The changing voice of Left history, new Left journals and radical American history

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of three scholarly journals of radical history that gave voice to a new revisionist perspective on the American past initially referred to as "new Left" history and later simply as radical history. It was this radical history that provided the first major challenge to the so-called Consensus school that dominated the historical profession during the fifties and sixties.

Young radical historians who burst onto the scene in the late sixties presented a view of the past which emphasized class, and social and economic conflict. They sought to create a "usable past" that would account for the country's many problems and would serve as the basis for reforming American society. In viewing American society through the eyes of the inarticulate, they saw a means to rediscover the inherent radicalism of the American past. During the past three decades this attempt to reinterpret the American past from a radical perspective has undergone significant modification and change as radical history has moved from the fringes of the profession to the mainstream of historical scholarship. As well, from the beginnings of this left history to the present, these scholars have been forced to grapple with the meaning of radical history and the role of the radical historian as activist and scholar.

The primary task of this presentation is to show how three generations of radical historians attempted to answer these questions in light of the shifting concerns that influenced their responses. Studies on the Left, Radical America, and the Radical History Review provided a major outlet for these historians to voice their very different approaches as they searched to find a radical American past. In addition, tracing their history from the sixties to the present provides a valuable way to assess the past and present state of radical history in the United States.

While these historians have succeeded in broadening the scope of American history by adding the voices of those previously excluded, such as women , blacks and the working class, and while their alternative view of that past helped to restore some excitement to the study of an American history that was no longer the preserve of the "Great White Men", they have not provided any definitive answers in their attempts to define themselves as intellectuals and to establish a common view of their role as radical historians. As they try to distinguish themselves from the mainstream of the profession, and continue to debate the meaning of the word radical, they are still bedevilled by the tensions between their activist and scholarly identities.

As their definition of themselves as radicals becomes more pluralistic and as the place of radical history in the profession continues to diminish, what remains of this once highly controversial threat to the orthodox canons of the profession continues to struggle forward into the future seeking ways to develop a role that is, according to their sole remaining organ, the Radical History Review, "scholarly and activist, radical and historical, seeking to both understand the world and to change it."