The international dimensions of the bicentennial are often forgotten today, overshadowed by memories of local events and a torrent of commercial kitsch in the U.S. itself. One could find Revolutionary War commemorations organized in almost every municipality and on television, Broadway, fast-food burger wrappers, beer cans and much else. Yet there was also a strong effort by the American government to foster a worldwide awareness and celebration of the 200th anniversary of the United States. One could even think of the bicentennial as a first shot across the bow in a coming era of so-called “globalization,” in which the U.S. would extend its worldwide hegemony not through brute force but rather soft power.
The story of an international U.S. bicentennial celebration can be told, broadly, in three parts. First came the early, centralized aspirations of the initial proposal for an event, broached in 1963 and made official by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966, just as he was escalating U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Then came the attempt by the Richard Nixon administration to use the bicentennial in service of a more right-wing approach to international politics, particularly as the U.S. withdrew its combat troops from Vietnam in 1973. Finally, there was an embrace of a decentralized bicentennial under Ford, which featured myriad local celebrations and commercialized, privatized consumer products that were coordinated from on high with a light touch, and which included worldwide participation on these new terms.
The concept of a national bicentennial celebration first appeared in 1963. Right away, it possessed international dimensions as a fundamentally Cold War project. Rep. John O. Marsh Jr., a conservative Democrat from Virginia, entered a House joint resolution to establish a bicentennial commission to commemorate the American Revolution. “The point I am trying to emphasize,” he explained in a document officially entered into the Congressional Record, “is that perhaps through this reexamination of the American past, we can better appreciate the values of our Republic and better understand the stakes involved in the present world struggle.” “After all,” Marsh continued, “the words, ‘liberty,’ ‘freedom,’ and ‘justice,’ that are crudely painted on the posters carried by those who riot today through southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa do not have their origins in the Communist Manifesto but rather have their inspiration in the American Declaration of Independence.”