Dartmouth Events

Event is sponsored by The Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences.  Light refreshments will be served.

Kristin Hoganson

Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Why has the legend of U.S. isolationism endured so tenaciously? Starting from the premise that the legend is as much about place as politics, this talk reconsiders the history of the rural Midwest, the so-called isolationist capital of America. Finding that Midwestern farmers were anything but isolationist in the years leading up to World War I, it explores the tensions between seemingly national interests and efforts to forge transborder alliances. Grappling with both their own economic prospects and Malthusian concerns, Midwestern farmers struggled to balance nationalist commitments with transnational occupational solidarities; self-interest with a desire to forestall hunger. From meterological congresses to the consular service and ecological transformation, Midwestern farmers’ many engagements in foreign relations not only challenge assumptions about locality, they can also help us understand the relationship between security and empire.