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A sobering excavation of how deeply nineteenth-century American banks were entwined with the institution of slavery. It’s now widely understood that the fullest expression of nineteenth-century American capitalism was found in the structures of chattel slavery. It’s also understood that almost every other institution and aspect of life then was at least entangled with—and often profited from—slavery’s perpetuation. Yet as Sharon Ann Murphy shows in her powerful and unprecedented book, the centrality of enslaved labor to banking in the antebellum United States is far greater than previously thought. Banking on Slavery sheds light on precisely how the financial relationships between banks and slaveholders worked across the nineteenth-century South. Murphy argues that the rapid spread of slavery in the South during the 1820s and ’30s depended significantly upon southern banks’ willingness to financialize enslaved lives, with the use of enslaved individuals as loan collateral proving central to these financial relationships. She makes clear how southern banks were ready—and, in some cases, even eager—to alter time-honored banking practices to meet the needs of slaveholders. In the end, many of these banks sacrificed themselves in their efforts to stabilize the slave economy. Murphy also details how banks and slaveholders transformed enslaved lives from physical bodies into abstract capital assets. Her book provides an essential examination of how our nation’s financial history is more intimately intertwined with the dehumanizing institution of slavery than scholars have previously thought.
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Michael Drescher analyzes national mythologies in American and German literature. He focuses on processes of mythological resignification, a literary phenomenon carrying significant implications for questions of identity, democracy, and nationalism in Europe and America. Precise narratological analyses are paired with detailed, transnational readings of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Gutzkow's Wally, die Zweiflerin, Brown's Clotel, and Heine's Deutschland. Ein Wintermärchen. The study marries literature, mythology, and politics and contributes to the study of American and German literature at large.
Mythology in literature. --- Myth in literature. --- Mythology; Antebellum America; Vormärz Germany; Politics; National Identity; Narratology; Nathaniel Hawthorne; Karl Gutzkow; William Wells Brown; Heinrich Heine; America; Culture; American Studies; Cultural Studies; American History; Literary Studies --- America. --- American History. --- American Studies. --- Antebellum America. --- Cultural Studies. --- Culture. --- Heinrich Heine. --- Karl Gutzkow. --- Literary Studies. --- Narratology. --- Nathaniel Hawthorne. --- National Identity. --- Politics. --- Vormärz Germany. --- William Wells Brown.
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What does it mean to own something? How does a thing become mine? Liberal philosophy since John Locke has championed the salutary effects of private property but has avoided the more difficult questions of property’s ontology. Chad Luck argues that antebellum American literature is obsessed with precisely these questions. Reading slave narratives, gothic romances, city-mystery novels, and a range of other property narratives, Luck unearths a wide-ranging literary effort to understand the nature of ownership, the phenomenology of possession. In these antebellum texts, ownership is not an abstract legal form but a lived relation, a dynamic of embodiment emerging within specific cultural spaces—a disputed frontier, a city agitated by class conflict. Luck challenges accounts that map property practice along a trajectory of abstraction and “virtualization.” The book also reorients recent Americanist work in emotion and affect by detailing a broader phenomenology of ownership, one extending beyond emotion to such sensory experiences as touch, taste, and vision. This productive blend of phenomenology and history uncovers deep-seated anxieties—and enthusiasms—about property across antebellum culture.
American fiction --- Material culture in literature. --- Property in literature. --- Personal belongings in literature. --- History and criticism. --- Affect. --- American Literature. --- Antebellum Culture. --- Eighteenth-Century. --- Embodiment. --- Nineteenth-Century. --- Ownership. --- Phenomenology. --- Property. --- Space.
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Essays on the history of bands in America from ca. 1820 to 1930, offering new insights on a major sphere of music making that brought diverse repertories to wide audiences.
Band music --- Bands (Music) --- Musicians --- MUSIC / History & Criticism. --- American Bands. --- Antebellum. --- Band Evolution. --- Civil War Music. --- Francesco Fanciulli. --- Kaiser-Cornet-Quartett. --- Music History. --- Music Marketing. --- Sousa Band. --- History and criticism. --- History
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In Pursuit of Leviathan traces the American whaling industry from its rise in the 1840's to its precipitous fall at the end of the nineteenth century. Using detailed and comprehensive data that describe more than four thousand whaling voyages from New Bedford, Massachusetts, the leading nineteenth-century whaling port, the authors explore the market for whale products, crew quality and labor contracts, and whale biology and distribution, and assess the productivity of the American fleet. They then examine new whaling techniques developed at the end of the nineteenth century, such as modified clippers and harpoons, and the introduction of darting guns. Despite the common belief that the whaling industry declined due to a fall in whale stocks, the authors argue that the industry's collapse was related to changes in technology and market conditions. Providing a wealth of historical information, In Pursuit of Leviathan is a classic industry study that will provide intriguing reading for anyone interested in the history of whaling.
Whaling --- Economic aspects --- History --- Commercial whaling --- Hunting, Whale --- Whale fisheries --- Whale hunting --- Fisheries --- E-books --- whaling, history, economics, voyages, new bedford, massachusetts, ports, labor, products, commerce, innovation, whale biology, productivity, technology, clippers, harpoons, darting guns, nonfiction, profits, blubber, ambergris, market forces, crew, sailors, fleet, 19th century, antebellum, eastern seaboard, natural resources, capital.
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In Xenocitizens, Jason Berger returns to the antebellum United States in order to challenge a scholarly tradition based on liberal–humanist perspectives. Through the concept of the xenocitizen, a synthesis of the terms “xeno,” which connotes alien or stranger, and “citizen,” which signals a naturalized subject of a state, Berger uncovers realities and possibilities that have been foreclosed by dominant paradigms. Innovatively re-orienting our thinking about traditional nineteenth-century figures such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau as well as formative writers such as William Wells Brown, Martin R. Delany, Margaret Fuller, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, Xenocitizens glimpses how antebellum thinkers formulated, in response to varying forms of oppression and crisis, startlingly unique ontological and social models as well as unfamiliar ways to exist and to leverage change. In doing so, Berger offers us a different nineteenth century—pushing our imaginative and critical thinking toward new terrain.
American literature --- Politics and literature --- Liberalism in literature. --- Social change in literature. --- Liberalism --- Literature and society --- History and criticism. --- History --- Harriet Beecher Stowe. --- Henry David Thoreau. --- Margaret Fuller. --- Martin Delany. --- Nineteenth-century American literature. --- Ralph Waldo Emerson. --- William Wells Brown. --- antebellum U.S. --- ecology. --- liberalism. --- neoliberalism. --- ontology.
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Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world's dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry. In Mastering Iron, Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the US iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manuscript research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel. Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, Mastering Iron sheds new light on American ambitions and highlights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions.
Iron industry and trade --- History. --- industrialization, factory, iron, ironworks, industry, civil war, alabama, maryland, massachusetts, metals, pennsylvania, virginia, technology, steel, manufacturing, business, history, nonfiction, labor, geography, economy, production, wales, welsh, immigrants, england, great britain, competition, antebellum, weather, climate, natural resources, mining, slavery, earth sciences. --- History
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The first public orphanage in America, the Charleston Orphan House saw to the welfare and education of thousands of children from poor white families in the urban South. From wealthy benefactors to the families who sought its assistance to the artisans and merchants who relied on its charges as apprentices, the Orphan House was a critical component of the city's social fabric. By bringing together white citizens from all levels of society, it also played a powerful political role in maintaining the prevailing social order. John E. Murray tells the story of the Charleston Orphan House for the first time through the words of those who lived there or had family members who did. Through their letters and petitions, the book follows the families from the events and decisions that led them to the Charleston Orphan House through the children's time spent there to, in a few cases, their later adult lives. What these accounts reveal are families struggling to maintain ties after catastrophic loss and to preserve bonds with children who no longer lived under their roofs. An intimate glimpse into the lives of the white poor in early American history, The Charleston Orphan House is moreover an illuminating look at social welfare provision in the antebellum South.
Orphanages --- History. --- Charleston Orphan House --- children, childhood, growing up, coming of age, orphans, orphanage, public, america, american, united states, welfare, poverty, south, southern, benefactors, apprentice, social studies, community, inequality, equality, class, classism, politics, political, family, true story, history, historical, antebellum, carolina, education, sickness, adulthood.
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Many of us may not realize that what we now call snail mail was once just as revolutionary as e-mail and text messages are today. As David M. Henkin argues in The Postal Age, a burgeoning postal network initiated major cultural shifts during the nineteenth century, laying the foundation for the interconnectedness that now defines our ever-evolving world of telecommunications. This fascinating history traces these shifts from their beginnings in the mid-1800s, when cheaper postage, mass literacy, and migration combined to make the long-established postal service a more integral and viable part
Communication. --- Postal service. --- Business. --- Postal service --- Communication --- Transportation Economics --- Business & Economics --- History --- Social aspects --- Mail --- Mail service --- Post-office --- Carriers --- Communication and traffic --- Transportation --- communication, social change, post office, letters, correspondance, postal network, telecommunications, postage, literacy, migration, civil war, gold rush, immigration, race, poverty, junk mail, valentines, antebellum, history, nonfiction, news, urban, family, mass mailing, information, intimacy, connection, distance, pioneers, american west, frontier, labor, travel, relocation, homestead.
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Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and men--both white and black--n the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to life, making this study an extraordinary combination of historical research and sociological interpretation. Hansen challenges conventional notions that women were largely relegated to a private realm and men to a public one. A third dimension--the social sphere--also existed and was a critical meeting ground for both genders. In the social worlds of love, livelihood, gossip, friendship, and mutual assistance, working people crossed ideological gender boundaries. The book's rare collection of original writings reinforces Hansen's arguments and also provides an intimate glimpse into antebellum New England life.
New England --- Social life and customs --- Women --- History --- 19th century --- NON-CLASSIFIABLE. --- New England. --- Human females --- Wimmin --- Woman --- Womon --- Womyn --- Females --- Human beings --- Femininity --- Social life and customs. --- Women. --- anecdotal. --- antebellum new england life. --- autobiographies. --- black and white. --- challenges conventional notions of gender roles. --- diaries. --- half century before civil war. --- historical research and sociological interpretation. --- letters. --- men and women. --- men to public realm. --- narrative of new englands working class. --- women to private realm.
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