Download or read book Ready Made Democracy written by Michael Zakim and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ready-Made Democracy explores the history of men's dress in America to consider how capitalism and democracy emerged at the center of American life during the century between the Revolution and the Civil War. Michael Zakim demonstrates how clothing initially attained a significant place in the American political imagination on the eve of Independence. At a time when household production was a popular expression of civic virtue, homespun clothing was widely regarded as a reflection of America's most cherished republican values: simplicity, industriousness, frugality, and independence. By the early nineteenth century, homespun began to disappear from the American material landscape. Exhortations of industry and modesty, however, remained a common fixture of public life. In fact, they found expression in the form of the business suit. Here, Zakim traces the evolution of homespun clothing into its ostensible opposite—the woolen coats, vests, and pantaloons that were "ready-made" for sale and wear across the country. In doing so, he demonstrates how traditional notions of work and property actually helped give birth to the modern industrial order. For Zakim, the history of men's dress in America mirrored this transformation of the nation's social and material landscape: profit-seeking in newly expanded markets, organizing a waged labor system in the city, shopping at "single-prices," and standardizing a business persona. In illuminating the critical links between politics, economics, and fashion in antebellum America, Ready-Made Democracy will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of the United States and in the creation of modern culture in general.

Download or read book The Roots of American Industrialization written by David R. Meyer and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2003-05-21 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Farms that were on poor soil and distant from markets declined, whereas other farms successfully adjusted production as rural and urban markets expanded and as Midwestern agricultural products flowed eastward after 1840. Rural and urban demand for manufactures in the East supported diverse industrial development and prosperous rural areas and burgeoning cities supplied increasing amounts of capital for investment.

Download or read book American Economic Growth and Standards of Living before the Civil War written by Robert E. Gallman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This benchmark volume addresses the debate over the effects of early industrialization on standards of living during the decades before the Civil War. Its contributors demonstrate that the aggregate antebellum economy was growing faster than any other large economy had grown before. Despite the dramatic economic growth and rise in income levels, questions remain as to the general quality of life during this era. Was the improvement in income widely shared? How did economic growth affect the nature of work? Did higher levels of income lead to improved health and longevity? The authors address these questions by analyzing new estimates of labor force participation, real wages, and productivity, as well as of the distribution of income, height, and nutrition.

Download or read book A Farewell to Alms written by Gregory Clark and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-29 with total page 433 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why are some parts of the world so rich and others so poor? Why did the Industrial Revolution--and the unprecedented economic growth that came with it--occur in eighteenth-century England, and not at some other time, or in some other place? Why didn't industrialization make the whole world rich--and why did it make large parts of the world even poorer? In A Farewell to Alms, Gregory Clark tackles these profound questions and suggests a new and provocative way in which culture--not exploitation, geography, or resources--explains the wealth, and the poverty, of nations. Countering the prevailing theory that the Industrial Revolution was sparked by the sudden development of stable political, legal, and economic institutions in seventeenth-century Europe, Clark shows that such institutions existed long before industrialization. He argues instead that these institutions gradually led to deep cultural changes by encouraging people to abandon hunter-gatherer instincts-violence, impatience, and economy of effort-and adopt economic habits-hard work, rationality, and education. The problem, Clark says, is that only societies that have long histories of settlement and security seem to develop the cultural characteristics and effective workforces that enable economic growth. For the many societies that have not enjoyed long periods of stability, industrialization has not been a blessing. Clark also dissects the notion, championed by Jared Diamond in Guns, Germs, and Steel, that natural endowments such as geography account for differences in the wealth of nations. A brilliant and sobering challenge to the idea that poor societies can be economically developed through outside intervention, A Farewell to Alms may change the way global economic history is understood.

Download or read book Founding Choices written by Douglas A. Irwin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-01-15 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Papers of the National Bureau of Economic Research conference held at Dartmouth College on May 8-9, 2009.

Download or read book Finance Money And Banking written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-02-01 with total page 6900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book One Hundred Years of American Commerce 1795 1895 written by Chauncey M. Depew and published by . This book was released on 1895 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The British Industrial Revolution written by Joel Mokyr and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Industrial Revolution remains a defining moment in the economic history of the modern world. But what kind and how much of a revolution was it? And what kind of ?moment? could it have been? These are just some of the larger questions among the many that economic historians continue to debate. Addressing the various interpretations and assumptions that have been attached to the concept of the Industrial Revolution, Joel Mokyr and his four distinguished contributors present and defend their views on essential aspects of the Industrial Revolution. In this revised edition, all chapters?including Mokyr's extensive introductory survey and evaluation of research in this field?are updated to consider arguments and findings advanced since the volume's initial 1993 publication. Like its predecessor, the revised edition of The British Industrial Revolution is an essential book for economic historians and, indeed, for any historian of Great Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Download or read book Empire of Cotton written by Sven Beckert and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZE • A Pulitzer Prize finalist that's as unsettling as it is enlightening: a book that brilliantly weaves together the story of cotton with how the present global world came to exist. “Masterly … An astonishing achievement.” —The New York Times The empire of cotton was, from the beginning, a fulcrum of constant global struggle between slaves and planters, merchants and statesmen, workers and factory owners. Sven Beckert makes clear how these forces ushered in the world of modern capitalism, including the vast wealth and disturbing inequalities that are with us today. In a remarkably brief period, European entrepreneurs and powerful politicians recast the world’s most significant manufacturing industry, combining imperial expansion and slave labor with new machines and wage workers to make and remake global capitalism.

Download or read book A Population History of the United States written by Herbert S. Klein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-28 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full-scale, one-volume survey of the demographic history of the United States has been fully updated here. From the arrival of humans in the Western Hemisphere to the current century, Klein analyses the basic demographic trends in the growth of the pre-conquest, colonial and national populations. From the origin and distribution of the Native Americans to late twentieth century changes in family structure, fertility and mortality, this updated edition incorporates recent research, including data from the 2010 census. In this definitive study, Klein explores regional patterns of fertility and mortality, trends in births, deaths and international and internal migrations, comparing them with contemporary European developments. The profound impact of historic declines in disease and mortality rates on the population structure of the late-twentieth century is explained, while the more recent urbanisation and rise of suburbia are examined within the context of new massive international migrations on North American society.

Download or read book U S History written by P. Scott Corbett and published by . This book was released on 2024-09-10 with total page 1886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.S. History is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of most introductory courses. The text provides a balanced approach to U.S. history, considering the people, events, and ideas that have shaped the United States from both the top down (politics, economics, diplomacy) and bottom up (eyewitness accounts, lived experience). U.S. History covers key forces that form the American experience, with particular attention to issues of race, class, and gender.

Download or read book Magazines and the Making of America written by Heather A. Haveman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-09 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the colonial era to the onset of the Civil War, Magazines and the Making of America looks at how magazines and the individuals, organizations, and circumstances they connected ushered America into the modern age. How did a magazine industry emerge in the United States, where there were once only amateur authors, clumsy technologies for production and distribution, and sparse reader demand? What legitimated magazines as they competed with other media, such as newspapers, books, and letters? And what role did magazines play in the integration or division of American society? From their first appearance in 1741, magazines brought together like-minded people, wherever they were located and whatever interests they shared. As America became socially differentiated, magazines engaged and empowered diverse communities of faith, purpose, and practice. Religious groups could distinguish themselves from others and demarcate their identities. Social-reform movements could energize activists across the country to push for change. People in specialized occupations could meet and learn from one another to improve their practices. Magazines built translocal communities—collections of people with common interests who were geographically dispersed and could not easily meet face-to-face. By supporting communities that crossed various axes of social structure, magazines also fostered pluralistic integration. Looking at the important role that magazines had in mediating and sustaining critical debates and diverse groups of people, Magazines and the Making of America considers how these print publications helped construct a distinctly American society.

Download or read book The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective written by Robert C. Allen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-09 with total page 13 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the industrial revolution take place in 18th century Britain and not elsewhere in Europe or Asia? Robert Allen argues that the British industrial revolution was a successful response to the global economy of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Download or read book The Economic Development of the Third World Since 1900 written by Paul Bairoch and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1967, Professor Bairoch’s Diagnostic de L’Evolution Economique du Tiers-Monde has gone into four editions, and has brought the author an international reputation. This English translation is, in effect, another edition based on the latest French text but incorporating much which is not to be found there. The statistical tables have been revised and expanded wherever possible to include figures up to the end of 1972; the bibliography has been specially adapted to include the literature on the subject in the English language; and two new chapters have been written: Chapter 8 on ‘Urbanization’ and Chapter 9 on ‘The labour force and employment’. It has been Professor Bairoch’s aim in this book to examine the development of under-developed countries (including China) during the present century and through the use of comparative statistics to formulate a diagnosis of their growth. His analysis includes, whenever relevant, a comparison between the present economic progress of Third World countries and that of the developed countries at the time of their ‘take off’. Special attention has also been given to China’s unique path of development. In the course of his research the author has elaborated several new series. The production of these new series and their integration with existing data make this book a valuable quantitative economic history of the Third World.

Download or read book Ages of American Capitalism written by Jonathan Levy and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 945 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A leading economic historian traces the evolution of American capitalism from the colonial era to the present—and argues that we’ve reached a turning point that will define the era ahead. “A monumental achievement, sure to become a classic.”—Zachary D. Carter, author of The Price of Peace In this ambitious single-volume history of the United States, economic historian Jonathan Levy reveals how capitalism in America has evolved through four distinct ages and how the country’s economic evolution is inseparable from the nature of American life itself. The Age of Commerce spans the colonial era through the outbreak of the Civil War, and the Age of Capital traces the lasting impact of the industrial revolution. The volatility of the Age of Capital ultimately led to the Great Depression, which sparked the Age of Control, during which the government took on a more active role in the economy, and finally, in the Age of Chaos, deregulation and the growth of the finance industry created a booming economy for some but also striking inequalities and a lack of oversight that led directly to the crash of 2008. In Ages of American Capitalism, Levy proves that capitalism in the United States has never been just one thing. Instead, it has morphed through the country’s history—and it’s likely changing again right now. “A stunning accomplishment . . . an indispensable guide to understanding American history—and what’s happening in today’s economy.”—Christian Science Monitor “The best one-volume history of American capitalism.”—Sven Beckert, author of Empire of Cotton

Download or read book British Economic Growth 1270 1870 written by Stephen Broadberry and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-01-22 with total page 503 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first systematic quantitative account of British economic growth from the thirteenth century to the Industrial Revolution.

Download or read book The Long Process of Development written by Jerry F. Hough and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-30 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking book examines the history of Spain, England, the United States, and Mexico to explain why development takes centuries.