Download or read book Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia written by Andrew M. Schocket and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During its first heady decades, the United States promised to become a fully democratic society with unprecedented liberty and opportunity. Yet, as political rights spread, a rising elite gained control over the sources of prosperity by means of the institution that has since come to symbolize capitalist America--the corporation. In this study, Andrew M. Schocket analyzes the establishment, growth, and operations of both commercial and municipal corporations in the nation's premier city, Philadelphia. From the 1780s through the 1820s, members of Philadelphia's privileged class formed corporations in order to consolidate their capital and political influence. By controlling regional transportation networks as well as banks and the municipal water supply, they exploited the ambitions of local farmers, artisans, and entrepreneurs who depended upon corporate services. Meanwhile, corporate insiders managed to insulate their decision-making not only from the public but even from the majority of their own stockholders. In short, in this leading commercial city with a reputation for innovation, a corporate aristocracy created a new form of power. At the same time, corporations answered needs that private individuals or partnerships could not--and government, uncertain of its own authority, would not--supply. Resolving the apparent contradiction between the spread of political democracy and the consolidation of economic power, Schocket provocatively argues that corporations helped to generate the relatively diffuse prosperity of the early national period. Though controlled by the few, they offered services that allowed middle-class entrepreneurs to flourish. This mixed legacy has resulted in the continuing ambivalence toward U.S. corporations today.
Download or read book Corporate Spirit written by Amanda Porterfield and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-01 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking work, Amanda Porterfield explores the long intertwining of religion and commerce in the history of incorporation in the United States. Beginning with the antecedents of that history in western Europe, she focuses on organizations to show how corporate strategies in religion and commerce developed symbiotically, and how religion has influenced the corporate structuring and commercial orientation of American society. Porterfield begins her story in ancient Rome. She traces the development of corporate organization through medieval Europe and Elizabethan England and then to colonial North America, where organizational practices derived from religion infiltrated commerce, and commerce led to political independence. Left more to their own devices than under British law, religious groups in the United States experienced unprecedented autonomy that facilitated new forms of communal governance and new means of broadcasting their messages. As commercial enterprise expanded, religious organizations grew apace, helping many Americans absorb the shocks of economic turbulence, and promoting new conceptions of faith, spirit, and will power that contributed to business. Porterfield highlights the role that American religious institutions played a society increasingly dominated by commercial incorporation and free market ideologies. She also shows how charitable impulses long nurtured by religion continued to stimulate reform and demand for accountability.
Download or read book The Founders and Finance written by Thomas K. McCraw and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2012-10-08 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1776 the United States government started out on a shoestring and quickly went bankrupt fighting its War of Independence against Britain. At the war’s end, the national government owed tremendous sums to foreign creditors and its own citizens. But lacking the power to tax, it had no means to repay them. The Founders and Finance is the first book to tell the story of how foreign-born financial specialists—immigrants—solved the fiscal crisis and set the United States on a path to long-term economic success. Pulitzer Prize–winning author Thomas K. McCraw analyzes the skills and worldliness of Alexander Hamilton (from the Danish Virgin Islands), Albert Gallatin (from the Republic of Geneva), and other immigrant founders who guided the nation to prosperity. Their expertise with liquid capital far exceeded that of native-born plantation owners Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, who well understood the management of land and slaves but had only a vague knowledge of financial instruments—currencies, stocks, and bonds. The very rootlessness of America’s immigrant leaders gave them a better understanding of money, credit, and banks, and the way each could be made to serve the public good. The remarkable financial innovations designed by Hamilton, Gallatin, and other immigrants enabled the United States to control its debts, to pay for the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, and—barely—to fight the War of 1812, which preserved the nation’s hard-won independence from Britain.
Download or read book A Companion to Benjamin Franklin written by David Waldstreicher and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-06-13 with total page 625 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion provides a comprehensive survey of the life, work and legacy of Benjamin Franklin - the oldest, most distinctive, and multifaceted of the founders. Includes contributions from across a range of academic disciplines Combines traditional and cutting-edge scholarship, from accomplished and emerging experts in the field Pays special attention to the American Revolution, the Enlightenment, journalism, colonial American society, and themes of race, class, and gender Places Franklin in the context of recent work in political theory, American Studies, American literature, material culture studies, popular culture, and international relations
Download or read book Historians on Hamilton written by Renee C. Romano and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America has gone Hamilton crazy. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony-winning musical has spawned sold-out performances, a triple platinum cast album, and a score so catchy that it is being used to teach U.S. history in classrooms across the country. But just how historically accurate is Hamilton? And how is the show itself making history? Historians on Hamilton brings together a collection of top scholars to explain the Hamilton phenomenon and explore what it might mean for our understanding of America’s history. The contributors examine what the musical got right, what it got wrong, and why it matters. Does Hamilton’s hip-hop take on the Founding Fathers misrepresent our nation’s past, or does it offer a bold positive vision for our nation’s future? Can a musical so unabashedly contemporary and deliberately anachronistic still communicate historical truths about American culture and politics? And is Hamilton as revolutionary as its creators and many commentators claim? Perfect for students, teachers, theatre fans, hip-hop heads, and history buffs alike, these short and lively essays examine why Hamilton became an Obama-era sensation and consider its continued relevance in the age of Trump. Whether you are a fan or a skeptic, you will come away from this collection with a new appreciation for the meaning and importance of the Hamilton phenomenon.
Download or read book Stumbling Towards the Constitution written by J. Chu and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-04-14 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Chu explores individual economic and legal behaviors, connecting them to adjustments in trade relations with Europe and Asia, the rise in debt litigation in Western Massachusetts, deflation and monetary illiquidity, and the Bank of North America.
Download or read book A Companion to American Legal History written by Sally E. Hadden and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-02-22 with total page 653 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Companion to American Legal History presents a compilation of the most recent writings from leading scholars on American legal history from the colonial era through the late twentieth century. Presents up-to-date research describing the key debates in American legal history Reflects the current state of American legal history research and points readers in the direction of future research Represents an ideal companion for graduate and law students seeking an introduction to the field, the key questions, and future research ideas
Download or read book In Union There Is Strength written by Andrew Heath and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1840s, Philadelphia was poised to join the ranks of the world's great cities, as its population grew, its manufacturing prospered, and its railroads reached outward to the West. Yet epidemics of riot, disease, and labor conflict led some to wonder whether growth would lead to disintegration. As slavery and territorial conquest forced Americans to ponder a similar looming disunion at the national level, Philadelphians searched for ways to hold their city together across internal social and sectional divisions—a project of consolidation that reshaped their city into the boundaries we know today. A bold new interpretation of a crucial period in Philadelphia's history, In Union There Is Strength examines the social and spatial reconstruction of an American city in the decades on either side of the American Civil War. Andrew Heath follows Philadelphia's fortunes over the course of forty years as industrialization, immigration, and natural population growth turned a Jacksonian-era port with a population of two hundred thousand into a Gilded Age metropolis containing nearly a million people. Heath focuses on the utopian socialists, civic boosters, and municipal reformers who argued that the path to urban greatness lay in the harmonious consolidation of jarring interests rather than in the atomistic individualism we have often associated with the nineteenth-century metropolis. Their rival visions drew them into debates about the reach of local government, the design of urban space, the character of civic life, the power of corporations, and the relations between labor and capital—and ultimately became entangled with the question of national union itself. In tracing these links between city-making and nation-making in the mid-nineteenth century, In Union There Is Strength shows how its titular rallying cry inspired creative, contradictory, and fiercely contested ideas about how to design, build, and live in a metropolis.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of the American System written by Songho Ha and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The American System was implemented by the US government after the American-British War of 1812 to develop a national domestic market. This study explores the rise and fall of the system between its inception in 1790 and the Panic of 1837.
Download or read book 2007 written by Massimo Mastrogregori and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-12-23 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die International Bibliographiy of Historical Sciences verzeichnet jährlich die bedeutendsten Neuerscheinungen geschichtswissenschaftlicher Monographien und Zeitschriftenartikel weltweit, die inhaltlich von der Vor- und Frühgeschichte bis zur jüngsten Vergangenheit reichen. Sie ist damit die derzeit einzige laufende Bibliographie dieser Art, die thematisch, zeitlich und geographisch ein derart breites Spektrum abdeckt. Innerhalb der systematischen Gliederung nach Zeitalter, Region oder historischer Disziplin sind die Werke nach Autorennamen oder charakteristischem Titelhauptwort aufgelistet.
Download or read book Class Matters written by Simon Middleton and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-06-03 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As a category of historical analysis, class is dead—or so it has been reported over the past two decades. The contributors to Class Matters contest this demise. Although differing in their approaches, they all agree that socioeconomic inequality remains indispensable to a true understanding of the transition from the early modern to modern era in North America and the rest of the Atlantic world. As a whole, they chart the emergence of class as a concept and its subsequent loss of analytic purchase in Anglo-American historiography. The opening section considers the dynamics of class relations in the Atlantic world across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—from Iroquoian and Algonquian communities in North America to tobacco lords in Glasgow. Subsequent chapters examine the cultural development of a new and aspirational middle class and its relationship to changing economic conditions and the articulation of corporate and industrial ideologies in the era of the American Revolution and beyond. A final section shifts the focus to the poor and vulnerable—tenant farmers, infant paupers, and the victims of capital punishment. In each case the authors describe how elite Americans exercised their political and social power to structure the lives and deaths of weaker members of their communities. An impassioned afterword urges class historians to take up the legacies of historical materialism. Engaging the difficulties and range of meanings of class, the essays in Class Matters seek to energize the study of social relations in the Atlantic world.
Download or read book Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic written by Mark Boonshoft and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the American Revolution, it was a cliche that the new republic's future depended on widespread, informed citizenship. However, instead of immediately creating the common schools--accessible, elementary education--that seemed necessary to create such a citizenry, the Federalists in power founded one of the most ubiquitous but forgotten institutions of early American life: academies, privately run but state-chartered secondary schools that offered European-style education primarily for elites. By 1800, academies had become the most widely incorporated institutions besides churches and transportation projects in nearly every state. In this book, Mark Boonshoft shows how many Americans saw the academy as a caricature of aristocratic European education and how their political reaction against the academy led to a first era of school reform in the United States, helping transform education from a tool of elite privilege into a key component of self-government. And yet the very anti-aristocratic critique that propelled democratic education was conspicuously silent on the persistence of racial and gender inequality in public schooling. By tracing the history of academies in the revolutionary era, Boonshoft offers a new understanding of political power and the origins of public education and segregation in the United States.
Download or read book A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson written by Sean Patrick Adams and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-01-28 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A COMPANION TO THE ERA OF ANDREW JACKSON More than perhaps any other president, Andrew Jackson’s story mirrored that of the United States; from his childhood during the American Revolution, through his military actions against both Native Americans and Great Britain, and continuing into his career in politics. As president, Jackson attacked the Bank of the United States, railed against disunion in South Carolina, defended the honor of Peggy Eaton, and founded the Democratic Party. In doing so, Andrew Jackson was not only an eyewitness to some of the seminal events of the Early American Republic; he produced an indelible mark on the nation’s political, economic, and cultural history. A Companion to the Era of Andrew Jackson features a collection of more than 30 original essays by leading scholars and historians that consider various aspects of the life, times, and legacy of the seventh president of the United States. Topics explored include life in the Early American Republic; issues of race, religion, and culture; the rise of the Democratic Party; Native American removal events; the Panic of 1837; the birth of women’s suffrage, and more.
Download or read book Tom Paine s Iron Bridge Building a United States written by Edward G. Gray and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2016-04-25 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The little-known story of the architectural project that lay at the heart of Tom Paine’s political blueprint for the United States. In a letter to his wife Abigail, John Adams judged the author of Common Sense as having “a better hand at pulling down than building.” Adams’s dismissive remark has helped shape the prevailing view of Tom Paine ever since. But, as Edward G. Gray shows in this fresh, illuminating work, Paine was a builder. He had a clear vision of success for his adopted country. It was embodied in an architectural project that he spent a decade planning: an iron bridge to span the Schuylkill River at Philadelphia. When Paine arrived in Philadelphia from England in 1774, the city was thriving as America’s largest port. But the seasonal dangers of the rivers dividing the region were becoming an obstacle to the city’s continued growth. Philadelphia needed a practical connection between the rich grain of Pennsylvania’s backcountry farms and its port on the Delaware. The iron bridge was Paine’s solution. The bridge was part of Paine’s answer to the central political challenge of the new nation: how to sustain a republic as large and as geographically fragmented as the United States. The iron construction was Paine’s brilliant response to the age-old challenge of bridge technology: how to build a structure strong enough to withstand the constant battering of water, ice, and wind. The convergence of political and technological design in Paine’s plan was Enlightenment genius. And Paine drew other giants of the period as patrons: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and for a time his great ideological opponent, Edmund Burke. Paine’s dream ultimately was a casualty of the vicious political crosscurrents of revolution and the American penchant for bridges of cheap, plentiful wood. But his innovative iron design became the model for bridge construction in Britain as it led the world into the industrial revolution.
Download or read book Flowers Guns and Money written by Lindsay Schakenbach Regele and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-11-27 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fascinating historical account of a largely forgotten statesman, who pioneered a form of patriotism that left an indelible mark on the early United States. Joel Roberts Poinsett’s (1779–1851) brand of self-interested patriotism illuminates the paradoxes of the antebellum United States. He was a South Carolina investor and enslaver, a confidant of Andrew Jackson, and a secret agent in South America who fought surreptitiously in Chile’s War for Independence. He was an ambitious Congressman and Secretary of War who oversaw the ignominy of the Trail of Tears and orchestrated America’s longest and costliest war against Native Americans, yet also helped found the Smithsonian. In addition, he was a naturalist, after whom the poinsettia—which he appropriated while he was serving as the first US ambassador to Mexico—is now named. As Lindsay Schakenbach Regele shows in Flowers, Guns, and Money, Poinsett personified a type of patriotism that emerged following the American Revolution, one in which statesmen served the nation by serving themselves, securing economic prosperity and military security while often prioritizing their own ambitions and financial interests. Whether waging war, opposing states’ rights yet supporting slavery, or pushing for agricultural and infrastructural improvements in his native South Carolina, Poinsett consistently acted in his own self-interest. By examining the man and his actions, Schakenbach Regele reveals an America defined by opportunity and violence, freedom and slavery, and nationalism and self-interest.
Download or read book Awkward Rituals written by Dana W. Logan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-05-06 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh account of early American religious history that argues for a new understanding of ritual. In the years between the American Revolution and the Civil War, there was an awkward persistence of sovereign rituals, vestiges of a monarchical past that were not easy to shed. In Awkward Rituals, Dana Logan focuses our attention on these performances, revealing the ways in which governance in the early republic was characterized by white Protestants reenacting the hierarchical authority of a seemingly rejected king. With her unique focus on embodied action, rather than the more common focus on discourse or law, Logan makes an original contribution to debates about the relative completeness of America’s Revolution. Awkward Rituals theorizes an under-examined form of action: rituals that do not feel natural even if they sometimes feel good. This account challenges common notions of ritual as a force that binds society and synthesizes the self. Ranging from Freemason initiations to evangelical societies to missionaries posing as sailors, Logan shows how white Protestants promoted a class-based society while simultaneously trumpeting egalitarianism. She thus redescribes ritual as a box to check, a chore to complete, an embarrassing display of theatrical verve. In Awkward Rituals, Logan emphasizes how ritual distinctively captures what does not change through revolution.
Download or read book Cooperation Community and Co Ops in a Global Era written by Carl Ratner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-11-15 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Globalization pressures have made cooperation on a global scale both necessary and possible. But cooperation is not easy in a world dominated by individual, cultural, and national selfish interests. The opposition to cooperation means that cooperation is not natural, but must be instituted through an intellectual and social struggle against countervailing forces. This book discusses issues that are necessary to describe the nature of cooperation and how it can be promoted as a social and ethical ideal amidst a sea of competing interests. Dr. Ratner uses the framework of cooperativism, that is the system of social institutions, social philosophy, cultural psychology and politics that promotes cooperation, as a starting point. Elements of cooperativism are derived from a rigorous analysis of various sources, including the needs of tendencies of human culture and human psychology.
