Book Description
By investigating eighteenth-century social and economic thought—an intellectual world with its own vocabulary, concepts, and assumptions—Drew McCoy smoothly integrates the history of ideas and the history of public policy in the Jeffersonian era. The book was originally published by UNC Press in 1980.
Customer Reviews:
The founding fathers lived in a very different world. .......2006-02-10
This book shows that in the years of American independence, it was the vision of America's ruling class leaders including Franklin, Jefferson and Adams that the United States be predominantly a nation of small independent farmers. These farmers also according to this vision would engage in very small scale manufacturing of household essentials from dishes to clothing and trade such products with one another. Manufactures that could not be obtained from the domestic market could be imported from Europe in return for American agricultural produce.
Franklin and Jefferson were horrified by the extreme inequality in wealth in Great Britain. British urban areas featured hideous slums and workers enduring horrific conditions in manufacturing establishments whose owners made huge sums of money off the virtual slave labor. Most American leaders were deeply concerned about preventing the development of a European style elite class of multi-millionaires who, under the mercantilist system, used the government to get special favors and subsidies as they lived lives of effeminate laziness and corruption. This fear took an extreme urgency for Jeffersonians during the reign of Treasury Secretary Hamilton who attempted to adopt the British mercantilist system to the United States and its Democratic republic.
America's leaders, the author shows, believed that the development of an urban proletariat that a large manufacturing economy entailed was incompatible with a Democratic republic. The Aristotles at the University of Chicago often quote Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, on the supreme efficiency of the Division of Labor. However the author quotes some passages from that book, strangely missed by those Aristotles, which declared that the Division of Labor transformed workers into drudges as stupid and ignorant as it was possible for human beings to be. If a person was an independent farmer, no matter how poor, he at least was able to exercise his creative and intellectual capacities as he operated his farm. However the factory worker did the same thing over and over again and had no opportunity to develop what Marx called his "species being." Gradually the intellecual and creative capacities of the worker became so degraded as to be barely distinguishable from that of an animal. Smith more or less called for the government to institute social programs to mitigate these effects on the factory worker. Jefferson and Madison shared these same fears.
But such a factory system as that which had developed in Britain would not develop for a very long time in the United States Jefferson thought. Because there was such a massive supply of arable land available, the United States could establish itself as a predominantly agricultural nation and prosper as it exported its food surpluses to Europe. Jefferson argued that a minimum of 50 acres (from unowned land of course, not from land already owned) should be distributed to all males who did not have property.
However after the peace of 1783, the British refused to lift trade barriers to American exports to the British Isles or the West Indies. American food exports still had to go through very intricate expensive mercantilist channels to reach British markets, making employment American agriculture a precarious enterprise and the specter loomed of having to turn to large create manufacturing to compensate for the loss of employment. James Madison believed that only strong national government control over commerce which was missing in the Articles of Confederation government, could peaceably coerce the Europeans to remove trade barriers to American exports. Madison by the early 1790's fervently argued for temporarily banning all imports and exports with Britain in order to force open British markets to American goods.
The British and French harassment of American shipping and the failure of Jefferson's trade embargo on Britain and France, led to the War of 1812. Some Jeffersonians supported government protection and subsidies of the manufacture of raw materials vital for national defense and agriculture. However, Madison and Jefferson still believed the U.S. could be a predominantly agricultural republic. Madison greatly feared for the future of the republic as the specter of large scale manufacturing and extreme inequality of wealth, loomed. Jefferson in the last years of his life believed that the manufacturing economy of the Northeast was conspiring to undermine what he conceived to be a virtual agricultural utopia in the South and West of the U.S. as the borders of it were defined in his day. Jefferson supported the extension of slavery into the Southern territory covered by the Missouri compromise of 1820 on the ground of encouraging the settlement of slave owning agriculturalists. He apparently convinced himself that this extension of slavery would somehow help peacefully whither that horrific institution away. However in reality it became even more consolidated and Jefferson's virtuous independent landholder slave owners drove their slaves harder and harder accumulated even more massive wealth and lived in decadent effeminate luxury.
The author does not really analyze how close to reality this vision of independent small farmers ever was--the composition of the property of these small farmers, how many slaves they owned, etc. Indeed ownership of slaves somehow diluted Jefferson's idyllic vision of the self-reliant small farmer which he apparently believed himself to be in spite of his innumerable slaves. The author does not talk about white supremacy. However the latter was obviously a big part of the Jeffersonian vision given the presence of slavery and also of course related to the Native Americans who were living on the land that Jefferson & co. wanted for the settlement of their expanding white population.
Where have all the political economists gone?.......2004-09-13
We tend to forget that up until the late nineteenth century most economists saw their field as a branch of politics and/or ethics.
The purview of this altogether brilliant book is the Federalist period thru the Monroe administration. McCoy elucidates the main theories of political economy in the early Republic and examines how practical politics forced the likes of Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and many others to change or adapt their views.
What these men were concerned with was the longevity of our country. A republic required a virtuous citizenry. In order to maintain such a citizenry, the republic must be run in such a way as to produce such paragons.
It is important to keep in mind that this was a period of time that tended to see republics as doomed in the long run. Accelerating that decline was the development of the manufacture on non-essentials or luxuries that were typified by the advanced economies of Europe. The manufacturing of these luxuries seemed to inevitably lead to the sort of personal and governmental corruption that every good American saw in Great Britain.
What came to be seen as the Jeffersonian solution to this issue was the idea of the yeoman republic- that we would be largely a nation of independent farmers. Such men were beholden to no one so they would naturally be more inclined to look to the public interest. They would eschew luxuries and live a reasonably simple life. They would be busy enough to be free of the debilitating effects of indolence (it is evident from McCoy's pages that the fear of the Great Unwashed wandering without occupation thru the streets drove many a founding father to researching and writing about political economy). Yet our yeoman farmers would have enough time to read and study the great issues of the day. Since we had an enormous frontier for future population growth to claim and cultivate it would be decades before we would have to deal with the economic consequences of population growth.
It is easy to mock such a viewpoint (and I admit to a wee mockery above). But it would be impossible to mock the scholarship that is used to develop the history of this viewpoint.
The first two chapters of the book set up the rest of the history. In these chapters, McCoy examines assumptions about luxury, indolence, mercantilism, and foreign trade in the writings of Mandeville, Ferguson, Adam Smith, Hume and Franklin among others. The chapters are gems of compression of exposition.
To me, however, the book gets more interesting in the later chapters as the above Jeffersonian synthesis emerges and the successive administrations of Jefferson and Madison attempt to use it to guide us in our foreign and economic policies. Here we are dealing with the thoughts of Albert Gallatin and Alexander Hamilton as well as numerous lesser writers. And here our ideological assumptions are battered by the stubbornly self-serving policies of Britain, France and Spain.
The main result was that to one degree or another both Madison and Jefferson were forced to eventually come to terms with the necessity of developing our own manufacturers and developing an internal market for their goods.
This is a thoroughly enjoyable extremely well written book which elucidates one of the earlier examples of an ongoing American tendency to confuse our ideological assumptions with the bones of reality (as it were). It is an important lesson to keep in mind that the assumptions about human nature that any one economic theory make are usually among the most naïve and the most political aspects of that economic theory. So I guess the title of my review should be: Does anybody else realize that we are still doing political economics?
This is a book to hang on to........2003-05-24
In The Elusive Republic, Drew R. McCoy presents a compeling work on the development of America's political economy. After walking away from this book I felt that I had a good grasp on an area of Jeffersonian republicanism that I had not been exposed to. This is a book to hang on to.
Bringing Jefferson to life.......2001-01-28
This was a successful chronicle of Jefferson's policy and his role in building a new republic. A wonderful read that brings history to life!
Good and Easy read--Religio-Philosophial gloss on US history.......2000-12-20
Excellent survey of how the founders idealized the future of America as contraposed against the "old world" as well as how, even in the early stages of the Country, the founder's time was idealized as a kind of ever receeding eden to which the country aspires to return to. You can hear the echos of this today in family values rhetoric, the contining (if anachronistic) idealization of the family farm and "main street." McCoy sets up the American experience as a continuing striving to re-create that idealized world of the founders that never really existed. Central that idealized conception was the idea of "virtue" among all of the citizens that the founders saw as a pre-requisite of a lasting republic. That is a republic could only work if its citizens were "masters and slaves of none"--this is where the ideal of the single yoeman farmer of Jefferson comes in. Only with this economic self-sufficiency, the founders thought, could citizens act for the common good. This is why it is often said that the founders didn't like or anticpate poltical parties--they felt that in this ideal republic, the citizens would always abandon their self interest. McCoy also talks about how important it was to inculcate this vision of the way that the repulbic "should be" throough educational exhortation and poltical economics (open land in the west)so that future generations would both understand their vision and be able to take care of it.
Book Description
Examining interactions between Native Americans and whites in eighteenth-century Pennsylvania, Jane Merritt traces the emergence of race as the defining difference between these neighbors on the frontier.
Before 1755, Indian and white communities in Pennsylvania shared a certain amount of interdependence. They traded skills and resources and found a common enemy in the colonial authorities, including the powerful Six Nations, who attempted to control them and the land they inhabited. Using innovative research in German Moravian records, among other sources, Merritt explores the cultural practices, social needs, gender dynamics, economic exigencies, and political forces that brought Native Americans and Euramericans together in the first half of the eighteenth century.
But as Merritt demonstrates, the tolerance and even cooperation that once marked relations between Indians and whites collapsed during the Seven Years' War. By the 1760s, as the white population increased, a stronger, nationalist identity emerged among both white and Indian populations, each calling for new territorial and political boundaries to separate their communities. Differences between Indians and whites--whether political, economic, social, religious, or ethnic--became increasingly characterized in racial terms, and the resulting animosity left an enduring legacy in Pennsylvania's colonial history.
Customer Reviews:
A good reference on pre-independence America 1700-1763.......2007-04-09
Jane Merritt gives an inside expose, on the clash of cultures in the Mid-Atlantic frontier(Delaware,Pennsylvania,Virginia etc.). The early relationship between a young Colonel George Washington of England and the Delawares is highlighted. The initial interaction between Washington and the Delawares, was poor. This lead to early military defeats to the French. The dynamics of the 7 years war, which changed the harmony of this region dramatically, is examined.
The odd antagonistic relationship between the Delawares and the Iroquois 6 Nations is analyzed to the fullest. It appears the Iroquois sold Delaware land inappropriately (walking purchase Treaty). You will gain insight into famous chiefs such as Delaware chief Shingas and chief Teedyuscung.
The shrewd business dealings of the European settlers is analyzed. You are made aware how simple semantics could misconstrue entire Treaties and agreements. Overall this book does a good job in clarifying, certain key points, in a very complex period, in American history.
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From Household To Empire: Society And Economy In Early Colonial New Mexico
Heather B. Trigg
Manufacturer: William P. Clements Center for Southwest Stud
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ASIN: 0816524440 |
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The early Spanish colonial period in New Mexico provides an opportunity to explore both economic activity within a colony and the relations between colony and homeland. By examining the material remains of this era--from the founding of the colony in 1598 to its demise with the Pueblo Rebellion in 1680--Trigg reveals a more complete picture of colonial life.
Book Description
Kimberly Gauderman has produced an informative, well-organized study on the lives of Spanish, mestiza, and indigenous women in seventeenth-century Quito.
—
Colonial Latin American Historical Review
"Gauderman's book is a must-read for anyone interested in gender and the law.
—
Law and History Review
Overall, this book contributes significantly to the field by shedding a great deal of light on the complex terrain in which the women, men, and state officials of colonial Quito negotiated policies and power. Its careful analysis, rich data, and readability will make it enormously useful in both research pursuits and the classroom.
—
The Journal of Latin American Anthropology
"I am impressed by the extent to which Gauderman . . . seems to have better grasped the complexities of [colonial] women's lives than most of the [authors of] existing literature. . . . I am very enthusiastic about this book."
—Patricia Seed, Rice University, author of
To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574-1821
What did it mean to be a woman in colonial Spanish America? Given the many advances in women's rights since the nineteenth century, we might assume that colonial women had few rights and were fully subordinated to male authority in the family and in society—but we'd be wrong. In this provocative study, Kimberly Gauderman undermines the long-accepted patriarchal model of colonial society by uncovering the active participation of indigenous, mestiza, and Spanish women of all social classes in many aspects of civil life in seventeenth-century Quito.
Gauderman draws on records of criminal and civil proceedings, notarial records, and city council records to reveal women's use of legal and extra-legal means to achieve personal and economic goals; their often successful attempts to confront men's physical violence, adultery, lack of financial support, and broken promises of marriage; women's control over property; and their participation in the local, interregional, and international economies. This research clearly demonstrates that authority in colonial society was less hierarchical and more decentralized than the patriarchal model suggests, which gave women substantial control over economic and social resources.
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- A subject that needs to be explored
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Colonial Habits: Convents and the Spiritual Economy of Cuzco, Peru
Kathryn Burns , and
Kathryn Burns
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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ASIN: 0822322919 |
Book Description
In Colonial Habits Kathryn Burns transforms our view of nuns as marginal recluses, making them central actors on the colonial stage. Beginning with the 1558 founding of South America’s first convent, Burns shows that nuns in Cuzco played a vital part in subjugating Incas, creating a creole elite, and reproducing an Andean colonial order in which economic and spiritual interests were inextricably fused.
Based on unprecedented archival research, Colonial Habits demonstrates how nuns became leading guarantors of their city’s social order by making loans, managing property, containing âunrulyâ women, and raising girls. Coining the phrase âspiritual economyâ to analyze the intricate investments and relationships that enabled Cuzco’s convents and their backers to thrive, Burns explains how, by the late 1700s, this economy had faltered badly, making convents an emblem of decay and a focal point for intense criticism of a failing colonial regime. By the nineteenth century, the nuns had retreated from their previous roles, marginalized in the construction of a new republican order.
Providing insight that can be extended well outside the Andes to the relationships articulated by convents across much of Europe, the Americas, and beyond, Colonial Habits will engage those interested in early modern economics, Latin American studies, women in religion, and the history of gender, class, and race.
Customer Reviews:
A subject that needs to be explored.......2000-04-26
Katheryn Burns has written a great book. Her discussion of the spiritual economy is innovative and needs to be explored by more people. Burns uncovers a history that has been neglected by most historians but is integral to one's understanding of colonial Latin America. In short, this is must read for anyone interested in the subject.
Book Description
Located in the heart of the Andes, Potosí was arguably the most important urban center in the Western Hemisphere during the colonial era. It was internationally famous for its abundant silver mines and regionally infamous for its labor draft. Set in this context of opulence and oppression associated with the silver trade, Trading Roles emphasizes daily life in the city’s streets, markets, and taverns. As Jane E. Mangan shows, food and drink transactions emerged as the most common site of interaction for Potosinos of different ethnic and class backgrounds. Within two decades of Potosí’s founding in the 1540s, the majority of the city’s inhabitants no longer produced food or alcohol for themselves; they purchased these items. Mangan presents a vibrant social history of colonial Potosí through an investigation of everyday commerce during the city’s economic heyday, between the discovery of silver in 1545 and the waning of production in the late seventeenth century.
Drawing on wills and dowries, judicial cases, town council records, and royal decrees, Mangan brings alive the bustle of trade in Potosí. She examines quotidian economic transactions in light of social custom, ethnicity, and gender, illuminating negotiations over vendor locations, kinship ties that sustained urban trade through the course of silver booms and busts, and credit practices that developed to mitigate the pressures of the market economy. Mangan argues that trade exchanges functioned as sites to negotiate identities within this colonial multiethnic society. Throughout the study, she demonstrates how women and indigenous peoples played essential roles in Potosí’s economy through the commercial transactions she describes so vividly.
Customer Reviews:
Mamadou makes it plain.......2000-03-29
Mamadou Chinyelu quotes Rev. William James - "What bothers me is that our leader seem to be asleep, while Harlem is being gradually taken away from us." Chinyelu's book Harlem Ain't Nothin' but a Third World Country describes how Harlem reached it's current state in a well organized, superbly documented.
Chinyelu first teaches us the characteristics of a third world nation and how those characteristics relate to Harlem. Using the third world as a paradigm we can more clearly understand how and why the current African American residents of Harlem are in jeopardy of being displaced. We can also see more clearly why these same residents and the political leadership is almost powerless to do anything about it.
`Them that got shall get..." With home and business ownership already at dismal levels in Harlem, Chinyelu sites many examples of how even these few owners are being forced out by transnational corporations with the aid of politicians - politicians who were unwilling to help local residents in a similar fashion.
Chinyelu's prophetic account of Harlem is eye-opening. Clearly the lessons here can be applied to any other community, where the needs of working class are ignored. Take Heed.
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The New Development Politics: The Age of Empire Building and New Social Movements
James F. Petras
Manufacturer: Ashgate Publishing
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Empire with Imperialism: The Globalizing Dynamics of Neoliberal Capitalism
ASIN: 0754635406 |
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The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives & New Directions
Manufacturer: Pennsylvania State University Press
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Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830
ASIN: 0271027118 |
Book Description
In recent years, scholars in a number of disciplines have focused their attention on understanding the early American economy. The result has been an outpouring of scholarship, some of it dramatically revising older methodologies and findings, and some of it charting entirely new territory-- new subjects, new places, and new arenas of study that might not have been considered "economic" in the past.
The Economy of Early America enters this resurgent discussion of the early American economy by showcasing the work of leading scholars who represent a spectrum of historiographical and methodological viewpoints. Contributors include David Hancock, Russell Menard, Lorena Walsh, Christopher Tomlins, David Waldstreicher, Terry Bouton, Brooke Hunter, Daniel Dupre, John Majewski, Donna Rilling, and Seth Rockman, as well as Cathy Matson.
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- The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia
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