History of American Capitalisms

Discussion:

• What Is NOT Capitalism?

• What Does a Capitalist Look Like?

Web Primary Source:

Nast, Thomas.  “The ‘Brains.’”  Illustration in Harper’s Weekly.  October 21, 1871.  P. 992.

→ Click here for Library of Congress image

Discussion:

• What Is a University and Why Are You Enrolled in One?
• What Is a Public University and Why Are You Enrolled in One?
• What Is a Research University and Why Are You Enrolled in One?

• Dividing the Economic Sphere from the Non-Economic

• Conjuring “Laws of the Market”

• Representational Practices and Invention of “the Economy”

Group Work:

Three Economic Indicators, 1945-2015

→ Click here for Historical Statistics of the United States Millennial Edition Online

Readings:

Mitchell, Timothy.  “Economists and the Economy in the Twentieth Century.”  In The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences: Positivism and its Epistemological Others.  George Steinmetz, ed.  Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.  Pp. 126-141.

Leonhardt, David.  “The American Dream, Quantified at Last.”  New York Times, December 11, 2016.

Discussion:

• Age of [?], 1991-2017

• The Discipline of History and Questioning What Is Not Questioned

• Capitalism from Critical Description to Congratulatory Self-Description Across the Twentieth Century

• Neoliberalism as a Phase in the History of Capitalism

Readings:

Chang, Ha-Joon.  23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism.  London: Allen Lane, 2010.  “Thing 6: Greater macroeconomic stability has not made the world economy more stable.”

Marks, Steven G.  “The Word ‘Capitalism’: The Soviet Union’s Gift to America.”  Society 49 (2012): 155-163.

Video:

→ “The History of Capitalism, Professor Seth Rockman”

Discussion:

• Finding Major Themes in Primary Sources

• The Directly Stated Versus the Indirectly Assumed

• Finding Major Themes in Secondary Sources

• One Perspective on Historical Change: Economic Knowledge Lagging Behind Economic Reality

Web Readings:

Mihm, Stephen.  “Accept No Imitations: The campaign against counterfeits, past and present.”  www.common-place.org 4:4 (Jul. 2004)

Zakim, Michael.  “Bookkeeping as Ideology: Capitalist knowledge in nineteenth-century America.”  www.common-place.org 6:3 (Apr. 2006)

Edling, Max M.  “When Johnny Comes Marching Home...from the Bank: War and finances in America, from the U.S.-Mexican War to the present.”  www.common-place.org 9:1 (Oct. 2008)

Lepler, Jessica.  “Pictures of Panic: Constructing hard times in words and images.”  www.common-place.org 10:3 (Apr. 2010)

Frankel, Oz.  “Hard Facts for Hard Times: Social knowledge and social crisis in the nineteenth century.”  www.common-place.org 10:3 (Apr. 2010)

Primary Sources:

Trescot, Wm. H.  The Position and Course of the South.  Charleston: Walker and James, 1850.  Esp. pp. 9-13 on the relationship between labor and capital.

Marsh, George P.  The Camel: His Organization Habits and Uses Considered With Reference to his Introduction into the United States.  Boston: Gould and Lincoln; New York: Sheldon, Blakeman and Company; Cincinnati: George S. Blanchard, 1856.  Pp. 5-12 (Preface), 177-196 (Chs. 17-18), 210-217 (App. D).

Consultation Schedule

Discussion:

• Writing How-To Manuals for the China Trade and for the Cotton Trade

• From Postcolonial Capitalism to “War Capitalism”

• Already Existing Globalization; the United States as Latecomer

• Analyzing Foregrounded Ideologies Versus Backgrounded Discourses

Readings:

Fichter, James R.  So Great a Proffit: How the East Indies Trade Transformed Anglo-American Capitalism.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010.  Ch. 2 (“America Sails East”).

Beckert, Sven.  Empire of Cotton: A Global History.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014.  Ch. 5 (“Slavery Takes Command”).

Primary Sources:

Quincy, Josiah.  Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton.  Boston: Wm. Crosby and H.P. Nichols, 1847.  Pp. 173-178.

Croom, Isaac.  “A Memoir, On the Subject of the Cotton-Plant, its History, Influence on Commerce, Politics, and the Welfare of the Human Race, and its Probable Destiny as the Great Product of the Southern United States.”  The American Cotton Planter, a Monthly Journal Devoted to Improved Plantation Economy, Manufactures, and the Mechanic Arts [Montgomery AL] 1 (1853): 1-13.

Discussion:

• Creating Historical Context for the Central Story

• Purifying Capitalism and Externalizing Not-Capitalism

• Vulnerabilities to Economic Forces and Political Powers Beyond View

• The Moral Anxieties of Capitalism

Readings:

Rothman, Joshua.  “The Hazards of the Flush Times: Gambling, Mob Violence, and the Anxieties of America’s Market Revolution.”  Journal of American History 95 (2008): 651-677.

Levy, Jonathan.  Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America.  Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.  Ch. 4 (“The Failure of the Freedman’s Bank”).

Primary Sources:

Members of the New-York Press.  ’37 and ’57: A Brief Popular Account of All the Financial Panics and Commercial Revulsions in the United States, from 1690 to 1857.  New-York: J.C. Haney, Publisher, 1857.  Ch. V (“The Great Crash at Last”).

Fitzhugh, George.  “What’s To Be Done with the Negroes!”  De Bow’s Review [After the War Series] 1 (1866): 577-581.

Discussion:

• Gleaning Applicable Methods from Secondary Sources

• Gleaning Ideas from Reading; Gleaning Ideas from Discussion

• Gleaning Main Themes from Primary Sources

• Gleaning Hidden Perspectives from Primary Sources

Readings:

Seelye, John.  “‘Rational Exultation’: The Erie Canal Celebration.”  Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 94 (1984): 241-267.

Hauptman, Laurence M.  “The Iroquois Indians And The Rise of the Empire State: Ditches, Defense, and Dispossession.”  New York History 79 (1998): 324-358.

Way, Peter.  “Evil Humors and Ardent Spirits: The Rough Culture of Canal Construction Laborers.”  Journal of American History 79 (1993): 1397-1428.

Carp, Roger E.  “The Limits of Reform: Labor and Discipline on the Erie Canal.”  Journal of the Early Republic 10 (1990): 191-219.

Engerman, Stanley L., and Sokoloff, Kenneth L.  “Digging the Dirt at Public Expense: Governance in the Building of the Erie Canal.”  Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2004.

Primary Sources:

Bagley, Sarah G.  “Pleasures of Factory Life.”  The Lowell Offering 1 (December 1840): 25-26.

“The Lowell Offering: Mouthpiece of the Corporations?”  Lowell Advertiser, July 10, 1845.

“Petition to the Massachusetts Legislature.”  Voice of Industry, January 15, 1845.

“Resolutions Denouncing Report of Committee by the Female Labor Reform Association.”  Voice of Industry, April 1, 1845.

“Preamble of the Lowell Female Labor Reform Association.”  Voice of Industry, February 27, 1846.

“United States.”  In Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue.  Vol. 3 (“Foreign States”).  London: Spicer Brothers, Wholesale Stationers; W. Clowes and Sons, Printers, 1851.  Pp. 3:1431-1432.

Discussion:

• Women (and Men) in the U.S. Constitution and State Constitutions

• Women in the Workforce in the Early Nineteenth Century

• Political Economy and Household Economies — Gendered Ideologies and Social Realities

• Capitalism and Ideologies of Household Management

Reading:

Boydston, Jeanne.  “The Woman Who Wasn’t There: Women’s Market Labor and the Transition to Capitalism in the United States.”  Journal of the Early Republic 16 (1996): 183-206.

Primary Sources:

Leslie, Miss [Eliza].  The House Book: or, A Manual of Domestic Economy. For Town and Country.  8th ed.  Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1845 (c.1840).

Webster, Thomas, Parkes, Mrs., and Reese, D. Meredith.  An Encyclopaedia of Domestic Economy: Comprising Such Subjects as are Most Immediately Connected with Housekeeping; as, The Construction of Domestic Edifices, with the Modes of Warming, Ventilating, and Lighting Them; A Description of the Various Articles of Furniture; A General Account of the Animal and Vegetable Substances Used as Food, and the Methods of Preserving and Preparing Them by Cooking; Making Bread; Materials Employed in Dress and the Toilet; Business of the Laundry; Description of the Various Wheel-Carriages; Preservation of Health; Domestic Medicines, &c., &c.  From the Last London Edition.  New-York: Published by Harper and Brothers, 1845.

Consultation Schedule

Reading:

Larson, John Lauritz.  The Market Revolution in America: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.  Ch. 2 (“Marvelous Improvements Everywhere”).

Discussion:

• Drafting an Introduction to your Research Paper

• Pro-Slavery Notions of the Domains of Suffering and Happiness

• Small Businesses Learning to Move Slaves and Monies Across Distances

• Business Externalities and the Routinization of Violence

Model Introduction:

Ogle, Vanessa.  “Whose Time Is It? The Pluralization of Time and the Global Condition, 1870s 1940s.”  American Historical Review 118 (2013): 1376-1402.

Reading:

Schermerhorn, Calvin.  The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014.  Ch. 5 (“The Slave-Factory of Franklin & Armfield”).

Primary Sources:

Pollard Edward A.  Black Diamonds Gathered in the Darkey Homes of the South.  New-York: Pudney and Russell, Publishers, 1859.

Weld, Theodore D.  American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.  New York: Published by the American Anti-Slavery Society, 1839.

Discussion:

• Conquest of a Continent — “Peace” more Catastrophic than “War”

• True Cost of the Louisiana Purchase

• Promotional Literature — Shaping the Definition and Narrative of Capitalism

• Capitalism and its Externalities

Reading:

Lee, Robert.  “Accounting for Conquest: The Price of the Louisiana Purchase of Indian Country.”  Journal of American History 103 (2017): 921-942.

Web Primary Source:

→ “The Invasion of America: How the United States Took Over an Eighth of the World”

Primary Sources:

Ferris, Jacob.  The States and Territories of The Great West; Including Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minesota [sic], Kansas and Nebraska; Their Geography, History, Advantages, Resources, and Prospects; Comprising their Local History, Institutions, and Laws.  New York and Auburn: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan; Buffalo: E.F. Beadle, 1856.

Goddard, Frederick B.  Where to Emigrate, and Why, Describes the Climate — Soil — Productions — Minerals and General Resources — Amount of Public Lands — The Quality and Price of Farm Lands in Nearly All Sections of the United States; and Containing A Description of the Pacific Railroad — the Homestead and other Land Laws — Rates of Wages Throughout the Country, Etc., Etc.  New York: Frederick B. Goddard, Publisher, 1869.

Scott, W[illiam]. A[nderson].  Trade and Letters: Their Journeyings Round the World.  New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1856.

Consultation Schedule

Discussion:

• The Anthropocene?  Onset, or Plateau?

• Technologies and Infrastructures of Steam, Coal, and Oil

• Analytical Theme, “Money Quote,” and Critical Analysis of Evidence

• What Was Rendered into Externalities — Technology Trap and Resource Curse

Readings:

Shulman, Peter A.  Coal and Empire: The Birth of Energy Security in Industrial America.  Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015.  Introduction.

Primary Sources:

Report to the Directors of the Pequa Railroad and Improvement Company.  Philadelphia: T.K., and P.G. Collins, Printers, 1849.

Johnson, Walter R.  The Coal Trade of British America, with Researches on the Characters and Practical Values of American and Foreign Coals.  Washington DC: Taylor and Maury; Philadelphia: A. Hart, 1850.

Stuart, Charles B.  The Naval and Mail Steamers of the United States.  New-York: Charles B. Norton; London: Sampson Low, Son and Company, 1853.

Web Primary Source:

→ “Oil Industry Photographs” [John Mather, 1861-1866]