What is it about?
The early 20th-century journal, "Critical Review" stood out as a periodical promoting conservative approaches to cultural reform. However, unlike the reputation it received among contemporaries, it did not oppose modernization or internationalization. By examining the journal founders' connection to the Harvard literary critic Irving Babbitt, this article shows that the Critical Review group was promoting its own version of a humanist modernity.
Featured Image
Photo by Texco Kwok on Unsplash
Why is it important?
This paper offers a case study in the internationalization of conservative movements and how they can be misunderstood and misrepresented. This is a widespread problem across cultures, as history is usually written with a focus on change agents and new developments, so that it is easy to understate the complexity of those positions opposing change.
Perspectives
I was inspired to write this article by thinking about a paradox in 21st-century conservative politics. We are currently living through an age in which conservative movements are promoting xenophobia, and blood-and-soil nationalism; yet there are strong international networks joining these conservative nationalists, both at the level of ideological formation and also practical cooperation in electioneering and organizing. Although the conservatives examined in this article are international humanists rather than xenophobes, I wanted to make the case for how external assumptions about what conservatives want can weaken our understanding of what they are actually doing.
Daniel Fried
University of Alberta
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Conservative Modernizers: the Origins of the Critical Review Group, October 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004697904_006.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
