Populist Appeals to Europe and their Implications, 1883-1908
Public Deposited- Last Modified
- February 26, 2019
- Creator
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Medlin, Eric
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
- Abstract
- In 1899, three years after their most significant electoral defeat, the Populist movement appeared to be past its prime. American intellectuals started to look back at the movement and identify its influences, origins and the impact that it could have on the future of the American political system. Kansas Populist Carl Vrooman wrote on all three of these notions in an article in the Populist magazine The Arena entitled “Twentieth Century Democracy.” Vrooman dedicated his article to a general analysis of the movement while particularly focusing on what Populists read, what they did and what their example meant for the upcoming century. In one section, he devotes a considerable amount of space to the role of Populist thought not only in the United States but around the world. This idea appeared once again in another work by Vrooman where he wrote, “Many of the principles advocated by the Populists have had as their champions such statesmen as Bismarck, Gladstone, Chamberlain…” Such a statement made by a well-connected Populist leader, one whose works gained inclusion into the Congressional Record on one occasion, challenges one of the dominant assumptions of Populist historiography: its American roots in terms of argument and rhetoric for policies. Historians of Populism over the past century focused almost exclusively on the American basis of Populist rhetoric. This appeal to Europe, however, is supported by a number of different appeals to European leaders found in the works of Populist intellectual and political leaders. Such appeals to Europe are key to understanding the intellectual framework of Populism and hint at the reasoning behind Populist policies and rhetoric. In order to better understand the place of Europe within this framework, one must begin at the early days of the Populist movement (by which I mean the late-19th and early-20th century reform movement led mostly by farmers under the leadership of the People’s Party). How did these leaders articulate the grievances that they professed against the political, social and economic systems of their day? What models of social protest from American history could they draw from and were those models sufficient? Then, once the Populists became a more coherent movement, how did they play on capturing power and what did they want to do when they did capture power? Finally, how did they cope with the losses that led to the eventual collapse of their movement? I believe that the many references and appeals to European leaders found in Populist works, especially the three cited by Vrooman, help to answer these questions and also better classify the place of the movement in its historical and political context.
- Date of publication
- spring 2014
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- Rights statement
- In Copyright
- Note
- Funding: None
- Advisor
- Worthen, Molly
- Degree
- Bachelor of Arts
- Honors level
- Honors
- Degree granting institution
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Extent
- 82
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