Rethinking Randolph Bourne's Trans-National America: How World War I Created an Isolationist Antiwar Pluralism

Abstract

The intellectual and cultural critic Randolph Bourne originated the concept of a “transnational America” in 1916. More than a mere label, “trans-national America” was the articulation of Bourne's visionary new form of pluralism. This article aims to rethink Bourne's transnationalism as a form of isolationist antiwar idealism, thus helping to bridge his writings on domestic reform and foreign policy. Further, it illuminates an important moment in the intellectual history of isolationism as it assumed a positive, pluralist cast. This analysis also opens new vistas onto the development of a wide-ranging liberal opposition to American entry into World War I. Bourne's potent pluralistic, cosmopolitan ideas and the actions he took—along with those of other antiwar activists, politicians, and thinkers—helped to set the ideological parameters for antiwar thought in the period from 1916 to 1918 as well as for later American dissent, particularly in wartime.