Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1987
Abstract
A recurring topic in the historiography of Populism has been the extent to which the Populists and other agrarian radicals were nativist or anti..Semitic in the tenor of some of their reforms. In this article I trace the progress of legislation intended to restrict or eliminate absentee ownership of Kansas lands by aliens, particularly British landlords, from the first demand for such restriction in 1882 through the enactment of restrictive legislation in 1891 to its repeal in 1901. I parallel this study by following the currents of anti..alien rhetoric of the agrarian radicals who advocated the restrictions. While it is easy to show that the reformers not only advocated but also enacted restrictions against alien land ownership, it is much more difficult to determine whether the opposition was fueled by nativism, a xenophobic perception of British investors that was at odds with reality, or by a legitimate fear of land monopoly during an era when the closing of the frontier of free land in the United States coincided with a major, worldwide economic crisis. In order to answer this question, I compare the records of British investment, colonization, land ownership, and landlordism with the claims of the agrarian reformers. British investment in Kansas land was by no means negligible, but it was even less the menacing specter portrayed by the reformers.
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly [GPQ 7 (Fall 1987): 232-243] . Copyright 1987 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.