Sutton offers a regional approach to the study of utopian
movements, focusing specifically on the "heartland," which he
defines to include the Old Northwest Territory, the Dakotas, and
Missouri. In the number of utopian settlements, the heartland
region is surpassed only by New England. Heartland Utopias provides
a scholarly overview of nineteenth century utopian communities in
the heartland from the first Shaker village near Dayton, Ohio,
built in 1807, to the 1903 incorporation and ensuing stormy history
of The House of David in Benton Harbor, Michigan. During these
years, charismatic individuals built three different kinds of
utopias: perfectionist, whose members thought they could achieve
impec-cancy almost immediately by living communally; cooperative,
whose members believed that communalism would improve the moral and
economic condition of its members and at the same time be the
alternative to exploitative capitalism; and social and communist,
whose members believed that democracy and equality could never be
achieved without living in an "association," as with the
socialists, or in a "community of good," as with the Icarians.
While these communities have individually been the topics of past
studies, Sutton's work is the first comprehensive examination of
all of the most important heartland communities. Major emphasis,
with separate chapters, is given to the following major utopian
settlements: the Shakers, the New Harmony, a number of separatist
communities, the Fourierist phalanxes, the Icarians, the
Hutterites, and the Chicago-area utopian societies. Many of the
communities that Sutton discusses still exist today. American
historians, regional historians, and students of utopian and
communal studies will be interested in this well-organized and
readable survey.
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