Boosterism is the act of promoting ("boosting") a town, city, or organization, with the goal of improving public perception of it. Boosting can be as simple as talking up the entity at a party or as elaborate as establishing a

visitors' bureau A destination marketing organization (DMO) is an Organization, organisation which promotes a location as an attractive travel destination. DMOs are known as tourist boards, tourism authorities or "Convention and Visitors Bureaus". They primarily ex ...

History

Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

is claimed to owe its name to an act of boosterism. The '' Saga of Erik the Red'' states that

Erik the Red Erik Thorvaldsson (), known as Erik the Red, was a Norse explorer, described in medieval and Icelandic saga sources as having founded the first European settlement in Greenland. Erik most likely earned the epithet "the Red" due to the color o ...

named the island "Greenland" because "men will desire much the more to go there if the land has a good name." During the expansion of the American and

Canadian Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...

West, boosterism became epidemic as the leaders and owners of small towns made extravagant predictions for their settlement, in the hope of attracting more residents and, not coincidentally, inflating the prices of local real estate. During the nineteenth century, competition for economic success among newly founded cities led to overflow of booster literature that listed the visible signs of growth, cited statistics on population and trade and looked to local geography for town success reasons. The 1871 humorous speech '' The Untold Delights of Duluth'', delivered by Democratic U.S. Representative J. Proctor Knott, lampooned boosterism. Boosterism is also a major theme of two

novel A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...

s by

Sinclair Lewis Harry Sinclair Lewis (February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930 Nobel Prize in Literature, 1930, he became the first author from the United States (and the first from the America ...

—'' Main Street'' (published 1920) and '' Babbitt'' (1922). As indicated by an editorial that Lewis wrote in 1908 entitled "The Needful Knocker", boosting was the opposite of knocking. The editorial explained: The short story " Jeeves and the Hard-boiled Egg" (1917) by P.G. Wodehouse includes an encounter with a convention visiting from the fictional town of Birdsburg, Missouri who talk up their town: Boosting is also done in political settings, especially in regard to disputed policies or controversial events. The former UK prime minister

Boris Johnson Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (born 19 June 1964) is a British politician and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He wa ...

is strongly associated with such behaviour.

References

External links

*''The Promised Land'', by

Pierre Berton Pierre Francis de Marigny Berton, CC, O.Ont. (July 12, 1920 – November 30, 2004) was a Canadian historian, writer, journalist and broadcaster. Berton wrote 50 best-selling books, mainly about Canadiana, Canadian history and popular cultur ...

*
Babbitt
' by Sinclair Lewis *
The Untold Delights of Duluth
', a speech by a US congressman in 1871, introduced by

David McCullough David Gaub McCullough (; July 7, 1933 – August 7, 2022) was an American popular historian. He was a two-time winner of both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. In 2006, he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United S ...

Promotion and marketing communications History of United States expansionism Community development Political science terminology {{polisci-stub

History

See also

References

External links