The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism

The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism
Author: Allan Kulikoff
Publsiher: University of Virginia Press
Total Pages: 366
Release: 1992
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0813914205

Download The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Allan Kulikoff's provocative new book traces the rural origins and growth of capitalism in America, challenging earlier scholarship and charting a new course for future studies in history and economics. Kulikoff argues that long before the explosive growth of cities and big factories, capitalism in the countryside changed our society- the ties between men and women, the relations between different social classes, the rhetoric of the yeomanry, slave migration, and frontier settlement. He challenges the received wisdom that associates the birth of capitalism wholly with New York, Philadelphia, and Boston and show how studying the critical market forces at play in farm and village illuminates the defining role of the yeomen class in the origins of capitalism.

The Political Economy of the Family Farm

The Political Economy of the Family Farm
Author: Sue Headlee
Publsiher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 230
Release: 1991-11-30
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780313389160

Download The Political Economy of the Family Farm Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Agriculture played an important role in the transition to capitalism in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. In her study, Sue Headlee argues that the family farm system, with its progressive nature and egalitarian class structure, revolutionized this transition to capitalism. The family farm is examined in light of its economic and political implications, showing the relationship between the family farm and fledgling industrial capitalism, a relationship that fostered the simultaneous industrial and agricultural revolutions and the creation of an agro-industrial complex. Headlee focuses on the adoption of the horse-drawn mechanical reaper (to harvest wheat) by family farmers in the 1850s. The neoclassical economic explanation, with its emphasis on the farm as a profit-maximizing firm, is criticized for its lack of recognition of the role of the family farm's egalitarian class structure. This look at the economic history of the United States has lessons for the Third World today: agricultural development is vital to the transition to capitalism; the agrarian class structures of Third World countries may be holding back that transition; and a family farm/land reform approach would lead to increases in productivity and in the material well-being of society. Headlee's analysis supports three important debates in political economy, thus providing the historical and theoretical context for understanding the role of agriculture in the transition to capitalism in general and in the particular case of the United States. Her findings conclude that agrarian class structures can explain the differential patterns of development in pre-industrial Europe. Further evidence is presented that the internal class structure of agrarian society is the crucial causal factor in the transition to capitalism and that market developments alone are not sufficient. Lastly and most controversially, Headlee acknowledges the importance of the Civil War in propelling the triumph of American capitalism, allowing the Republican Party (an alliance of family farmers and industrial capitalists) to take control of the state from the Democratic Party of the southern plantation owners. This book will be of interest to scholars in political economy, economic history, agrarian economics, and development economics.

The Origins of American Capitalism

The Origins of American Capitalism
Author: James A. Henretta
Publsiher: UPNE
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1991
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1555531091

Download The Origins of American Capitalism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice

Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice
Author: Susan Archer Mann
Publsiher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9781469639727

Download Agrarian Capitalism in Theory and Practice Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Susan Mann focuses on a longstanding controversy in sociological theory: why has agriculture been traditionally resistant to wage labor? Capitalist develoment has been slower and more uneven in agriculture than in other spheres of production, and major parts of the rural economy remain almost preindustrial in their reliance on family labor, lack of separation between industry and household, and failure to develop a highly specialized division of labor. Emphasizing the agriculture of the American South, Mann adopts an interdisciplinary approach, drawing insights from history and economics as well as sociology. Mann points out that most theories of agrarian capitalism -- both Marxist and non-Marxist -- ignore the implications of agriculture as a production process centered in nature, with natural features that cannot be synchronized easily into the tempos required by industrial production. She argues that various natural and technical features of agricultural production, such as the relatively lengthy production time of certain crops and the irregular labor requirements imposed by seasonal production, make some types of farming particularly risky avenues for capitalist investment. To test this pioneering theory of natural obstacles to rural capitalist development, Mann creatively combines diverse research methodologies. Analyzing U.S. Agricultural Census data, she shows the correlations between type of agricultural commodity or crop produced, the natural and technical features of these rural commodities, and the use of wage labor. Using an historical-comparative approach, she investigates the persistence of nonwage labor in American cotton production after the Civil War. She examines why sharecropping, rather than wage labor, replaced slavery in the older cotton-producing regions of the southeastern United States. She then discusses the domestic and international factors that finally led to the demise of sharecropping and the rise of wage labor in the decades following the Great Depression. In this historical study of the rise and demise of sharecropping, the interplay between nature, gender, race, and class is highlighted. By closely examining both natural and social obstacles to wage labor within the context of a global economy, Mann presents not only an intriguing analysis of agrarian capitalist development but also an entirely new framework for examining the social history of the American South. Originally published in 1990. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South

From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South
Author: Joseph P. Reidy
Publsiher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Total Pages: 377
Release: 2000-11-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807864067

Download From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Reidy has produced one of the most thoughtful treatments to date of a critical moment in southern history, placing the social transformation of the South in the context of 'the age of capital' and the changes in the markets, ideologies, etc. of the Atlantic world system. Better than anyone perhaps, Reidy has elaborated both the large and small narratives of this development, connecting global forces with the initiatives and reactions of ordinary southerners, black and white.--Thomas C. Holt, University of Chicago "Joseph Reidy's detailed analysis of social and economic developments in central Georgia during and after slavery will take its place among the standard works on these subjects. Its discussions of the expansion of the cotton kingdom and of the changes after emancipation make it necessary reading for all concerned with southern and African-American history.--Stanley Engerman, University of Rochester "Successfully places the experience of one region's people into the larger theoretical context of world capitalist development and in the process challenges other scholars to do the same.--Rural Sociology

The American Road to Capitalism

The American Road to Capitalism
Author: Charles Post
Publsiher: BRILL
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2011-03-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9789004201033

Download The American Road to Capitalism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book synthesizes Marxian theory with the existing historical literature to produce a new analysis of the origins of capitalism in the US and the social roots of the US Civil War.

The Origin of Capitalism

The Origin of Capitalism
Author: Ellen Meiksins Wood
Publsiher: Unknown
Total Pages: 160
Release: 1999-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: STANFORD:36105022959816

Download The Origin of Capitalism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Ellen Meiksins Wood challenges most existing accounts of capitalism's origins, arguing that they fail to recognize its distinctive attributes as a social system by making its emergence seem natural and inevitable

Tobacco and Slaves

Tobacco and Slaves
Author: Allan Kulikoff
Publsiher: UNC Press Books
Total Pages: 468
Release: 2012-12-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780807839225

Download Tobacco and Slaves Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Tobacco and Slaves is a major reinterpretation of the economic and political transformation of Chesapeake society from 1680 to 1800. Building upon massive archival research in Maryland and Virginia, Allan Kulikoff provides the most comprehensive study to date of changing social relations--among both blacks and whites--in the eighteenth-century South. He links his arguments about class, gender, and race to the later social history of the South and to larger patterns of American development. Allan Kulikoff is professor of history at Northern Illinois University and author of The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism.