The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic Development and Political Conflict, 1620–1877Most US historians assume that capitalism either came in the first ships or was the inevitable result of the expansion of the market. Unable to analyze the dynamics of specific forms of social labour in the antebellum US, most historians of the US Civil War have privileged autonomous political and ideological factors, ignoring the deep social roots of the conflict. This book applies theoretical insights derived from the debates on the transition to capitalism in Europe to the historical literature on the US to produce a new analysis of the origins of capitalism in the US, and the social roots of the Civil War. Short-listed for the 2011 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize. |
Contents
Introduction | 1 |
Chapter One The American Road to Capitalism | 7 |
The Transformation of the Northern Countryside Before the Civil War | 37 |
Chapter Three PlantationSlavery and Economic Development in the AntebellumSouthern United States | 103 |
The Place of the American Revolution in the Origins of USCapitalism | 155 |
Toward a New Social Interpretation | 195 |
Conclusion Democracy Against Capitalism in the PostCivilWar United States | 253 |
| 279 | |
| 295 | |
Other editions - View all
The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-Structure, Economic ... Charles Post Limited preview - 2011 |
The American Road to Capitalism: Studies in Class-structure, Economic ... Charles Post No preview available - 2012 |
Common terms and phrases
African Americans agrarian petty-commodity production American American Revolution antebellum argued Ashworth Brenner British capitalist capitalist production Chapter Civil claim class-conflict colonial commercial commodities commodity-production cotton cotton-production countryside crops debate debts Democrats development of capitalism direct producers division of labour dominance economic development eighteenth century Ellen Meiksins Wood family-farmers farm federal Fogel and Engerman Foner form of social Genovese geographical expansion growing growth Henretta historians historical home-market ideological increase independent household-production industrial capital industrialisation Kulikoff labour-power labour-process labour-productivity labour-saving land-speculation landed property landholdings law of value major manufacturers master-slave masters McCusker and Menard means of production mechanisation merchant-capital merchants Native Americans nineteenth century non-capitalist organised plantation plantation-slavery planters political purchase radical regions relations of production Republicans result revolution rural households self-sufficient settlers sharecropping slave-owning slavery’s slaves social labour social-property relations South Southern specialise output state-governments subsistence surplus-labour technical innovation tion tobacco transformation urban wage-labour wage-workers Whigs workers world-market