Ryden on Matson, ed., _The Economy of Early America: Historical Perspectives and New Directions_

[eh.net-review at eh.net]

Published by EH.NET (January 2007)

Cathy Matson, editor, _The Economy of Early America: Historical 
Perspectives and New Directions_. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania 
State University Press, 2005. viii + 380 pp. $55 (hardcover), ISBN: 
0-271-02711-8.

Reviewed for EH.NET by David B. Ryden, Department of History, 
University of Houston-Downtown.


In her lengthy overview of the intersection between economics and the 
field of history, Cathy Matson leads us to the conclusion that the 
New Economic history is all but fizzled out in Early American 
studies. Seventeenth and eighteenth century data are simply too thin 
to solve long-running regional income debates; to evaluate theories 
on economic growth (i.e. the staples model); or to conclude whether 
the colonials and early nationals were capitalists, 
proto-capitalists, or anti-capitalists. Furthermore, the cliometric 
approach has been unable to keep up with the non-quantifiable 
questions pursued by linguistic and cultural theorists. The point of 
this book, then, is to showcase new approaches that attempt to 
reframe social and cultural history into the field of economic 
history. While some economists might be initially suspicious of this 
agenda, it appears that the book is written _for_ historians, with 
the hopes of persuading them to be more receptive to adopt economic 
themes in their research.

Eleven out of the twelve contributions to this volume were delivered 
at the inaugural Program in Early American Economy and Society 
(PEAES) Conference, in April 2001. As the subtitle suggests, this 
collection of essays is all about taking stock of the field and 
divining "new directions." Much of the book is therefore 
historiographic and Matson has chosen John McCusker and Russell 
Menard's _The Economy of British America_ (1985) as a reference point 
(for full disclosure, Rus Menard was my graduate school advisor). 
Both Matson's general survey and David Hancock's "Rethinking _The 
Economy of British America_" mark the publication of the McCusker and 
Menard synthesis as a breaking point for the economic approach to 
colonial history. The problem with McCusker and Menard's volume, 
according to Hancock, was that it "seem[ed]" (1) "to close more doors 
than it opens," (2) "to be too 'economic' in its orientation" and (3) 
"to be insufficiently connected to historian's emerging interest in 
cultural studies." Thus, _fashion_ and the apparent certitude of the 
conclusion mapped by McCusker and Menard cemented in many minds 
(particularly that of younger historians) that there are no longer 
exciting colonial-era avenues for statistical research. Echoing 
Matson's call to fit more scholarship under the economic-history 
umbrella, Hancock laments the fact that cultural histories are 
absolutely bereft of economic history, calling this development to be 
just plain "weird." While he doesn't hold out high hopes for a 
resurgence of the statistical studies championed by McCusker and 
Menard, he sees the "boundaries of political-economic history ... 
waiting to be pushed."

The interloping contributors to this volume are Lorena Walsh and 
Russell Menard himself. In her review essay on recent trends in the 
demographic history of British America, Walsh sees continuity between 
the quantitative history of the 1970s through today. She points to 
the relatively recent migration studies by David Eltis and P.M.G. 
Harris. Added to these macro-studies are the quantitative regional 
work by Billy Smith, Daniel Vickers, and R.C. Nash. But Walsh 
emphasizes that there is still more statistical work to be done. She 
sees the greatest need in the areas of slave demography, material 
culture, and consumption patterns. Even the conclusions of _The 
Economy of British America_ are suggested to be worth revisiting, for 
the "often tentative synthesis of the state of the art in 1985" 
became "far more concrete and enduring ... than the authors [McCusker 
and Menard] ever intended." In the final sentence of her paper, 
Walsh's uncompromising position is loud and clear: she proclaims the 
urgent need for senior researchers, such as those listed above, to 
"persuade younger scholars to roll up their sleeves and get on with 
the important tasks remaining" in the field of economic and 
quantitative history.

Walsh briefly complies with the volume's theme when she notes that 
material-culture topics offer the best opportunity for a dialogue 
between economists and those operating within the cultural approach. 
Menard's chapter, on the other hand, ignores the book's agenda 
altogether. Rather, his paper follows through with the same 
neoclassical themes he laid out with his coauthor in 1985. This time, 
however, Menard uses the opportunity to survey recent findings on 
colonial agricultural production in order to hammer away at Peter 
Mancall and Thomas Weiss's contention that there was no colonial 
economic growth (1999). Menard coins the phrase "Mestizo agriculture" 
to catalogue a long list of on-the-spot farm innovations that 
integrated skills and methods from Europe, America, and Africa. For 
Menard, the widespread advances in productivity provide sufficient 
evidence that there were at least modest gains in real income.

With the exception of Christopher Tomlin's summary of colonial 
servant migration and Brooke Hunter's impressive research on the 
economic impact of the Hessian-fly infestation, the remaining 
chapters are indeed significantly different from the approach laid 
out by McCusker and Menard. These pieces are working within an 
entirely different historiographical framework, dealing with more 
political and social issues of the late colonial, early national, and 
Jacksonian periods. A repeated theme in these chapters is the debate 
over how Americans felt about the "Market Revolution" during the 
early nineteenth century. As mentioned in the book's preface, there 
is not a consensus on many points, including this one. Seth Rockman, 
for example, emphasizes the exploitation that was at the heart of the 
"Unfree Origins of American Capitalism," while Donna Rilling's study 
of Philadelphia entrepreneurs focuses on a group that directly 
benefited from market integration during the early national period. 
Because this debate over attitudes toward the market is so prominent 
in these essays, it is no surprise that political economy 
reverberates throughout the second half of this volume.

Every essay included in this book is insightful and offers solid 
documentation on the current state of the field. Its fundamental 
limitation, however, is in its narrow geographic scope. Each author 
fits his or her work within the literature of United States history, 
but there is a marked concentration on Pennsylvania subjects. This is 
no surprise, given that the PEAES is located at the Library Company 
in Philadelphia. Nonetheless, with the rise in "Atlantic history" 
since the publication of _The Economy of British America_, one might 
expect that trade and mercantile connections would figure more 
prominently. Attitudes towards consumption of foreign goods and 
imperial restrictions on British West Indian commerce are mentioned 
several times, but never explored deeply by any of the contributors. 
This complaint, however, should not distract from the book's 
contributions. Matson's seventy page "Thoughts on the Field of 
Economic History" is a powerful introduction to the intersection of 
the two disciplines, while each individual essay offers an impressive 
survey of the literature. Economists and historians interested in 
early America will find this provocative collection to be a 
worthwhile read that might motivate them to challenge or endorse the 
PEAES-school approach.

Table of Contents

Preface
1 A House of Many Mansions: Some Thoughts on the Field of Economic 
History by Cathy Matson 2 Rethinking the Economy of British America 
by David Hancock 3 Colonial America's Mestizo Agriculture by Russell 
R. Menard 4 Peopling, Producing, and Consuming in Early British 
America by Lorena S. Walsh 5 Indentured Servitude in Perspective: 
European Migration into North America and the Composition of the 
Early American Labor Force, 1600/1775 by Christopher Tomlins 6 
Capitalism, Slavery, and Benjamin Franklin's American Revolution by 
David Waldstreicher 7 Moneyless in Pennsylvania: Privatization and 
the Depression of the 1780s by Terry Bouton 8 Creative Destruction: 
The Forgotten Legacy of the Hessian Fly by Brooke Hunter 9 The Panic 
of 1819 and the Political Economy of Sectionalism by Daniel S. Dupre 
10 Toward a Social History of the Corporation: Shareholding in 
Pennsylvania, 1800/1840 by John Majewski 11 Small-Producer Capitalism 
in Early National Philadelphia by Donna J. Rilling 12 The Unfree 
Origins of America Capitalism by Seth Rockman


David B. Ryden is an assistant professor of history at the University 
of Houston-Downtown. His research focuses on the economy of British 
America. Most recently, he coauthored (with Russell R. Menard) "South 
Carolina's Colonial Land Market: An Analysis of Rural Property Sales, 
1720-1775," _Social Science History_ (2005). He is presently 
completing a book manuscript on the West India lobby and the 
abolition of the British slave trade.

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