2008 Articles

Turner, Beard, Chandler: Progressive Historians

John, Richard R.

For almost half a century, Alfred D. Chandler Jr. has enjoyed an enviable reputation as the most influential business historian in the world. Even in history departments that have shifted their primary focus from politics and economics to society and culture, Chandler remains required reading. Yet, there is one dimension of his scholarship that has thus far been mostly overlooked. And that is its indebtedness to, and refinement of, the genre of historical writing that we customarily label "progressive," a genre whose most prominent exemplars include Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard.