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Reconstituting Ethnic Politics
Boston, 1909-1925
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
Henry Adams (1918:7) once described nineteenth-century Massachusetts party politics as the “systematic organization of hatreds.” At first glance, his observation appears to be true for the early twentieth century as well, especially for Boston, where Brahmin reformers battled Irish bosses in an apparent reprise of a half-century-old conflict. But a closer examination reveals that while ethnic hatreds grew stronger in the city's twentieth-century public life, Progressive reform weakened partisan organization. In fact, political modernization produced tribal politics; such was Progressivism's ironic legacy in Boston. When the city's politics shifted from contests between grassroots parties to battles over shaping public opinion, ethnicity replaced partisanship as the primary source of local political identification. Conflict between Yankee and Irish now defined the city's public life as never before.
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- Special Section: Institutions and Institutionalism
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- Copyright © Social Science History Association 1995
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