William Jennings Bryan's 1905-6 world tour

Scroop, D. (2013) William Jennings Bryan's 1905-6 world tour. Historical Journal, 56(2), pp. 459-486. (doi: 10.1017/S0018246X12000520)

Abstract

This article is a study of the 1905-6 world tour undertaken by William Jennings Bryan and his family. Bryan was one of the major US politicians of his era. Three times a Democratic party presidential nominee (1896, 1900, 1908), he played a prominent role in the various reform crusades of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and was the leading figure on the populist, agrarian wing of his party. To date, however, historians have paid little attention to his extensive travels and voluminous travel writing, in large part because hostile journalists and historians – chief among them Walter Lippmann, H. L. Mencken, and Richard Hofstadter – succeeded in casting him as an archetype of American parochialism. This study makes us aware of Bryan's published and unpublished correspondence, the memoirs of his daughter Grace, newspaper reports, and cartoons to form a reassessment of Bryan, focusing primarily on his encounters with unfamiliar cultures, and with imperialism in the Philippines, British India, and the Dutch East Indies. In so doing, it places Bryan for the first time in a global and transnational frame, and mounts a broader critique of the rigidly regional and national orientation of the US historiography of populism.

• Item Type: Articles (Other)
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Scroop, Dr Daniel
• Authors: Scroop, D.
• Subjects: E History America > E151 United States (General)
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > History
• Journal Name: Historical Journal
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• ISSN: 1469-5103
• ISSN (Online): 0018-246X
• Published Online: 03 May 2013