Small dealers and worthy men: the politics of scale from Bryan to Nader

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The proposed research investigates the relationship between democratic culture and economic scale in the United States since 1900. How did a people steeped in the fiercely individualistic mythology of the frontier, and embedded in a culture powerfully infused by democratic principles, adjust to the large scale and great complexity of the modern industrial economy? This question is fundamental to any understanding of twentieth-century American history, but from the present vantage point-in the wake of the 2008-9 financial crisis-the need to answer it is, perhaps, more urgent than ever. In our age of 'too big to fail' banks there is a pressing need for a greater historical understanding of what I term 'the politics of scale'.This project addresses the problem of scale in modern US history through a series of biographically-anchored and chronologically-ordered case studies. Each of these studies is based on a key individual whose political modus operandi was premised upon antipathy to concentrated economic power. It begins with the turn-of-the-century global travels of agrarian populist William Jennings Bryan, and ends with consumer advocate Ralph Nader's crusades against General Motors and other auto manufacturers in the 1960s. Two things connect Bryan to Nader, and to all the other figures and wider movements on which this study is based. The first is that they shared a conviction that large-scale economic power is incompatible with American democracy, especially when that power is concentrated in the hands of a few big corporations. The second is that they showed themselves capable of politically engaging, and on occasion mobilising, large swathes of the American people in their various crusades against the size and influence of big business. The purpose of the research is not to establish whether individual politicians succeeded or failed, but through case studies to illuminate more widely how twentieth-century Americans navigated and came to terms with the politics of scale.The principal outcome of the project will be a book manuscript setting out a new way of mapping and understanding the politics of scale in American history. This will be of direct use to academics, students, and others eager to understand the contours of modern US history; more indirectly, through its influence on its readers and as a result of the dissemination activities built-in to the design of the project, it will contribute to an awareness of the complexity of modern American political culture. In a larger sense still, perhaps, the research proposed here can be seen as part of a broader effort, in which generations of US historians have been involved, to understand and explain the awkward relationship between America's fiercely populist political culture on the one hand, with its marked suspicion of concentrated power, and, on the other hand, its status as the world's most prototypically capitalistic nation, its most aggressive champion and exporter of corporate culture. These are important matters for historians to probe, but of course they also resonate in our contemporary politics, and not only in Britain and the United States.The research will take place from Feb.-Oct. 2012 and will pay for a one-week visit to the Library of Congress, where archival work for the manuscript will be completed, and for relief from teaching so that the researcher can devote the bulk of his efforts to writing. In addition it incorporates dissemination, to make historians and other academics aware of the research findings, and impact activities-including a blog, a workshop on the politics of scale for political activists in the South Yorkshire region, and a public event with the involvement of one or more think-tanks-to communicate, and create opportunities to interact with, individuals and groups outside academia.