Description
Book SynopsisIn a bold argument, Marilyn Lake shows that race and reform were mutually supportive as Progressivism became the political logic of settler colonialism at the turn of the 20th century. She points to exchanges between American and Australasian reformers who shared racial sensibilities, along with a commitment to forging an ideal social order.
Trade ReviewProgressive reform will never look the same again. Marilyn Lake definitively shows how turn-of-the-century Australian reformers helped shape American political culture and the great extent to which Australians and Americans shared a mindset steeped in settler colonialism. This book’s evidence of their ‘subjective affinities’ is transformative. -- Nancy F. Cott, Harvard University
This is a landmark book that provides an integral account of the circulatory systems that connected white reform communities in the large Anglophone societies that lay on either side of the Pacific. In abundant detail, Lake shows how the democratic and racialist programs of these reformers were two sides of the same settler–colonialist coin. -- Doug Rossinow, coeditor of
Outside In: The Transnational Circuitry of US HistoryFew Americans know that in the early twentieth century Australia passed the first minimum-wage laws and gave women the vote; but American reformers were inspired by their counterparts in the antipodes. Marilyn Lake has written a stunning book about transpacific Progressivism. -- Mae M. Ngai, author of
Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern AmericaLake powerfully invokes the Australasian connection to U.S. politics and culture, substantiating the range and depth of those ties and illuminating political thought at both ends of the geographical divide. A worthy counterpart to Daniel Rodgers’s iconic Atlantic Crossings, Progressive New World offers a fresh and valuable take on the transnational Progressive era.
-- Leon Fink, author of
The Long Gilded Age: American Capitalism and the Lessons of a New World Order[An] important new book…U.S. historians will need to reassess the assumption that progressive reform was either an internal product or a result of transatlantic dialogues alone…The treatment of settler colonialism is Lake’s most arresting contribution. * Australian Book Review *
Imitation might be the greatest form of flattery, but if Americans flatter themselves that the rest of the free world has always wanted to emulate their democratic institutions and national habits, Lake’s book plainly demonstrates that, at the turn of the 20th century, the flow of imitation was decidedly in Australia’s direction. America’s brightest minds and most ardent reformers looked to Australia to see which way the winds of change blew. -- Clare Wright * Sydney Morning Herald *
Makes an important contribution to our understanding of Progressivism, and Lake’s insistence that we see American history through the lens of settler colonialism provides a powerful framing to look at familiar histories anew. -- Kornel S. Chang * Labor *
