Robert H. Wiebe. The Search For Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill and Wang, 1967.
According the Wiebe, "America during the nineteenth century was a society of island communities." (xiii) By 1877, the United States government had waged a four-year long total war, and the American economy was becoming rapidly industrialized as society was becoming increasingly urbanized. Yet the country had not developed the sort of centralized state apparatus to go with these developments. Most people still lived in communities which were, in institutional terms, isolated from each others. This book is a study of the process by which the nation slowly came to grips with the realization that it was hurdling into a new economic and social order while still operating under increasingly outdated assumptions and organizational modes of operation.
Wiebe's study is political in nature, although there are chapters on the emerging, self-conscious Middle Class, "values", and foreign policy. More specifically, it is the story of the arrival of the Progressive movement and its eventual incorporation into the two main political parties. The Democratic Party is the more "natural" and congenial home by 1920, but that shift is far from complete at the end of the time period.
Wiebe's interpretive framework is compelling, and it gives an intellectual unity to his account. He might err too much towards crediting the Progressives for giving the era the unity and purpose it was striving for, and he spends too little time discussing the ugly aspects of the war-inspired nationalism which led to the Red Scare and anti-immigration legislation. He doesn't ignore them, but his explanation that these repressions were merely the domestic corollary to the heightened passions of the war is inadequate--if he didn't want to discuss these issues with the attention they deserved, he should have ended his account in 1919 rather than 1920.
Still, this book still holds up well nearly half a century after publication. Wiebe's central understanding of the era as a "search for order" still merits respect and consideration from students and scholars alike.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Rebirth of a Nation
Jackson Lears. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920.
New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
In Lears' telling, America during the era between the end of the Civil War and World War I was marked by multiple public manifestations of millions of individual, private yearnings. Americans were, in aggregate if not always collectively, hungry for "regeneration", a concept which suffuses this book and takes a variety of forms.
The first chapter, "The Long Shadow of Appomattox", deals with the legacy of the Civil War--specifically, the legacy of years of brutal combat and hundreds of thousands of fatalities. The war traumatized many, and as it dragged on it raised more and more questions about the causes for which all those lives were sacrificed and so much suffering was inflicted. It became more difficult to question the cause, and more imperative to believe that it was all worth it.
Ultimately, the nation would develop a narrative which justified the "shared sacrifice" of both North and South; a narrative in which the "Anglo-Saxon race" had been tested and committed to blood sacrifice, and a narrative from which African-Americans were excluded. This emphasis on transcendent struggle and redemptive bloodshed would weigh heavily on the next generation which grew up without a similar grand crusade. Thus, men like Theodore Roosevelt--and millions more--looked for some cause, some worth sacrifice to give meaning to an existence many feared was becoming sterile and complacent.
Lears extends this restless quest across many of the familiar conflicts of the period--the agrarian revolt, labor unrest, Progressive reform, racial conflict, and the Spanish-American War--and finds a similar quest for regeneration in all of it. What he doesn't find, more often than not, is uplift--Lears is no cheap cynic, but he is anything but sentimental about this period in American history. He certainly has nothing good to say about Teddy Roosevelt, who epitomizes much of the American character of the time, in ways that Lears is frankly contemptuous of.
The First World War would kill the regenerative impulse just as the exhausting drive to sell the League of Nations to the American people would destroy Woodrow Wilson. But it would come back, he contends, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Learn from history, he implies, or we will be doomed to create needless havoc in search of more dragons to slay.
New York: Harper Collins, 2009.
In Lears' telling, America during the era between the end of the Civil War and World War I was marked by multiple public manifestations of millions of individual, private yearnings. Americans were, in aggregate if not always collectively, hungry for "regeneration", a concept which suffuses this book and takes a variety of forms.
The first chapter, "The Long Shadow of Appomattox", deals with the legacy of the Civil War--specifically, the legacy of years of brutal combat and hundreds of thousands of fatalities. The war traumatized many, and as it dragged on it raised more and more questions about the causes for which all those lives were sacrificed and so much suffering was inflicted. It became more difficult to question the cause, and more imperative to believe that it was all worth it.
Ultimately, the nation would develop a narrative which justified the "shared sacrifice" of both North and South; a narrative in which the "Anglo-Saxon race" had been tested and committed to blood sacrifice, and a narrative from which African-Americans were excluded. This emphasis on transcendent struggle and redemptive bloodshed would weigh heavily on the next generation which grew up without a similar grand crusade. Thus, men like Theodore Roosevelt--and millions more--looked for some cause, some worth sacrifice to give meaning to an existence many feared was becoming sterile and complacent.
Lears extends this restless quest across many of the familiar conflicts of the period--the agrarian revolt, labor unrest, Progressive reform, racial conflict, and the Spanish-American War--and finds a similar quest for regeneration in all of it. What he doesn't find, more often than not, is uplift--Lears is no cheap cynic, but he is anything but sentimental about this period in American history. He certainly has nothing good to say about Teddy Roosevelt, who epitomizes much of the American character of the time, in ways that Lears is frankly contemptuous of.
The First World War would kill the regenerative impulse just as the exhausting drive to sell the League of Nations to the American people would destroy Woodrow Wilson. But it would come back, he contends, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Learn from history, he implies, or we will be doomed to create needless havoc in search of more dragons to slay.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The War that Made America
Fred Anderson. The War that Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War.
New York: Penguin Books, 2005.
Anderson has written a longer work on the French and Indian War, Crucible of War, which is considered an important work on the subject. Anderson has become such an acknowledged expert on the subject that he was brought in as an adviser for a PBS special. This book serves as a companion to that special; it might also double as a de facto 'abridged' version of his award-winning work.
As a stand-alone volume, this book is a fine addition to the literature aimed at the general reader. Anderson writes well and entertainingly, and the volume is richly illustrated and includes an ample number of useful maps. Brevity does not mean incompleteness; this is no mere chronological recitation of battles and diplomatic intrigue.
The locus of the war is found not in London or Paris, or even in colonial capitals, but in the world of the Indians of the West who will be more detrimentally affected by the outcome of what would end up being a world war. The concept of the Middle Ground, and the centrality of Iroquois diplomacy in colonial conflicts, are no longer novel in historical circles but for many general readers this is still eye-opening and unexpected information.
Anderson has a great eye for character; he brings many of the participants alive with empathy, humor, and an appreciation for the shared humanity of Indian, Euro-American, British, and French participants.
As a stand-alone volume, this book is a fine addition to the literature aimed at the general reader. Anderson writes well and entertainingly, and the volume is richly illustrated and includes an ample number of useful maps. Brevity does not mean incompleteness; this is no mere chronological recitation of battles and diplomatic intrigue.
The locus of the war is found not in London or Paris, or even in colonial capitals, but in the world of the Indians of the West who will be more detrimentally affected by the outcome of what would end up being a world war. The concept of the Middle Ground, and the centrality of Iroquois diplomacy in colonial conflicts, are no longer novel in historical circles but for many general readers this is still eye-opening and unexpected information.
Anderson has a great eye for character; he brings many of the participants alive with empathy, humor, and an appreciation for the shared humanity of Indian, Euro-American, British, and French participants.
In short, there are more complete versions of this story available, but not necessarily more well-informed; and at any rate this one is as readable and enjoyable as a reader could hope.
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