Comparative Perspectives on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era

Ballard Campbell
Northeastern University

Thanks to Richard Jensen, Kriste Lindenmeyer, Alan Lessoff and William G. Shade for helpful comments on this essay.

Comparative perspectives on the United States have received increased attention in recent years, stimulated apparently by the rise in world history's popularity. David Thelen's sponsorship of transnational history as a subject of three special issues of the Journal of American History no doubt has contributed to the trend. The reprinting of C. Vann Woodward's The Comparative Approach to American History in 1997, the publication of George Fredrickson's essays on comparative history, and the report of the La Pietra Project reflect recent efforts to put United States history in an international perspective.1 While comparative history hardly has gained equal footing with nationally-centered studies, enough work on the Gilded Age and Progressive Era has appeared over the last decade and a half to warrant an assessment. This essay takes note of scholarship on economics, business, politics and governance that has examined the United States within an international context during the 1870s-1914 era. My objective is to discern trends in the literature and suggest opportunities for future research rather than to provide a comprehensive bibliographical survey.	1
The Geography of Comparison. Comparative history that includes the United States leans decidedly toward Britain and Western Europe. Juxtaposing the United States with England has long been popular, for obvious reasons, as have studies that compare the United States with Western Europe.2 Two of the most important comparative works that appeared in the 1990s, Alfred Chandler's Scale and Scope and Daniel Rodgers' Atlantic Crossings, fall into this geographic pattern.3 Chandler examined Britain and Germany in addition to the United States, while Rodgers' European matchmates were England, Germany, and France. Michael Mann's monumental exploration of classes and state-building during the long nineteenth century included Great Britain, France, Prussia-Germany, and Austria-Hungary, in addition to the United States.4 Studies set within the tradition of western civilization perhaps account for more than one-half of the comparative scholarship reviewed here. Almost all discussions of American "exceptionalism" are set within the north Atlantic community.5	2
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