ABSTRACT
In 1952, Eric F. Goldman argued that progressivism was 'as exclusively national a movement as the United States ever knew'. But in the years that followed, a number of works appeared which challenged the validity of this narrowly national interpretation. Other historians, looking at the matter in a more general, European context, were struck by the apparent similarities between American progressives, British Liberals or Labourites, and French and German socialists. American progressives, conscious of the widening gulf that separated rich and poor in their own cities, were particularly interested in the British settlement house movement. The kind of friendship and easy camaraderie that developed between American progressives and British socialists and advanced Liberals was only rarely reproduced in relations between the progressives and their counterparts in continental Europe. The rise of socialism was a more serious factor complicating the relations between American and European reformers.
