Two Vermonts: Geography and Identity, 1865-1910UPNE, 2006 - 256 pagina's Two Vermonts establishes a little-known fact about Vermont: that the state's fascination with tourism as a savior for a suffering economy is more than a century old, and that this interest in tourism has always been dogged by controversy. Through this lens, the book is poised to take its place as the standard work on Vermont in the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era. Searls examines the origins of Vermont's contemporary identity and some reasons why that identity (“Who is a Vermonter?”) is to this day so hotly contested. Searls divides nineteenth-century Vermonters into conceptually “uphill,” or rural/parochial, and “downhill,” or urban/cosmopolitan, elements. These two groups, he says, negotiated modernity in distinct and contrary ways. The dissonance between their opposing tactical approaches to progress and change belied the pastoral ideal that contemporary urban Americans had come to associate with the romantic notion of “Vermont.” Downhill Vermonters, espousing a vision of a mutually reinforcing relationship between tradition and progress, unilaterally endeavored to foster the pastoral ideal as a means of stimulating economic development. The hostile uphill resistance to this strategy engendered intense social conflict over issues including education, religion, and prohibition in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The story of Vermont's vigorous nineteenth-century quest for a unified identity bears witness to the stirring and convoluted forging of today's “Vermont.” Searls's engaging exploration of this period of Vermont's history advances our understanding of the political, economic, and cultural transformation of all of rural America as industrial capitalism and modernity revolutionized the United States between 1865 and 1910. By the late Progressive Era, Vermont's reputation was rooted in the national yearning to keep society civil, personal, and meaningful in a world growing more informal, bureaucratic, and difficult to navigate. The fundamental ideological differences among Vermont communities are indicative of how elusive and frustrating efforts to balance progress and tradition were in the context of effectively negotiating capitalist transformation in contemporary America. |
Inhoudsopgave
Decline or Stability? Vermont in the Gilded Age | 19 |
CHAPTER 2 | 50 |
CHAPTER 3 | 75 |
The Birth of the New Vermont | 96 |
CHAPTER 5 | 117 |
CHAPTER 6 | 131 |
Conclusion | 153 |
List of Governors | 163 |
Bibliography | 217 |
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Agricultural College American Barre Barstow Bennington Bennington Banner Board of Agriculture boosters Boston Burlington Free Press century Change in Vermont Chittenden County Civil Clement community of Vermonters Company cultural decline downhill Vermonters early emigrants England farm farmers Fish and Game Game League Gazetteer Gilded Age Graffagnino Grange Greater Vermont Green Mountain Boys hill immigrants Irish John Johnsbury Caledonian Record Justin Smith Morrill labor McCullough modernity mont monters Montpelier Morrill non-Yankees Old Home Week organizations political population railroad Redfield Proctor reform Republican residents rural Vermont Rutland Herald self-published small towns social Sons of Vermont state's Summer T. D. S. Bassett tion tourism University of Vermont University Press uphill and downhill uphill Vermonters urban Vermont Dairymen's Association Vermont Fish Vermont Historical Society Vermont History Vermont Missionary Vermont State Board Vermont tradition village vision Webb West Rutland William William Seward Webb Winter women workers wrote Yankee York