Description
Book SynopsisAmerican Capitalism presents cutting-edge research that makes capitalism a subject of historical inquiry. Venturing new angles on finance, debt, and credit; women's rights; slavery and political economy; labor; the racialization of capitalism; and the production of knowledge, it demonstrates the breadth and scope of the new history of capitalism.
Trade ReviewSven Beckert and Christine Desan are leaders in the burgeoning history of capitalism field, and they have put together a volume of outstanding scholars whose essays, in their chronological reach and subject matter, show this new literature at its best. A very fine and promising collection. -- Steven Hahn, New York University
This stunning volume not only captures the most vibrant, challenging work in the history of capitalism, but also distills the central themes and defining contributions of the field. The essays speak to all historians, not just those working in the history of capitalism. A must-read. -- Laura F. Edwards, Duke University
American Capitalism represents the coming of age of a field of historical research. Rarely, in any field, has one volume featured the work of so many talented and accomplished historians. Each chapter breaks fresh ground and proposes new lines of inquiry. The editors have assembled a landmark and agenda-setting book that no student of economic life in the United States can afford to ignore. -- Jonathan Levy, University of Chicago
From the creditor constitution to the market for slave clothing to early American mercantilist thinking, this deftly curated book samples some of the best work that the history of capitalism literature has to offer. Readers interested in new and provocative explorations of the politics, law, and culture enmeshed in American economic institutions need look no further. -- Suresh Naidu, Columbia University
Few historical subfields are more important and timely than the critical history of capitalism. In this volume, Sven Beckert and Christine Desan have assembled cutting-edge work on topics as diverse as slavery, credit, insurance and risk, financial crises, race, gender, agriculture, and law and regulation. These essays combine chronological breadth, analytical depth, and geographic scope, linking the micro and macro, the local and the global. Essential reading. -- Thomas J. Sugrue, New York University
American Capitalism shows us the benefits of a broad approach to the study of capitalism, and scholars from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds will learn much from its essays. -- John N. Blanton * The Gotham Center for New York History *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Part I. Making Markets1. The Capitalist Constitution, by Woody Holton
2. What
Was the Great Bull Market? Value, Valuation, and Financial History, by Julia Ott
3. The New York City Fiscal Crisis and the Idea of the State, by Kim Phillips-Fein
Part II. Claiming and Contesting Capitalism4. Utopian Capitalism, by Richard White
5. The Sovereign Market and Sex Difference: Human Rights in America, by Amy Dru Stanley
6. Negro Cloth: Mastering the Market for Slave Clothing in Antebellum America, by Seth Rockman
7. Revulsions of Capital: Slavery and Political Economy in the Epoch of the Turner Rebellion, Virginia,
1829–1832, by Christopher Tomlins
Part III. “Knowing” Capital8. Risk, Uncertainty, and Data: Managing Risk in Twentieth-Century America, by Mary Poovey
9. Representations of Capitalism in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, by Peter Knight
10. Value of Life: Insurance, Slavery, and Expertise, by Michael Ralph
Part IV. Refiguring Space from the Local to the Global11. War by Other Means: Mercantilism and Free Trade in the Age of the American Revolution, by Eliga H. Gould
12. “Innovative Solutions to Modern Agriculture”: Capitalist Farming, Global Competition, and the Devolution of the U.S. Rice Industry, by Peter A. Coclanis
13. Importing the World’s Fair, by Michael Zakim
14. Plantation Dispossessions: The Global Travel of Agricultural Racial Capitalism, by Kris Manjapra
Selected Bibliography
List of Contributors
Index
