By looking at two different scholarly articles on the 1920s one can get an idea of the historiography of the 1920s has developed. The two articles that will be analyzed in this post to show the historiography of the 1920s are “Urban-Rural Conflict in the 1920s: A Historiographical Assessment” that was written by Charles W Eagles in 1986 and “The Twenties: A New Historiographical Frontier” that was written by Burl Noggle in 1966. Eagles’s paper focuses more on how in the historiography of the 1920s the Urban-Rural divide has been used as a reasoning behind the events of the 1920s while Noggle’s takes more a general look at the historiography of the 1920s.
Eagles, Noggle, and the 1920s
Despite the different topics of each author’s paper there are many similarities between the two. The similarities between them help form a solid general historiography of the 1920s. They both agree that Frederick Lewis Allen in his book, Only Yesterday, published in 1931, was the first to write about the 20s as its own historical period and define it as a historical period. They agree that is the interpretation most historians took of the 1920s for the next two decades . Noggle says that the period after 1950 is when Historians started to “transcend” Allen’s original interpretation of the 1920s.1 Eagles agrees with Noggle but he goes more into detail about why. He cites examples of various writing to support the argument that Allen’s interpretation was that the aftereffects of World War I was what caused the unique culture and events of the 1920s . He also shows that the 1940s weren’t a monolith and that Historians were already starting to write about an urban-rural divide as the reasoning for the 1920s.2 Even though Allen wasn’t an historian he is the person who kickstarted the studying of the 1920s and whose interpretation would dominate historical writing up until around 1950.
What revises Allen’s official narrative? This is where Eagles and Noggle start to differ. Noggle never says who broke the narrative or why it was broken. Noggle only says that after 1950 historical analysis of the 1920s became much more common and detailed than it was before. He cites the increase in doctoral studies and papers written about the 1920s after 1950. After that Noggle goes into the different topics that have been analyzed in the 1920s.3 Eagles disagrees with Noggle and says there was an important of the 50s that changed the narrative. The next major work was the book, The Age of Reform, written by Richard Hofstadter in 1955. According to Eagles, Hofstadter takes the interpretation that it was the decline of rural life that made the rural areas want to resist reform.4 Now, both Eagles and Noggle show the differences that arose after 1950 in historiography of the 1920s but they never said the reasons for these changes. The reason why they don’t is to them, it was pretty obvious. Only two big events happened between when Allen published his book in 1931 and 1950. The end of WWII and the New Deal. These events re-shaped the way Americans thought. Having gone through the biggest war and reform movement in American history, historians realized the 1920s was more than just an after effect of WWI. There was much more that went into the complicated society and events of the 1920s.
Now, Noggle stops at the revisions that take place during the 1950s since in 1966 when he wrote his article there was no new revisions yet. It seems both Eagles and Noggle agree that nothing much changed from 1950 to 1966 as Eagles cites the next revision as being in 1967 with the publishing of William Leuchtenberg’s book, The Perils of Prosperity. Eagles says Leuchtenberg went deeper than any other historian into the evidence for the urban-rural divide of the 1920s being the cause for much of the reactionary policies and actions of the 1920s. Eagles adds that in the 70s came a sort of backlash that wanted to ignore what Leuchtenberg wrote. Eagles claims Noggle supported the backlash by leaving Leuchtenberg’s book as a footnote in an essay he wrote in the early 70s.5 The 70s seems to be where Noggle and Eagles fully steer way from each other. Noggle refuses to go along with the urban-rural narrative even after Hofstadter and Leuchtenberg’s popular evidence based books. While Eagles says it is incredibly hard to not talk about the urban-rural divide when talking about the history of the 1920s.
My Thoughts
Based on Burl, Noggle, and a couple other sources provided to me my thoughts on the timeline don’t differ too much from Burl and Noggle. I just used more modern sources to expand on it. Only Yesterday in 1931 was the definitive start of the telling of the history of the 1920s. Allen’s definition of the decade is the one that stuck and the book came out right after the 1920s ended. It’s hard to deny Only Yesterday its rightful place as the start of 1920s historiography. As I already mentioned before, this narrative focused on how the consequences of WWI formed the 1920s.
I agree with Noggle and Eagles again that the 1950s is when the first major revision of the main narrative surrounding the 1920s happened. The narrative shifted to a more Urban-Rural divide narrative with the likes of Hofstadter and Leuchtenberg. This specific narrative came into focus probably because of how rural life changed in the post WWII era. By the 1950s the traditional Urban-Rural divide was starting to become more an Urban-Suburban divide as rural farmland was turned into suburbs for returning soldiers to live in. With a huge decline in rural life in the post WWII era the Urban-Rural conflict reared its ugly head again. Because of this Urban-Rural divide narrative was very much in the minds of the people of the 50s.
After the 1950s the next revision doesn’t come until after Eagle’s wrote his paper. This new revision starts in the late 80s to early 90s. During this era Historians start to focus away from the Urban-Rural divide and completely focus on the social history of the 1920s. Historians start to focus more on things like women’s involvement with prohibition, the Great Migration, the secular vs traditional religious debate, racism and the immigration acts, etc. They start to focus on more of the stories that were ignored before the late 80s and 90s. The reasoning for this probably comes the red wave of Reagan and Busch when these social issues started to become more prevalent again. Historians might’ve realized that much of the rhetoric that came with Reganism reminded them of the 1920s and they realized they needed to write about these social issues which were ignored before to remind people of the consequences of erasing all the progress America made in the last 70 years. The evidence for this comes from David J Goldberg’s article, Rethinking the 1920s where he states the best books on each topic of the 1920s starting from the earliest to the latest. In his article for most topics like politics of the 1920s the earliest book is usually from the 60s or 70s. But, for topics like the Black Life in the South the earliest books start in the late 80s to early 90s. Goldberg even acknowledges this himself saying that Lynn Dumenil’s book, The Modern Temper, published in 1995, was a major representation of the 1920s because of its focus on social and cultural issues.6
How Does this Help?
What was the point of this blog? How does it help me understand the 1920s better? By looking at history as been written over time one can learn a lot. Its put every source you read on the topic into perspective. For example, if the book is written before the 80’s then you’ll understand why there is a lack of discussion surrounding the social history of the 1920s. It also helps you understand how current events of the author’s time helps effects the telling of history.
- Burl, Noggle, “The Twenties: A New Historiographical Frontier.” The Journal of American History 53, no. 2, (1966): 300, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894201. ↩︎
- Charles W., Eagles, “Urban-Rural Conflict in the 1920s: A Historiographical Assessment.” The Historian 49, no. 1, (1986): 30-31, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24446743. ↩︎
- Noggle, “A New Historiographical”, 300-301 ↩︎
- Eagles, “Urban-Rural Conflict”, 34-35 ↩︎
- Eagles, “Urban-Rural Conflict”, 36-39 ↩︎
- David J,. Goldberg, “Rethinking the 1920S: Historians and Changing Perspectives.”, OAH Magazine of History 21, no. 3, (2007): 7–10, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162122. ↩︎
Bibliography
Eagles, Charles W. “Urban-Rural Conflict in the 1920s: A Historiographical Assessment.” The Historian 49, no. 1 (1986): 26–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24446743.
Goldberg, David J. “Rethinking the 1920S: Historians and Changing Perspectives.” OAH Magazine of History, vol. 21, no. 3, 2007, pp. 7–10. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25162122.
Noggle, Burl. “The Twenties: A New Historiographical Frontier.” The Journal of American History 53, no. 2 (1966): 299–314. https://doi.org/10.2307/1894201.
