Rowland Tappan Berthoff (September 20, 1921 – March 25, 2001) was an Americanhistorian, working in the fields of immigration and social life in the USA.^[1][2] He is best known for his 1971 bookAn Unsettled People: Order and Disorder in American Life.

He was born inToledo, Ohio, attendedOberlin College, and did graduate work atHarvard University where he received a doctorate in 1952, as a student ofOscar Handlin. Berthoff was an Assistant Professor of History atPrinceton University from 1953, and then a professor of history inArts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, from 1962. He was madechairman ofWashington University's history department and named William Elliott Smith Professor of History in 1971.

He promotedsocial history andethnic history. His 1960 article on "The American Social Order: A Conservative Hypothesis" called for a conservative interpretation of American history.

• Republic of the dispossessed: The exceptional old-European consensus in America (1997)online His last book collects eight of his scholarly articles on the intellectual history of American politics. He identified an American consensus on personal liberty and communal equality, and traces their origins to immigrants who lacked those rights in Europe.^[3]
• An Unsettled People: Order and Disorder in American Life (1971)online. This is Berthoff's best-known book, exploring the themes of social order and disorder throughout American history, with attention to how these forces shaped the nation's development.^[4]
• British Immigrants in Industrial America, 1790–1950 (1953)online. This revised PhD dissertation examines the experiences and contributions of British immigrants to the industrialization of America, providing a detailed analysis of their adaptation and influence.^[5]
• "The American Social Order: A Conservative Hypothesis" (1960). This influential article in theAmerican Historical Review, called for a conservative interpretation of American history and contributed significantly to debates in social history.^[6]

• Berthoff, Rowland. "The American Social Order: A Conservative Hypothesis,"American Historical Review, April 1960, Vol. 65 Issue 3, pp 495–514in JSTOR

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