Transatlantic Social Politics: 1800-Present

This edited collection, comprising essays by an array of established and emerging scholars from Europe and the United States, offers a fresh perspective on the history of transatlantic political networks and exchanges since 1800. Historians such as Daniel T. Rodgers have already shown how important such networks were in shaping the politics of the modern Atlantic world. To date, however, this field has been dominated by studies of the activities and ideas of progressive reformers, with a particular focus on the period 1870-1940, an era in which reform networks coalesced so as to fashion the world of 'social politics' so brilliantly depicted in Rodgers's path-breaking study Atlantic Crossings (1998). The contributions gathered here challenge the chronological and ideological orientation of such work. They do so by collectively proposing a new periodization of modern transatlantic politics—one demonstrating the vitality and long-range significance both of early and mid-nineteenth, and of post-1945 interactions. At the same time, they illustrate the ideological heterogeneity of transatlantic political exchange, which encompassed a kaleidoscope of conservative, radical, and populist elements, in addition to the progressive and liberal currents about which so much has already been written