The Gilded Age and Progressive Era

As the labor movement pushed for greater recognition, pay, and conditions in the workplace (on land), the sailors of America had a tougher fight. The nature of maritime commerce made sailors foreign in a domestic sense, as the Supreme Court would rule. Geography complicated their place in constitutional law, and made them at once victims and agents of the American empire. Will Riddell joins me to discuss these labor issues and his new book On the Waves of Empire.

Essential Reading:

William D. Riddell, On the Waves of Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Merchant Sailors, 1872-1924 (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Julie Greene, “The Wages of Empire: Capitalism, Expansion, and Working-Class Formation,” in Daniel E. Bender and Jana K. Lipman (eds.), Making the Empire Work: Labor and United States Imperialism (2015) 35-58.

Beth Lew-Williams, The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America (2018).

Leon Fink, Sweatshops of the Sea: Merchant Seamen in the World’s First Globalized Industry, From 1812 to the Present (2011).

Moon-Ho Jung, Menace to Empire: Anti-Colonial Solidarities and the Transpacific Origins of the U.S. National Security State (2022).

Marilyn Lake, Progressive New World: How Settler Colonialism and Transpacific Exchange Shaped American Reform (2019),

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The 2023 Spring seminar series at the Breakers, hosted by the Preservation Society of Newport County focused on the transformation of the United States in the Gilded Age. Listen to CEO of the Society Trudy Coxe and Director of Curation and Programming Leslie Jones talk about the series. Here also are the links to the various lectures:

• Michael Patrick Cullinane "The Gilded Age: Past and Present"
• Matthew Bird "The Gilded Years: The First Information Age"
• Will B. Mackintosh "The Many Playgrounds of the Industrial Age"
• T.J. Stiles "Age of the Machine: The Fight to Reinvent Democracy in the Gilded Age"
• Richard Guy Wilson "Creating a New American Image: Architecture, 1870-1910"
• Nancy Unger "Under the Gold-Plating: Everyday Americans in the Gilded Age"

Visit the Newport Preservation Society

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The lives and friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge spanned the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Few other politicians had such a monumental impact on the time, and Dr. Laurence Jurdem joins the show to explain of their friendship came to define the period.

Essential Reading:

Laurence Jurdem, The Rough Rider and the Professor: Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and the Friendship that Changed American History (2023).

Recommended Reading:

John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (1965).

William Harbaugh, Power and Responsibility: The Life and Times of Theodore Roosevelt (1961).

Selections from the Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge, 1884-1918 (1925).

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The rise of socialism in the United States parallels the sprawl of industrial capitalism. The intellectual debates about how Marxism would play out in America became ever more complex when the Socialist Labor Party considered the idea race. Dr. Lorenzo Costaguta joins the show to explain how scientific racism - in its various forms - divided socialist activists and eventually contributed to the decline of the Socialist Labor Party of America.

Essential Reading:

Lorenzo Costaguta, Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Daniel E. Bender, American Abyss: Savagery and Civilization in the Age of Industry (2013).

Philip S. Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans: From the Age of Jackson to World War II (1977).

Paul Heideman (ed.), Class Struggle and the Color Line: American Socialism and the Race Question, 1900-1930 (2018).

Sally M. Miller (ed.), Race, Ethnicity and Gender in Early Twentieth-century American Socialism (1999).

Mark Pittenger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920 (1993).

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How did Japan's rise to world power change the dynamics of geopolitics, and the way imperial powers viewed non-White people? Chris Suh joins the podcast to discuss his debut book on the effects of Japanese imperialism and the transformation of the Pacific world.

Essential Reading:

Chris Suh, The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion (2023).

Recommended Reading:

David C. Atkinson, The Burden of White Supremacy: Containing Asian Migration in the British Empire and the United States (2016).

Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005).

Thomas Bender, A Nation among Nations: America’s Place in World History (2006).

Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1897– 1911 (1972).

Richard S. Kim, The Quest for Sovereignty: Korean Immigration Nationalism and U.S. Sovereignty, 1905– 1945 (2011).

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Where does the Old South end and the New South begin? The transition comes with Scarlet O'Hara and Margaret Mitchell's blockbuster romance Gone with the Wind. Here the ideas of the Lost Cause mythology take root, and the promise and peril of industrial capitalism take shape. Professor Sarah Churchwell joins the podcast to discuss her new book and how we all should be re-reading Mitchell's novel with today's context in mind.

Essential Reading:

Sarah Chruchwell, The Wrath to Come (2023).

Sarah Churchwell, Behold America: A History of America First and the American Dream (2018).

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From the anti-Catholicism of the Know Nothings to the present-day Catholic nationalism in American politics, the Church and its leaders have left an indelible mark on society. Dr. William Cossen joins the show to explain how the idea of Catholic nationalism came to be in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

William S. Cossen, Making Catholic America: Religious Nationalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Maura Jane Farrelly, Papist Patriots: The Making of an American Catholic Identity (2012).

Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (1994).

Jon Gjerde, Catholicism and the Shaping of Nineteenth-Century America (2012).

John T. McGreevy, Catholicism and American Freedom: A History (2003).

Kevin M. Schultz, Tri-Faith America: How Catholics and Jews Held Post-war America to Its Protestant Promise (2011).

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The peace movement, global citizenship, and global government are wrapped up in this week's episode. Dr. Megan Threlkeld joins to discuss her book Citizens of the World, which takes on these subjects and the role that nine women played in shaping the idea of global citizenship. Given the rise of internationalism in this period, Dr. Threlkeld's book is vital to how we interpret international relations in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

Essential Reading:

Megan Threlkeld, Citizens of the World: U.S. Women and Global Government (2022).

Recommended Reading:

Keisha N. Blain and Tiffany M. Gill (eds.), To Turn the Whole World Over: Black Women and Internationalism (2019).

Daniel Gorman, International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century (2017).

Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (2012).

Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler (eds.), Women’s International Thought: A New History (2021).

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Some families are synonymous with the Gilded Age and Progressive Era: the Vanderbilts, the LaFollettes, the Roosevelts, and the Astors to name a few. Dr. David Patterson joins the show to remind us of another dynasty: the Pinchots, a reform-minded, Presbyterian family that held sway in Washington and Pennsylvania from the Civil War to the Kennedy administration.

Essential Reading:

David Patterson, The Pinchots: A Family Saga (2023).

Recommended Reading:

Nina Burleigh, A Very Private Woman: The Life and Unsolved Murder of Presidential Mistress Mary Meyer (1998).

Bibi Gaston: The Loveliest Woman in America: A Tragic Actress, Her Lost Diaries, and Her Granddaughter’s Search for Home (2008).

Char Miller, Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (2001).

Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (1947).

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