Brenda L. Broussard
20th Century US History
Prof. Buzzanco
January 24, 2007
STANDING AT ARMAGEDDON: THE UNITED STATES, 1877-1919. By Nell Irvin
Painter. (WW Norton and Co., New York, NY, 1987, 1989).
Born in Houston in 1942, raised and schooled in California, Nell Irvin Painter
followed the footsteps of her parents and grandparents into the world of higher education.
She has held many distinguished positions in four different universities and recently
retired from Princeton as the Director of Afro-American Studies.1 She currently holds the
positions of president of the Southern Historical Association for 2007 and the President
of the Organization of American Historians for 2007-2008. Most of her works are
interdisciplinary and focus on gender and race. The text in review, Standing At
Armageddon, is an early example of interdisciplinary writing, emerging in the late
eighties when Marxist economic historical accounts were being replaced with micro-field
cultural studies. Standing At Armageddon won the Letitia Brown Book Prize of the
Association of Black Women Historians, and received the honor of Notable Book of the
Year from the New York Times Book Review.
While Painter lays out her goals of the text in her introduction, she posted a more
systematic listing of her purpose on her website in the form of a reply letter to a fellow
professor. This letter is attached at the end of this review and provides the basis of
analysis and criticism for this exercise. Painter’s first objective is to present a synthesis
history in narrative form covering the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the
twentieth. She marginally achieves this goal. The text gives the experienced reader the
feeling that the author simply could not make up her mind as to whether she wanted to
write a political, economic, or social history, so decided on a mish mash of the three. This
1
Biographical information obtained from Nell Irvin Painter’s webpage, www.nellpainter.com.
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lends the context a scattered form with each portion of a chapter resembling a vignette
unrelated to the previous or following anecdote. This does not mean that the text is of
little merit. It would serve nicely at the undergraduate level as a survey reference text.
Painter rarely delves deeply into the various little narratives that sew her text together,
therefore versed academics need to provide additional explanation and analysis when
used at the lower collegiate levels. Graduates might find the text useful as a refresher text
that highlights the major events and agents of the era. For undergraduates, her scattered
methodology warrants merit in that is exemplifies how diverse American society was
during this time. Often it is difficult to convey that industrial labor strikes were occurring
at the same time that Indians and frontiersmen were battling it out on the mid-west plains.
Painter’s short, jumpy style lends to the rapidly changing atmosphere of the era she is
explaining.
The author’s next goal was to show where the money came from and where it
went. It is here that her personal bias towards the dispossessed and marginalized is
evident on every page. Capitalists are clearly the antagonists in history, according to
Painter. She sets the stage in her first two chapters by discussing labor, labor movements,
labor unions, strikes, and their relationship to politics. In a whirlwind of names and
places, Painter provides a laundry list of all the key players in the embryonic American
labor movement. In chapter three, Painter discusses the abnormal distribution of wealth
that industrialization created in the United States and the proposed “remedies.” These
remedies include tariffs, currency and banking reform, antitrust and monopoly policy.
She points to a general acceptance by the masses of corruption in politics as the norm.
Painter nicely spells out in easily discernable language where the Democratic and
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Republican parties stood on each of these issues and even provides some analysis on the
differing logics. In chapter four Painter elaborates on the bimetal-paper currency debate
and discusses several more pivotal labor strikes during the 1890s Depression. Following
Painter’s letter, she achieves her third goal of including ordinary people in her text.
However, luminaries take center stage, and ordinary people are often just the masses
involved in the numerous violent incidents she catalogs. A strength of the book is that
Painter leaves no stone unturned, even if only slightly. She mentions an abundance of
groups and their roles in altering domestic policies by their socio-economic standing,
race, gender, religious affiliation, political association, geographic location, etc. This is
where her little vignettes add a degree of depth to the text.
Chapters five, ten, and eleven concentrate on foreign wars, and how foreign
policy affected domestic policy, and the final chapter deals with the aftermath of World
War I. Dispersed throughout these chapters are issues of expansionism, colonialism,
racial hierarchy, and interventionism. Chapters 6, titled “Prosperity,” returns to the
capitalists are evil theme, as Painter enumerates the most prosperous of trusts at the turn
of the century and their role in the poverty of the masses. Chapters seven and eight only
briefly examine race and woman suffrage. This is not a weakness, oversight, or
afterthought, because Painter deals with women and the disenfranchised throughout the
entire text.
Overall, the author meets her goals. An ambitious undertaking once the reader
realizes just how numerous the issues are that Painter covers in Standing At Armageddon.
There is no bibliography, but there is a modest index. Painter’s sources are largely
secondary, which is not unusual for a synthesis history. Standing At Armageddon would
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be an excellent text for undergraduate survey courses in post-1877 American history or
early American labor history. Graduates will find the text too generalized for a readings
course, but a good source for jogging their memories of certain key events, especial those
involving labor strikes.
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The following is a reply from Painter to Professor Zeidel on how best to use Standing At
Armageddon in the classroom.
5 October 1999
Good Afternoon, Professor Zeidel,
Thanks for your gracious comments about STANDING AT ARMAGEDDON.
I'm delighted that readers are finding the book interesting and useful. What follows isn't
exactly an outline, but I hope it'll give your teachers a clearer sense of what I wanted to
do in the book. ARMAGEDDON aims to show readers:
1. What happened. Having read a million American history books in which the writer
engages other historians without letting readers know the events and figures being
discussed, I wanted to lay out a narrative political history that clearly explained important
events and people in the national political life of the period.
2. Where the money came from and where it went. I thought it important for readers to
understand the economic issues that lay at the bottom of crucial political controversies,
especially taxation--including tariffs and income taxes--currency, and the federal reserve
system.
3. Ordinary people's part in national political history. Because most Americans at the
time were (and still are) working people, their situation and their influence on the
political economy of the time lie at the center of ARMAGEDDON.
4. The integration of international issues with domestic policy, which is how Americans
experienced them. Therefore the chapters on foreign wars explain how they played out in
domestic politics, and when Woodrow Wilson goes to Paris and Versailles,
ARMAGEDDON remains focused on American domestic issues--such as inflation and
strikes.
5. A definition of "Americans" that doesn't exclude people whose citizenship was
compromised, e.g., white women and people of color.
All in all, I didn't want ARMAGEDDON to come off as a provincial American history
with blinders on.
Best Wishes,
Nell Painter2
2
Taken from www.nellpainter.com