Meaning:
opportunist, self-seeker, an outsider who seeks power or success
presumptuously, a person who places expediency above principle.
Example: "after the Civil War the carpetbaggers from the north tried to take
over the south"
Background:
An outsider who pretends to be an insider is a carpetbagger; he's a person
who tries to take advantage of a group by joining it only for his own
personal benefit.
Northerners who moved south during Reconstruction in the 1860s and 70s were
the original carpetbaggers, named for their suitcases. It was a derogatory
term then, and it continues to be used with contempt today. You can use the
noun carpetbagger to describe a politician who is running for governor in a
state where he's only lived for six months.
- www.vocabulary.com [edited]
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I remember this word from Margaret Mitchell's "Gone with the Wind" so many years
ago and on Aug 5, was delighted to read its apt usage in the last paragraph on
page 70 of the book "Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China" by Jung Chang.
The Kuomintang personnel put in charge of the factories--those that had not
been dismantled by the Russians--were conspicuously unsuccessful at getting
the economy moving again. They got a few factories working at well below full
capacity, but pocketed most of the revenue themselves.
Kuomintang carpetbaggers were moving into the smart houses which the Japanese
had vacated...
Chang was writing about the Nationalist rule in the Manchu city Jinzhou in early
1946, after the Japanese surrendered the previous year, the Russians'
three-month looting and raping, and the Communists' brief sojourn and retreat to
the rural areas.
