it featured an elaboration on Koht's theory about class and the nation. According to Koht, the community of the nation was expanded in a democratic way when the agrarian movement, then the labour movement, both rose from political passivity to demand a place in the political and national sphere. He wrote about this in the 1910 article Norsk folkesamling as well. The book Norsk bondereisning, published in 1926 as a compilation of Koht's presented material in his university lectures, represented the culmination of Koht's work on the topic of class conflict between the agrarian and the urban population. Koht argued that the peasant movement had abandoned the cause of class interest in favour of universal rights and social reforms. The same perspective had to be applied to the struggle of the labour movement, Koht maintained. An economic background for the farmers' rising was presented in 1912, in Priser og politikk i norsk historie, originally a lecture for the second Norwegian conference of historians. This lecture was also where his historical materialism came to fruition. In 1951 he stated that he "has never thought that the theories could be foundational for a political or social uprising". Koht's stay in the United States affected his historical views and adaptation of historical materialism, and he also tried to encourage the study of American history in Norway. American culture did not have a particularly high standing in Norway at the time. In school, Koht did not learn proper English. Before he embarked to the US, some historian colleagues insinuated that the country "barely had any history" and was not worth visiting. Koht's first writing on the subject came in 1910 with the lecture Genesis of American Independence. He followed with Pengemakt og arbeid i Amerika ("Monetary Power and Labor in America", 1910), which was based on "People's Academy" lectures, then Amerikansk kultur ("American Culture", 1912) and Den amerikanske nasjonen ("The American Nation", 1920). He would return briefly to American academia during his career, for instance in the autumn of 1930 to hold a course at Harvard University. Wishing to unite materialism and idealism, Koht became interested in psychology and the role of individuals in history. The latter focus led to his becoming, in the words of his biographer Åsmund Svendsen, "one of the greatest biographers of the 20th century". Inspired by the work with Norsk Forfatter-lexikon, he wrote a life of the author Henrik