Carnegie's Model Republic: Triumphant Democracy and the British-American Relationship

Examines Carnegie’s book Triumphant Democracy and his efforts to promote closer ties between America and Britain.

Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) has long been known as a leading American industrialist, a man of great wealth and great philanthropy. What is not as well known is that he was actively involved in Anglo-American politics and tried to promote a closer relationship between his native Britain and the United States. To that end, Carnegie published Triumphant Democracy in 1886, in which he proposed the American federal republic as a model for solving Britain’s unsettling problems. On the basis of his own experience, Carnegie argued that America was a much-improved Britain and that the British monarchy could best overcome its social and political turbulence by following the democratic American model. He expressed a growing belief that the antagonism between the two nations should be supplanted by rapprochement. A. S. Eisenstadt offers an in-depth analysis of Triumphant Democracy, illustrating its importance and illuminating the larger current of British-American politics between the American Revolution and World War I and the fascinating exchange about the virtues and defects of the two nations.