Henry Cabot Lodge critiqued the adoption of European culture by Americans and the mimicry that threatened American identity, in parallel with his advocacy for new markets and an economic rationale for imperialism whilst subscribing to racially charged paternalism.
Henry Cabot Lodge, a Massachusetts senator, criticized American imperialism and the trend of adopting foreign manners. He expressed concern over Americans, particularly the wealthy class, falling under the influence of European culture and the allure of the "American colony" in Paris during the Second Empire.
Lodge distinguished between genuine appreciation for European culture and a distasteful mimicry that he believed undermined American identity. In the context of the race for new markets and economic expansion post-war, he challenged the idea of America's colonial economics, contrasting it with the country's revolutionary past and its values of democracy and freedom. However, Lodge and others used this rhetoric while holding underlying assumptions of racial superiority and justifying paternalistic imperialism.
The probable question may be:
Colonialism in the United States by Henry Cabot Lodge In the years which followed the close of the war, it seemed as if colonialism had been utterly extinguished: but, unfortunately, this was not the case. The multiplication of great fortunes, the growth of a class rich by inheritance, and the improvement in methods of travel and communication, all tended to carry large numbers of Americans to Europe. The luxurious fancies which were born of increased wealth, and the intellectual tastes which were developed by the advance of the higher education, and to which an old civilization offers peculiar advantages and attractions, combined to breed in many persons a love of foreign life and foreign manners. These tendencies and opportunities have revived the dying spirit of colonialism. We see it most strongly in the leisure class, which is gradually increasing in this country. During the miserable ascendancy of the Second Empire, a band of these persons formed what was known as the "American colony," in Paris. Perhaps they still exist; if so, their existence is now less flagrant and more decent. When they were notorious they presented the melancholy spectacle of Americans admiring and aping the manners, habits, and vices of another nation, when that nation was bent and corrupted by the cheap, meretricious, and rotten system of the third Napoleon. They furnished a very offensive example of peculiarly mean colonialism. This particular phase has departed, but the same sort of Americans are, unfortunately, still common in Europe. I do not mean, of course, those persons who go abroad to buy social consideration, nor the women who trade on their beauty or their wits to gain a brief and dishonoring notoriety. These last are merely adventurers and adventuresses, who are common to all nations. The people referred to here form that large class, comprising many excellent men and women, no doubt, who pass their lives in Europe, mourning over the inferiority of their own country, and who become thoroughly denationalized.
What were Henry Cabot Lodge's criticisms of Americans adopting European culture, and how did he connect these concerns with his views on imperialism, new markets, and economic expansion, considering the role of racial paternalism in his arguments?