side or the other, Volker Depkat explores the diverse ways in which Americans have described their country as exceptional. Describing how narratives of exceptionalism have never been a purely American affair, Depkat shows how, for example, European, African, and Asian immigrants projected their own dreams and nightmares onto the American screen, contributing to the intellectual construction of America. In fact, the different groups living in America have described American exceptionalism in such differing terms that there hardly ever was a shared understanding as to what these exceptional experiences were and how to interpret them. What has unified the disparate exceptionalist narratives, Depkat explains, is their insistence on America's universalist and future-oriented way of life. In engaging and lucid prose, Depkat offers general readers and students of American history an invaluable lens through which they can evaluate for themselves the merits of the many ways in which Americans have understood their country as exceptional.

This book presents case studies that analyse the diplomatic uses and functions of robes, furniture, weapons, tools, jewelry, paintings, sculptures, books, food, and other material objects in early modern inter-cultural diplomatic encounters in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific world.Readers will gain insights into the material dimensions of early modern diplomacy and the cultural logics and diplomatic rationales of object use in a wide range of regional, political, and imperial contexts spanning the Habsburg Empire, France, Spain, the Ottoman Empire, British and French colonial North America, colonial Mexico, Hawaii, and the South Seas. Transcending the established topic of gift exchanges, the volume aims at an analysis of the overall material settings of early modern diplomatic encounters. With its clear temporal focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the source-driven case studies on concrete objects and object groups open multiple paths into the complexities of the early modern era as a formative phase in the history of diplomacy.The book is intended for historians of the early modern period, particularly diplomatic history, political history, art history, cultural history, religious history, and regional history. It is also relevant for scholars in the field of material culture studies, ethnography, and museology.

The idea that America is exceptional, whether because of its founding creed, natural abundance, or Protestant origins, has been the subject of fierce debate going back to the founding. Rather than argue for one side or the other, Volker Depkat explores the diverse ways in which Americans have described their country as exceptional. Describing how narratives of exceptionalism have never been a purely American affair, Depkat shows how, for example, European, African, and Asian immigrants projected their own dreams and nightmares onto the American screen, contributing to the intellectual construction of America. In fact, the different groups living in America have described American exceptionalism in such differing terms that there hardly ever was a shared understanding as to what these exceptional experiences were and how to interpret them. What has unified the disparate exceptionalist narratives, Depkat explains, is their insistence on America's universalist and future-oriented way of life. In engaging and lucid prose, Depkat offers general readers and students of American history an invaluable lens through which they can evaluate for themselves the merits of the many ways in which Americans have understood their country as exceptional.