More Than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard [Hardcover]

Clyde W. Barrow (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0765800276 | ISBN-13: 978-0765800275 | Publication Date: August 31, 2000

Charles A. Beard (1874-1948) was one of America's most influential historians and political scientists. He played a major role in founding the disciplines of history and political science, helped shape the teaching of social studies in the nation's public schools, and was one the nation's most popular public intellectuals. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century, Beard's reputation has been eroded by relentless criticism. Clyde W. Barrow argues that Beard's work has renewed relevance in light of recent theoretical debates about the new institutionalism, the crisis of the welfare state, and American foreign policy messianism.  

Barrow's takes Beard seriously as a political theorist, while challenging many misconceptions. For example, Beard's method of economic interpretation has been dismissed as Marxist, but Barrow carefully reconstructs the sources of Beard's thinking to demonstrate that his method owes more to historical and institutional economics and that his concept of state-society relations was in fact derived from Madison's Tenth Federalist. Barrow reconstructs Beard's theory of American political development using his concept of realistic dialectics, which viewed the clash between democracy (Jeffersonianism) and capitalism (Hamiltonianism) as the engine of American political development. During the 1930s, Beard suggested that the United States was making the transition to a higher form of social and industrial democracy that would supersede the contradiction of American political development. Notably, Beard was a critic of the New Deal and the liberal welfare state, because they failed to reconstruct the economic relations that reproduce inequalities of income, status, and power.

Beard went on to voice his concern that at crucial junctures in American history, class struggle is diverted into international conflicts as popular leaders back down from a direct confrontation with the dominant capitalist elite. He analyes American foreign policy as an extension of domestic economic policy and, in particular, a result of the failures of domestic economic policy. Beard's conception of American history plays itself out in a tragic cycle of imperialism and diversion that left him a disenchanted realist. This incisive study will be of interest to those intrested in the evolution of historical thinking.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Clyde Barrow's More Than a Historian provides a fascinating intellectual history of Charles Bread, a political scientist whom he places in the "pantheon of thinkers that most scholars no longer read" With 42 books, scores of coauthored books, and hundreds of articles and book reviews, Beard can be only characteried as amaingly prolific. Yet the only book that still resonates in political science and American History is An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution(1913). Barrows history of Beard gives us ample reason finally to read it or read it again."

– American Political Science Review

"As Clyde Barrow's fine book demonstrates, Beard's emphasis on the connection between political ideas and policies and social and economic structure, as well as his courage and maverick political temperament, have much to offer critical and left social scientists."

– New Political Science

"Clyde Barrow has created a rich book...a careful, contextual, historically situated set of chapters analying Beard's ideas on history, political economy, constitutions, and policy."

– The Review of Politics

"...a fascinating intellectual history of Charles Beard, a political scientist whom he places in the "pantheon of thinkers that most scholars no longer read"(p. xvi)....Barrow's history of Beard gives us ample reason finally to read it or read it again."

– American Political Science Review

About the Author

Clyde W. Barrow is Chancellor Professor in the Policy Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth where he also serves as director of the Center of Policy Analysis. His works include More than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard, Economic Impacts of the Textile and Apparel Industries in Massachusetts, and Globalisation, Trade Liberalisation, and Higher Education in North America: The Emergence of a New Market Under NAFTA? (with Sylvie Didou-Aupetit and John Mallea).

 

Product Details

• Hardcover: 289 pages
• Publisher: Transaction Publishers (August 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765800276
• ISBN-13: 978-0765800275
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,078,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Important American Historian of the 20th Century, March 3, 2003

By 

M. Swanson (Virginia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: More Than a Historian: The Political and Economic Thought of Charles A. Beard (Hardcover)

When I was in graduate school Charles Beard was one of the figures that everyone loved to trash, but no one had ever read. Professors and their nodding students constantly pointed at Beard as an example of "determinism" or "reductionism" - someone who used a method of analysis that they politically did not agree with. Unfortunately, the current trend in academic history is to scorn any theoretical analysis at all and instead embrace the fad of "post-modernism." In historical writing this means trying to get the subjects to speak for themselves and not to interject your voice or to pass any judgement or impose a grand theory over events - there is no absolute truth so how can you claim to have a true opinion they argue.

Charles Beard helped to found the American Historical Review and wrote The Economic Interpreation to the Constitution - which has put all books since in its shadow. The books that followed this first classic became widely read best sellers. Beard wrote a grand narrative history of the United States from its founding to the 1930's - something very few historians of today would even attempt.

Beard's work has been misunderstood and mischaracterized by people since the 1950's. Barrow's excellent book does a good job of identifying the real sources of Beard's framework and brings Beard's real thoughts back to life. I know of no other book that does this as well as Barrow's.

Scholars of today will profit from this book, because it will help them rediscover a method of analysis that is a useful tool to understanding not only the past, but today.

Beard's primary source of inspiration for his "economic interpretation" was James Madison's Federalist X. The economic intepretation is simple and logical, and can be summed up as follows:

Economic relations - > class structure -> social actors -> events -> economic relations

Economic relations - form the class structure of society - the social actors grow up inside of this structure - their actions and thoughts create the politics and state of society and also its culture and ideology - which in turn effect and can alter the economic relations

Hardly a reductionist theory - but one that takes on an organic life of its own. I believe this is an excellent theoretical view of social life and goes further than "post-modern" type theories which only focus on culture and ideology and are truly reductionist models, because they go no further than where they start.

If you are interested in serious history - history that goes beyond simply recounting events and biographies - you need a intellectual and theoretical underpinning that can be used as an interprative framework to understand what is behind the events that happen. This book will help you understand the thoughts of one man who did just that and was the most famous American historian of the first half of the 20th century. Hard to imagine a historian being truly famous, but he was. He was bigger than Stephen Ambrose during his time and was probably the most influential historian in American history. Only people close were Frederick Jackson Turner, Alfred Mayhan, or Henry Adams - and they were from the century before him.

This is a good book. Clear and concise.