Atlantic Crossings

"The most belated of nations," Theodore Roosevelt called his country during the workmen's compensation fight in 1907. Earlier reformers, progressives of his day, and later New Dealers lamented the nation's resistance to models abroad for correctives to the backwardness of American social politics. Atlantic Crossings is the first major account of the vibrant international network that they constructed--so often obscured by notions of American exceptionalism--and of its profound impact on the United States from the 1870s through 1945.On a narrative canvas that sweeps across Europe and the United States, Daniel Rodgers retells the story of the classic era of efforts to repair the damages of unbridled capitalism. He reveals the forgotten international roots of such innovations as city planning, rural cooperatives, modernist architecture for public housing, and social insurance, among other reforms. From small beginnings to reconstructions of the new great cities and rural life, and to the wide-ranging mechanics of social security for working people, Rodgers finds the interconnections, adaptations, exchanges, and even rivalries in the Atlantic region's social planning. He uncovers the immense diffusion of talent, ideas, and action that were breathtaking in their range and impact.The scope of Atlantic Crossings is vast and peopled with the reformers, university men and women, new experts, bureaucrats, politicians, and gifted amateurs. This long durée of contemporary social policy encompassed fierce debate, new conceptions of the role of the state, an acceptance of the importance of expertise in making government policy, and a recognition of a shared destiny in a newly created world.

Rodger's title, Atlantic Crossings, suggests his purpose, which is to argue that reform efforts in the United States were part of a broader and connected attempt in France, Germany, Denmark, and Britain to respond to the intertwined dilemmas of explosive urban growth, growing poverty, and mass migration...Rodgers demonstrates more clearly than any previous historian how literally hundreds of American activists pounced upon the pilot projects and settlement houses of the suddenly innovative Old World and attempted to transplant them to native grounds. The depth of research, in three languages, conclusively establishes the shared response to what contemporaries called the "social question.", Atlantic Crossings makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the complex traffic of social policy and design solutions during the period [of the 1930s]. It counters the notion of American isolation, and shows that there was an active transatlantic exchange of ideas and models generated, borrowed, tested and modified., Americans are so imbued with the sense of living in a 'city upon a hill' which is a model to the world that a book depicting American leaders enmeshed in a North Atlantic web jars. Daniel Rodgers places such a network at the heart of Progressive social reform, informing and shaping policy agendas from the 1890s to the New Deal...this is an impressive and informative work that will sensitize any reader to the international influences in the Progressive tradition. In particular, Rodgers deftly depicts the misunderstandings and dangers inherent in adopting social policies outside of their cultural context., [Atlantic Crossings] reconstructs a distinctive era in American history during which American social politics were tied, through rivalry and intellectual exchange, to social political debates and endeavors in Europe., Atlantic Crossings is a stunning intellectual achievement. By exploring the trans Atlantic context of reform ideas, as well as the connection between those ideas and the nitty gritty of political practice, Daniel Rodgers forces us to re-think the entire Progressive era and all its tangled legacies. This is a deeply researched, passionately argued, and beautifully written work of comparative history. Anyone interested in the history--and future--of the American reform tradition, the welfare state, or social democracy needs to read and learn from this magnificent book.

Daniel T. Rodgers is Henry Charles Lea Professor of History at Princeton University.