Date of Graduation

5-2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in History (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

History

Advisor/Mentor

Robert C. McMath

Committee Member

Elliott West

Second Committee Member

Sterling Evans

Keywords

Social sciences, Charles Tilley, Doug McAdam, Farming, Sidney Tarrow, Social movements

Abstract

This research uses as a case study farmers' movements in North Dakota and Saskatchewan, two identical locales in terms of wheat monoculture, demographics, and agrarian ideology, and traces the differing Social, economic, and political outcomes between 1905 and 1950. The research, however, moves beyond this and also investigates the transnational integration, connections, and engagements among agrarian groups across the broader North American northern plains and across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, to Europe, the Soviet Union, and Australia. Methodologically, this study applies Social movement theory, pioneered by sociologists Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilley, which seeks to replace a static view of Social movements with a more dynamic one and allows for baseline comparison and elucidation of cross-border interactions. This investigation utilizes personal and organizational papers, along with movement newspapers and other movement publications from archives in the United States and Canada. For the first time, this research delves deeply into the shared histories of the U.S.-Canadian northern plains--and movements' relationships with similar agrarian histories around the globe--and takes the story from the late nineteenth century through the tumult of the Great Depression, when the divergent paths of farmers' movements began, and into the early Cold War period, when two distinct political outcomes became apparent.

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