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American usage

In the United States, derisive term carpetbagger was a Northerner who traveled to the South after the American Civil War, through the late 1860s and the 1870s, during Reconstruction. They went south to exploit the power vacuum created by the Civil War, intending to gain political or financial advantage. The south was poor after the war.

Carpetbaggers are not to be confused with scalawags, who were southerners who were Republican sympathizers.

They were so named after the habit of carrying belongings in a carpet bag. Since many Southern business and political leaders were ousted from their positions as a result of the war, there was much personal gain to be found by travelling south, and many of these carpetbaggers became mayors, governors, and business leaders.

Certainly many carpetbaggers were corrupt, and the word forever has the meaning of "an outsider who moves someplace to exploit the natives and enrich himself at their expense," or "a politician who moves to another state for political reasons, such as ease of election."

UK usage

Carpetbagging was also used in the United Kingdom in the 1990s during wave of flotations of building societies (mutuals), as a derogatory term for the advocates of these conversions. Investors in these mutuals would receive shares in the new public companies, usually distributed at a flat rate, thus equally benefiting small and large investors, and providing a broad incentive for members to vote for conversion-advocating (carpetbagging) leadership candidates.

Major building societies which converted included: Northern Rock Halifax Bradford and Bingley Woolwich