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The Challenges of Democracy: James Harvey Robinson, the New History, and Adult Education for Citizenship

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2010

Kevin Mattson
Affiliation:
Ohio University

Abstract

Mention James Harvey Robinson and most students of American history will think two words: “New History.” Robinson tried to articulate what better-known historians of the period – Charles Beard, Frederick Jackson Turner, and Vernon Parrington – were doing in their research and writing. As Richard Hofstadter explained, the leading historians of the Progressive Era tried “to make American history relevant to the political and intellectual issues of the moment.…They attempted to find a usable past related to the broadest needs of a nation fully launched upon its own industrialization, and to make history an active instrument of self-recognition and self-improvement.” Situated firmly in the “revolt against formalism” that marked Progressive Era intellectual work, historians made their research instrumental, teasing out what William James called the “cash value” of ideas. Historical writing could no longer, in Robinson's own words, “catalogue mere names of person and places which have not the least importance for the reader.” Rather, it had to “help us understand ourselves and our fellows and the problems and prospects of mankind.” In those words and his pioneering (though largely forgotten) work in European and intellectual history, Robinson codified the purpose of what has come to be known as Progressive history.

Type
Essays
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2003

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References

1 Hofstadter, Richard, The Progressive Historians: Turner, Beard, Parrington (New York, 1970), xii, xviiGoogle Scholar; White, Morton, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (New York, 1949)Google Scholar; James, William, Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth (Cambridge, MA, 1978), 3132Google Scholar; Robinson, James Harvey, The New History: Essays Illustrating the Modern Historical Outlook (1912; reprint, New York, 1965), 5, 17.Google Scholar See also Novick, Peter, That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (Cambridge, UK, 1989), ch. 4.Google Scholar That Robinson worked primarily in European history is probably why his work was not examined by Richard Hofstadter and others who have paid the most attention to the meanings of “progressive historiography.”

2 Filene, Peter, “An Obituary for the Progressive Movement,” American Quarterly 22 (1970): 2034CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel, “In Search of Progressivism,” Reviews in American History 10 (1982): 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Howe, Frederic, The City: The Hope of Democracy (New York, 1907).Google Scholar On the overturn of historical interpretations, see Kennedy, David, “Overview: The Progressive Era,” The Historian 37 (1975): 453–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the democratic experimentation of the Progressive Era, see Mattson, Kevin, Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (University Park, PA, 1998)Google Scholar and Johnston's, Robertimportant article on redemocratizing the Progressive Era in the Journal of the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era 1 (January, 2002): 6892.Google Scholar On deliberative democracy, see Habermas, Jurgen, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, MA, 1989)Google Scholar and Bohman, James and Rehg, William, eds., Deliberative Democracy (Cambridge, MA, 1997).Google Scholar

3 Kloppenberg, James, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920 (New York, 1986)Google Scholar; Westbrook, Robert, John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, 1991)Google Scholar; Bender, Thomas, Intellect and Public Life: Essays on the Social History of Academic Intellectuals in the United States (Baltimore, 1993), 91105Google Scholar; Fink, Leon, Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment (Cambridge, MA, 1997).Google Scholar A classic work in intellectual history that strikes an exceedingly cynical stance towards intellectual engagement during the Progressive Era (and beyond) is Lasch, Christopher, The New Radicalism in America, 1889–1963: The Intellectual as Social Type (New York, 1965).Google Scholar

4 Ross, Dorothy, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, UK, 1991), ch. 10.Google Scholar See generally, Rochester, Stuart, American Liberal Disillusionment in the Wake of World War I (University Park, PA, 1977)Google Scholar; Thompson, John, Reformers and War: American Progressive Publicists and the First World War (Cambridge, UK, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vaughn, Stephen, Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information (Chapel Hill, 1980)Google Scholar; Schaffer, Ronald, America in the Great War: The Rise of the War Welfare State (New York, 1991)Google Scholar; and Mattson, , Creating a Democratic Public, ch. 6.Google Scholar

5 Barnes, Harry Elmer, “James Harvey Robinson,” in American Masters of Social Science, ed., Odum, Howard (New York, 1927), 326Google Scholar; other biographical information is gleaned from, Hendricks, Luther, James Harvey Robinson: Teacher of History (New York, 1946).Google Scholar Unfortunately, Robinson's papers at Columbia University do not include any correspondence and only cover the earliest stages of his career. The papers in the New School Archives include some writings but no correspondence either.

6 See Hendricks, James Harvey Robinson. See also Robinson, James Harvey, The German Bundesrath: A Study in Comparative Constitutional Law (Philadelphia, 1891)Google Scholar; Robinson's, section in Translations and Reprints from the Original Sources of European History (Philadelphia, n.d, but probably 1891)Google Scholar; “The Original and Derived Features of the Constitution,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 1 (1890–1 ): 203–43. With the latter work, it is interesting to note that Robinson does a fairly straightforward history in which he traces out the influence of state constitutions on the writing of the national American constitution. There is absolutely none of the socio-economic interpretation that Charles Beard would develop twenty years later. For more on the transatlantic nature of Progressive Era intellectuals who often studied in German universities, see Rodgers, Daniel, Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 8688.Google Scholar

7 Beard quoted in Nore, Ellen, Charles A. Beard: An Intellectual Biography (Carbondale, IL, 1983), 33Google Scholar (on the same page, Nore discusses Robinson's earlier work in developing a new kind of history); Robinson, James Harvey and Beard, Charles, Outlines of European History, Part II: From the 17th Century to the War of 1914 (Boston, 1916), iiiGoogle Scholar; see vol. I preface for comments about need to stress contemporary history. See also James Robinson, Harvey, The Development of Modern Europe: An Introduction to the Study of Current History (Boston, 1908).Google Scholar Here he argues that the Industrial Revolution had a bigger impact than “armies and legislative assemblies” (375), a classic statement of New History.

8 Westbrook, , John Dewey and American Democracy, 97, 101, 103Google Scholar; for Robinson's interest in John Dewey, see Hendricks, , John Harvey Robinson, 13Google Scholar and Higham, John, Writing American History: Essays on Modem Scholarship (Bloomington, IN, 1970), 132–33.Google Scholar

9 Robinson, James Harvey, The New History, 17, 27.Google Scholar

10 Robinson, , The New History, 2324Google Scholar, 252. The term “public intellectual” comes from Jacoby, Russell, The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe (New York, 1987)Google Scholar and is critically explored in Bender, Intellect and Public Life and Fink, Progressive Intellectuals and the Dilemmas of Democratic Commitment.

11 Breisach, Ernst, American Progressive History: An Experiment in Modernization (Chicago, 1993), 67, 76Google Scholar; Bannister, Robert, Sociology and Scientism: The American Quest for Objectivity, 1880–1940 (Chapel Hill, 1987), 22Google Scholar; Ross, , The Origins of American Social Science, 286Google Scholar; Segal, Daniel, “‘Western Civ’ and the Staging of History in American Higher Education,” American Historical Review 105 (June 2000): 777.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For more on the connection between social science and reform, see Haskell, Thomas, The Emergence of Professional Social Science (Urbana, 1977)Google Scholar and the interesting observations made in Liss, Julia, “Diasporic Identities: the Science and Politics of Race in the Work of Franz Boas and W.E.B. Du Bois, 1894–1919,” Cultural Anthropology 13 (1998): 127–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 The New History, 50; The Development of Modern Europe, 382–405. For more on liberalism during this period of time, see Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory.

13 See Gross, David, “The ‘New History’: A Note of Reappraisal,” History and Theory 13 (1974): 54CrossRefGoogle Scholar and The New History, 142, 151, 153. Christopher Lasch forges the same critique as Gross in his now classic The New Radicalism in America, 158 (Lasch here discusses Jane Addams' and John Dewey's ideas about industrial education but his interpretation could just as easily be applied to Robinson).

14 A Committee of Five, The Study of History in Secondary Schools: Report to the American Historical Association (New York, 1912), 39Google Scholar; Nore, , Charles A. Beard, 34.Google Scholar For a favorable treatment of Robinson's service on this committee (and others) and his general attempt to reform high school history education, see Whelan, Michael, “James Harvey Robinson, the New History, and the 1916 Social Studies Report,” The History Teacher 24 (February 1991): 191202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 See Nore, , Charles A. Beard, 7882Google Scholar; Bender, Thomas, New York Intellect: A History of Intellectual Life in New York City, From 1750 to the Beginnings of Our Own Time (New York, 1987), 296–99.Google Scholar On Beard's CPI activity, see Gruber, Carol, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of Higher Learning in America (Baton Rouge, LA, 1975), 159Google Scholar and Blakey, George, Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War (Lexington, KY, 1970), 5152.Google Scholar Robinson himself supported censorship and then quickly felt a backlash as his own works in European history were attacked for being pro-German. See Blakey, 82–83.

16 Cattell, James McKeen, University Control (New York, 1913), 5, 19, 62.Google Scholar For more on Cattell, see also Gruber, Mars and , Minerva and Veysey, Laurence, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago, 1965), 394–96.Google Scholar

17 Beard, Charles quoted in Hofstadter, , The Progressive Historians, 286.Google Scholar

18 Rutkoff, Peter and Scott, William, New School: A History of the New School for Social Research (New York, 1986), 67.Google Scholar On Croly's role, I rely upon Levy, David, Herbert Croly of The New Republic: The Life and Thought of an American Progressive (Princeton, 1985).Google Scholar

19 Croly, Herbert, “A School of Social Research,” The New Republic (June 8, 1918): 167Google Scholar; “A Proposal for an Independent School of Social Science,” document found in the New School for Social Research Archives (from herein abbreviated NSSR Archives), 6, 9–10, 11. On Robinson's support of Thorstein Veblen's The Higher Learning in America, see Kett, Joseph, The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties: From Self-Improvement to Adult Education in America, 1750–1990 (Stanford, 1994), 337.Google Scholar

20 Croly, , Progressive Democracy (New York, 1914), 145Google Scholar; Croly, , The Promise of American Life (New York, 1909).Google Scholar On the transition between these books, see Kloppenberg, , Uncertain Victory, 390–91.Google Scholar

21 Croly, , “School of Social Research,” 170, 171.Google Scholar This vision of the expert seems akin to Beard's view of the expert as someone who “admits his fallibility, retains an open mind and is prepared to serve.” As quoted in Bender, , Intellect and Public Life, 100.Google Scholar Veblen, it should be noted, had hoped that New School professors could reach the “engineers” he was writing about in his The Engineers and the Price System. He explained in a letter, “Now, it is an intimate part of the ambitions of the New School to come into touch with the technical men who have to do with the country's industry and know something about the state of things and the needs of industry.” Quoted in Dorfman, Joseph, Thorstein Veblen and His America (1934; reprint, New York, 1966), 453.Google Scholar This seemed to suggest that Veblen might have identified with Croly's vision, albeit stressing the private sector, not the public sector.

22 Kett, , The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties, 339Google Scholar; Johnson, Alvin, Pilgrim's Progress (New York, 1952), 272.Google Scholar

23 Johnson, , Pilgrim's Progress, 273.Google Scholar

24 Robinson, , “The New School,” The School and Society 11 (1920): 130, 131.Google Scholar

25 Untitled Document (1918 written across top), found in James Harvey Robinson (Founder) Folder in the NSSR Archives. In a document written by Charles Beard, probably in 1919, the students are described as active, not passive. They are called “cup bearers” who bring “tidings of their own.” Document found in Charles Beard Folder, NSSR Archives. For more on the issue of democratic adult education, see Ehrlich, Steven Mark, “Transformative Adult Education, Institutional Paradox and the New School for Social Research” (Ph.D. diss., Boston College, 1995): 58Google Scholar and Rohfeld, Rae Wahl, “James Harvey Robinson: Historian as Adult Educator,” Adult Education Quarterly 40 (1990): 219–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Attendance numbers come from a document found in the NSSR Archives entitled “The New School for Social Research: Work of the First Term; Researches Under Way; Suggestions Concerning Future Development,” 3 (Robinson's class on “The History of the Human Mind” had the second largest attendance). On 2, there is also a precise breakdown of student types. Croly quoted in Nore, , Charles A. Beard, 90.Google Scholar

27 Butler quoted in Bender, , New York Intellect, 302.Google Scholar

28 See Johnson, Pilgrim's Progress; Ross, , The Origins of American Social Science, 395, 402, 404.Google Scholar

29 Quoted in Barnes, , “James Harvey Robinson,” 394.Google Scholar

30 Schied, Fred, “Labor and Learning: Adult Education and the Decline of Workers' Education,” Journal of the Midwest History of Education Society 22 (1995): 515Google Scholar, esp. 10.1 also gleaned information about the Workers' Education Bureau (WEB) from a folder in the NSSR Archive on Charles Beard, which included some information on the WEB and a pamphlet Beard wrote entitled “An American Adventure in Workers' Education” (1936).

31 Robinson, , The Mind in the Making: The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform (1921; reprint, New York, 1950), 208, 205, 228Google Scholar; The Humanizing of Knowledge (New York, 1926), 23; and “Creative Thought as the Hope of the World,” Current Opinion, (August 1922): 245. On the wider use of science by intellectuals, see the classic essay, “The Fixation of Belief,” by Peirce, Charles, reprinted in Philosophical Writings ofPeirce, ed., Buchler, Justus (New York, 1955)Google Scholar; Hollinger, David, “Science and Anarchy: Walter Lippmann's Drift and Mastery,” in In the American Province: Studies in the History and Historiography of Ideas (Baltimore, 1985)Google Scholar; Westbrook, , John Dewey and American Democracy, 141–42.Google Scholar

32 Robinson, , The Mind in the Making, 154, 12, 20, 225.Google Scholar

33 The Mind in the Making, 212.

34 Tawney, quoted in The Mind in the Making, 177, 202Google Scholar; “Ever Learning,” Bookman (December 1926): 469, 470. Tawney's tradition of social thought included John Ruskin, William Morris, and the arts and crafts movement. He joined Toynbee Hall, led the Workers Educational Association (WEA), and as one writer points out, forged a moral critique of capitalism. See Wright, Anthony, R.H. Tawney (Manchester, UK, 1987), 11, 33.Google Scholar For more on the soft socialist critique of capitalism, see Mattson, Kevin, “Our Morals and Theirs: Has Capitalism Won the War?Socialist Review 28 (2001): 158–59.Google Scholar It should be pointed out that during the 1920s John Dewey and Walter Lippmann had their famous debate about whether or not America's turn towards becoming a mass society would destroy democracy. For more on this, see Mattson, , Creating a Democratic Public, ch. 6.Google Scholar

35 The Humanizing of Knowledge, 63, 70, 89.

36 Robinson, , “The Newer Way of Historians,” American Historical Review 35 (January 1930): 252CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Breisach, , American Progressive History, 125Google Scholar; The Humanizing of Knowledge, 33; “Is Darwinism Dead?” Harper's (June 1922): 74.

37 Lasch, Christopher, The True and Only Heaven: Progress and its Critics (New York, 1991), 416Google Scholar; Robinson, , The Human Comedy: As Devised and Directed by Mankind Itself (New York, 1937), 259, 195.Google Scholar On Robinson's wife's death, see Breisach, , American Progressive History, 125.Google Scholar

38 Robinson, , The Mind in the Making, 28Google Scholar; for Follett's vision, see The New State (originally published 1919; reprint: University Park, PA, 1998).

39 Westbrook, , John Dewey and American Democracy, 113Google Scholar; Kett, , The Pursuit of Knowledge Under Difficulties, 368Google Scholar; Ross, , Origins of Social Science, 404.Google Scholar

40 On the transformation of adult education during the 1920s to 1950s, see Ehrlich, “Transformative Adult Education, Institutional Paradox and the New School for Social Research” and Kett, The Pursuit of Knowledge. On current experiments in critical adult education, see Mattson, Kevin, “Teaching Democracy: Reflections on the Clemente Course in the Humanities, Higher Education, and Democracy,” The Good Society 11 (2002): 8084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar