Harvesting History
McCormick's Reaper, Heritage Branding, and Historical Forgery
Daniel P. Ott
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
Harvesting History explores how the highly contentious claim of Cyrus McCormick's 1831 invention of the reaper came to be incorporated into the American historical canon as a fact. Spanning the late 1870s to the 1930s, Daniel P. Ott reveals how the McCormick family and various affiliated businesses created a usable past about their departed patriarch, Cyrus McCormick, and his role in creating modern civilization through advertising and the emerging historical profession. The mythical invention narrative was widely peddled for decades by salesmen and in catalogs, as well as in corporate public education campaigns and eventually in history books, to justify the family's elite position in American society and its monopolistic control of the harvester industry in the face of political and popular antagonism.
As a parallel story to the McCormicks' manipulation of the past, Harvesting History also provides a glimpse of the nascent discipline of history during the Progressive Era. Early historians were anxious to demonstrate their value in the new corporate economy as modern professionals and "objective" guardians of the past. While ethics might have prevented them from being historians for hire, their own desire for inclusion in the emerging middle class predisposed them to be receptive to the McCormicks' financial influence as well as their historical messages.
Product Details
| Publisher | University of Nebraska Press |
| Publish Date | January 01, 2023 |
| Pages | 306 |
| Language | English |
| Type |  Hardback |
| EAN/UPC | 9781496206985 |
| Dimensions | 9.0 X 6.0 X 0.8 inches | 1.4 pounds |
About the Author
Daniel P. Ott is a historian with the National Park Service in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He previously taught public history at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and worked at the Minnesota Historical Society.
Reviews
"McCormick's use of history provides an informative case study that illuminates the power of historical memory and explores how historians and their work intersected with the rise of modern capitalism. . . . This book will be of interest to anyone who studies agricultural, business, or public history."--Amanda L. Van Lanen, Western Historical Quarterly
"A fascinating account of one company's dedication to making its success seem not only natural but emblematic of shared American values. . . . Ott's analysis of McCormick/International Harvester's history is a moral tale well told."--Deborah Fitzgerald, Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at MIT
"A fascinating story of farm technology, advertising, regional history, and mythmaking."--J. L. Anderson, author of Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945-1972
"Daniel Ott has pieced together the many lives of the McCormick reaper, illuminating stages that moved the machine out of the fields and into American consciousness."--Debra Reid, curator of agriculture and environment for The Henry Ford
"Well researched, well written, and engaging. . . . A significant contribution to the study of historical memory."--David Blanke, author of Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest
"A fascinating account of one company's dedication to making its success seem not only natural but emblematic of shared American values. . . . Ott's analysis of McCormick/International Harvester's history is a moral tale well told."--Deborah Fitzgerald, Leverett Howell and William King Cutten Professor of the History of Technology at MIT
"A fascinating story of farm technology, advertising, regional history, and mythmaking."--J. L. Anderson, author of Industrializing the Corn Belt: Agriculture, Technology, and Environment, 1945-1972
"Daniel Ott has pieced together the many lives of the McCormick reaper, illuminating stages that moved the machine out of the fields and into American consciousness."--Debra Reid, curator of agriculture and environment for The Henry Ford
"Well researched, well written, and engaging. . . . A significant contribution to the study of historical memory."--David Blanke, author of Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took Root in the Rural Midwest
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