Orchestrating Power

Orchestrating Power explores how the expansion of the American state for the First World War reshaped the nature of governance. This wartime state expansion is examined through the creation, structure, activities, and impact of the Council of Defense System on the ability of the United States to mobilize for a significant conflict in a foreign land.

Nathan K. Finney focuses on North Carolina's Council of Defense to describe how the System was mediated by specific people at various levels of society, and the results of their decisions. The result is a compelling story about how individuals drove dynamic and compelling regional and national events that propelled a massive national wartime mobilization.

Positioned between the national government and the people of North Carolina, the Council of Defense mediated the activities of public, private, and individual efforts in support of mobilization activities. Because of this intermediary positioning, the Council was instrumental in expanding state capacity and capability for military and resource mobilization and supporting an increase in the nation's ability to mobilize for the war.

However, the Council's intermediary role also allowed those managing the state mobilization to prevent any significant challenge to the state's social and political structures, despite the dynamic changes wrought by the need to mobilize the nation for war. As a result, Orchestrating Power helps us understand the crucial decisions and developments of early twentieth-century America, showing why the country mobilized for war in the specific ways that it did.

Nathan K. Finney is a fellow at the Atlantic Council's Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, a managing editor for the British Journal for Military History, and on the board of the Journal of Military History. He earned a PhD in History at Duke University.

In his rich and nuanced book, Finney provides insightful answers to an old historical riddle: how did the United States mobilize so quickly for the First World War? Focusing on public-private collaborations at the local level, Orchestrating Power reveals how Progressive Era Americans built the warfare state.

Jennifer Keene, author of Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America:

Finney tells an important story with excellent, razor-sharp focus. As a result, Orchestrating Power reveals the key intermediary role that the Councils of Defense played in the mobilization of manpower (military and civilian), material resources, and public opinion in the United States during World War I.

Elisabeth S. Clemens, author of Civic Gifts:

Orchestrating Power makes an original, deeply researched historical contribution to the field of American political development. Nathan K. Finney not only provides a valuable case study, but also an opportunity to think carefully about how state-level efforts helped to shape the relation of private actors/organizations to public efforts.