‘Charles Austin Beard: The Return of the Master Historian of American Imperialism’
By Richard Drake
Cornell University Press, 336 pages

In paperback for the first time, this bold biography of an American historian, celebrated for his groundbreaking books “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution” (1913) and, with his wife Mary Beard, “The Rise of American Civilization” (1928), seeks to rehabilitate a reputation that fell into disfavor in the 1930s and 1940s and has yet to recover since his death in 1948.

Charles Beard electrified the historical profession in the early 20th century by arguing that the Founding Fathers — notwithstanding their high ideals of equality and democracy — created a government that served elites first and the greater populace later, and with mixed results at best.

Beard’s interpretation — that is the word he insisted on — had maximum impact during the Progressive era and the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, when trust busting and the graduated income tax attempted to wrest at least some control from elites and distribute wealth more widely.

The son of a well-to-do Indiana Republican farmer, Beard believed in limited government and was an anti-imperialist in the vein of Grover Cleveland. Beard studied at Oxford, and was influenced by John Ruskin and Italian thinkers who, while not Marxists, socialists, or conservatives inculcated in him a belief that governments were formed and developed out of the clash and cooperation of elites.

Beard’s view that the economic interests of the Founding Fathers were paramount always had its critics, but his powerful and seemingly self-evident hypothesis that those in power served themselves first began to be challenged during the FDR years, when the president’s rhetoric against big business and his welfare programs seemed to contradict Beard’s view that wealth always ruled.

Then Beard virtually destroyed his influence by opposing American entry into World War II, arguing that the fight against fascism was not the main purpose of the conflict. On the contrary, he said it was about how American imperialism would be able to triumph in a post-war world.

In short, World War II was not the “good war” — it became part of what Beard deemed an American conceit of exceptionalism that Ruskin and Italian historians had taught him did not exist. Governments were the same everywhere in the sense that those in power were in it for themselves.

While Beard conceded that American ideas of democracy and equality had some impact on those who ruled, he could never bring himself to fundamentally alter his economic interpretation of history.

Richard Drake is a skeptic of what he deems American imperialism. In his preface he wonders why the United States still has all those bases in Italy. He gives Beard more than a fair hearing and argues that Beard, for all his faults, did not deserve what, in effect, has been ostracism in the historical profession and the loss of influence in popular thinking about the history of the nation.

Mr. Drake realizes that Beard had trouble dealing with mixed motivations — that leaders could believe in high ideals that would serve not only themselves but their fellow citizens. But, in the end, this biography suggests that without a strain of Beardian thinking — a skepticism about American exceptionalism and expansionism — it is more than likely that American leaders will go astray in their blindness to their self-serving policies. 

Mr. Drake’s chapter titles emphasize the way different elites, sometimes in concert and sometimes in conflict, remain in power: “Washington and Wall Street Working Together for War” is one. Another is “Attacking ‘the Saint,’” which shows how Beard’s assault on FDR as a duplicitous president who talked peace and prepared for war doomed any possibility of his continuing influence on the historical profession and American thought. 

Beard has not made it easy for a biographer. With his wife’s complicity, he destroyed his personal papers. Even so, Mr. Drake has been diligent in tracking down Beard letters that are in the archives of others.

There is a noble quality to this biography, as it speaks for a stubborn thinker and scholar who managed to alienate those on the left and right alike. Even in Beard’s last, waning years, he refused to recant criticisms of American leaders in an age that wanted to believe in the triumph of democratic values that were essential to the rebuilding and progress of the nation after World War II.

Mr. Rollyson’s work in progress is “Making the American Presidency: How Biographers Shape History.”