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The Best Poor Man's Country

2012-06-21T22:56:33Z

32.164.50.35: Created page with "The Best Poor Man's Country invites readers to consider the significance of Pennsylvania to Europe in the colonial days, as a beacon of freedom and an open field for entrepreneur..."

The Best Poor Man's Country invites readers to consider the significance of Pennsylvania to Europe in the colonial days, as a beacon of freedom and an open field for entrepreneurial spirits to hoe a row for themselves without the encumbering religious community or nucleic structure of New England society. The colony's settlers hailed from England, Germany's protestant southwest, Wales, Scotland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and France. James T. Lemon emphasizes the liberal and individualistic outlook of the people, starting his first chapter with a consideration of the declining feudal system and the mentality of those recently unbelted from its constraints. "Most migrants were dissenters from Rome," suggests the author, who is preoccupied with the political outlook of an incipient petty bourgeoisie that puts its roots down in Penn's Woods. Lemon writes against earlier scholarship that suggests national identity shaped settlement more than practical interest, insisting that, whatever their ethnic origin, people followed the dictates of rational self-interest (i.e. liberalism) in tackling the land. This ideology (or set of "goals," as he prefers) also led to a sort of conservatism emphasizing hard work, material gain, and privacy. In other words, the political culture of ambitious middle-of-the-road Western European dissenter protestants in a relatively open society begat a form of settlement -- scattered, somewhat isolated, punctuated by the occasional trading center -- that in turn developed the political culture of the Pennsylvania to come.

Lemon looks at the initial sites of settlement, spatial mobility, urban hierarchy, rural economic structure and land-use regionalization. He especially seeks to explain why the colony's settlers opted for a pattern of dispered farms rather than agricultural villages and tightknit townships. "Unlike early 17th century Massachusetts, the chief level of local government in Pennsylvania was the county." The author finds little correlation between different nationalities and the kind of land they chose to inhabit, as the availability of water, market access, and farms of desirable size determined many people's decision of where to settle, regardless of ethnicity.

The area along the Delaware had a thin population of Indians and few Europeans in 1680, but by 1800 there were more than 300,000 European-Americans there. Lemon points out that they had dramatically altered the landscape, with scattered farms, market towns and mines, but they had changed little in the way of technology or underlying values. Pennsylvanians clung to the notion of individual, material success, and even those who abandoned the land carried the same ideology with them as they went west.

Lemon divides his study into four periods: establishment, 1681-1700; stagnation, 1700-1730; expansion, 1730-1760; and consolidation, disruption, and reestablishment, 1760-1800. In the first stage, most settlers did not come from the richest or the poorest strata of western European society. Rather, they were the "middling" sort - Quakers, German sectarians and Anglicans who came to build an open society based on individual effort and material success. William Penn had advocated fee-simple tenure, which most agreed with, and a design of townships centered around meeting-houses, which many did not like. Enclosure of land and consolidation of fields dominated, against the model of New England town-based, communitarian settlement. Although towns were surveyed, most settlement lacked any clear center and the county became the basic unit of governance. People did like the idea of having a few major urban centers as markets for crops and other goods, so they supported the development of Philadelphia; the city's founding also coincided with the opening of markets in the West Indies, to which the area mostly exported wheat and beef.

Between 1700 and 1730, the formerly rapid pace of growth slackened. Fewer migrants came during this time, principally Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and German Mennonites. Many more Germans, of the Lutheran and Reformed persuasion, came after 1725. There was much mixed settlement by these newcomers, although some gravitated toward areas already settled by people similar to themselves. People showed no interest in founding new towns, as most turned to Philadelphia to fulfill the necessary urban functions. The time between 1730-1760 saw renewed growth, and by 1752 the three counties Lemon initially studied had been divided into eight, with Lancaster, York, Reading, and Carlisle emerging as small but significant urban nodes. They were sufficiently distant from both Philadelphia and each other to have relevance to their surrounding communities, a la central place theory. Depression and war sometimes stood in the way of trade, but agricultural exports increased by 50 percent between the 1730s and the 60s and imports increased even more so. Lemon credits the planning acumen of the Penns in strategically placing country towns and the skill of merchants in organizing trade for bolstering economic activity, since farming techniques remained "virtually antediluvian."

Social stratification had been relatively unknown in the "establishment" period, but in the first sixty years of the eighteenth century differentiation of wealth did steadily develop. According to Lemon, the relative success of the sectarians derived from their hard work, mutual help, and inclination to try new techniques, rather than any occupation of superior soil. Wealth still did not vary by nationality in 1760. In the final period, closing out the eighteenth century, Lemon found less growth and prosperity, chiefly due to the disruptions of war and revolution. Experimentation began that would yield major gains in farm productivity after 1800. The final three or four decades were quite different than the boisterous economic growth of 1748-1760, as imports/exports peaked and doubts about Atlantic trade (as seen in the Nonimportation agreements of 1769) stifled commerce. Farmers, who still focused largely on subsistence, were able to weather the changes.

Changes in the Land

2012-06-21T22:55:37Z

32.164.50.35:

Since the mid-1980s, William Cronon’s contributions to environmental history remain pivotal. ''Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West'' (1992) combined environmental, ecological, and economic histories to explore the effects of the Midwest’s largest city on the region and surrounding lands. Likewise, Cronon’s earlier effort, ''Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England'' (1983) attempts to extend historical boundaries past “human institutions – economies, class, and gender systems, political organizations, cultural rituals – to the natural ecosystems which provide the context for these institutions.” Cronon cautions readers to not draw the wrong conclusions from his work. Though European and Native American ideas about property and land use differed, neither proved “purer” rather each illustrated ways humans altered the environment, “the reader must be very clear that the Indians were no more static than the colonists in their activities and organization. When I describe pre-colonial Indian ways of life, I intend no suggestion that they were somehow “purer” or more “Indian” than the ways of life Indians chose (or were forced into) following their contact with colonists.” (viii)

For the newly arriving European settlers, the landscape held, in addition to environmental and economic value, symbolic meaning. Cronon points out that for Enlightenment thinkers like Benjamin Rush, “the landscape was a visible confirmation of the state of human society. Both underwent an evolutionary development from savagery to civilization.” (6) In this way, Cronon notes that colonists did not arrive on “virgin lands” but rather an environment that had been altered by Native American practices. When these practices collapse in the face of colonial settlement, Cronon carefully notes that “The destruction of Indian communities in fact brought some of the most important ecological changes which followed the Europeans’ arrival in America. The choice is not between two landscapes, one with and own without human influence; it is between two human ways of living, two ways of belonging to an ecosystem. The riddle of this book is to explore why these different ways of living had such different effects on new England ecosystems.” (12)

Comparing pre-colonial Indian ways with the alterations brought by European settlement, one of the clearer observations that Cronon draws upon is the failure of Europeans to grasp the meanings behind Native American ecological practices. This lack of understanding emerge in several instances. For example, colonists failed to comprehend why Native Americans lived, in European eyes, in state of poverty, “the way Indians had chosen to inhabit that world posed a paradox almost form the start for Europeans accustomed to other ways of interacting with the environment. Many European visitors were stuck by what seemed to them the poverty of Indians who lived in the midst of a landscape endowed so astonishingly with abundance.” (33) Other examples of misunderstanding proliferated.

The division of labor between men and women among Native Americans confused colonists who viewed the men’s incessant hunting, a form of leisure in Europe, as lazy, viewing Indian women as indefatigable. Europeans not only used “Indian reliance on hunting not only to condemn Indian men as lazy savages but to deny that Indians had a rightful claim to the land they hunted. European perceptions of what constituted a proper use of the environment thus reinforced what became a European ideology of conquest.” (53) The occasional forest burnings that Native American tribes engaged in also confused European observers who failed to grasp the importance of managing the forest for plant and animal life. Most colonists believed forest burning simplified Native American hunting and travel, but Cronon points out fires helped to increase soil nutrients, destroyed plant diseases and pests, and “promoted the mosaic quality of New England ecosystems, creating forests in many different states of ecological succession.” (51)

In other cases, different understandings of a concept resulted in confusion. Cronon disputes ideas that Native Americans lacked any understanding of property, rather he points out they had a keen understanding of it but utilized it differently. The mobility of Native American settlements made property accumulation more burdensome. Moreover, property was often employed as gifts to neighboring tribes and the like. Since the role of kinship and personality played a larger role in Native American political society, property served as a way to gather allies and authority. Native Americans employed “usufruct rights” as a means of managing land. Cronon defines “usufruct rights” as “acknowledgments by one group that another might use an area for planting for hunting or gathering non-agricultural food on such lands, and no conception of deriving rent from them.” (62) Rules applied to hunting, gathering, and planting lands but often a tract of land could be used for multiple purposes by different groups so usufruct rights enabled them all to access the land. Though somewhat variable, usufruct rights were not “inherently exclusive” . (67) What separated European and Native Americans understandings of property rested largely in commodization as Cronon notes, “more than anything else , it was the treatment of the land and property as commodities traded at markets that distinguished English conceptions of ownership from Indian ones.” (75) Likewise, commodities drawn from the land whether they be animal or plant, were now valued for their market place worth rather than utility. Taxes on the land itself required more than subsistence farming, drawing residents into colonial production and an orientation toward “market exchange”. Again, Cronon points out the any ecological changes “related to these commodities, we can safely point to market demand as the key casual agent.” (76) However, the “land-capital equation created two central ecological contradictions of the colonial economy.” (169) The colonists economic transformations conflicted with those of native Americans, but the adjustments of indigenous peoples to these changes contributed to such transformations. Secondly, the colonists own economic practices were “ecologically destructive.” (169)

For Native Americans, forced settlement meant that their former subsistence practices now had negative effects, “subsistence practices which had never before had deleterious ecological consequences began gradually to have them. Planting fields could no longer be so easily abandoned when their fertility declined and agricultural yields fell, making crops a less reliable source of food. Hunting to became more difficult.” (103)

Deforestation provided the “most sweeping transformations” as flooding became more common and certain species of trees (white pines, white cedars, and white oaks) due to colonial practices, diminished. Use of trees for fuel proved the largest reason for deforestation. The loss of trees meant more flooding and even changes in the landscape’s response to weather, “In wintertime, the effects of clearing produced even more complex set of changes in these relationships. Although cleared land tended to be colder in winter than forested land – because drier and more exposed to the effects of the wind chill – it received enough radiant heat from the sun to melt the snow more quickly … It was not, as some thought, that the weather itself was changed by clearing, but rather the way landscapes responded to the weather.” (123) New England colonists drove much of this deforestation since in European minds clearing marked another means toward civilization. Europeans saw deforestation as “the progress of cultivation”, they hoped to recreate the environment in the image of their home continent, “for the New England landscape, and for the Indians, what followed was undoubtedly a new ecological order; for the colonists, on the other hand, it was an old and familiar way of life.” (126) Pastoralism also undermined Native American subsistence patterns. In addition, the combination of deforestation, flooding, soil compaction, and intensive plowing led to increased soil erosion.

Native Americans were not passive in their responses. Indians both took advantage of new opportunities presented by Europeans while resisting those they viewed as threatening or dangerous. Such changes altered the identities of Native Americans. In this way, as Cronon points out, these adjustments had effects, “by ceasing to live as their ancestors had done, they did not cease to be Indians, but became Indians with very different relationships to the ecosystems in which they lived.” (164) Cronon concludes that the “transition to capitalism” led ot an alienation of the land’s resources and human labor, transforming “natural communities as profoundly as it did human ones. “ (170) The integration of the New England eco-systems into a capitalist global economy meant colonists and Indians played a role in ecological destruction

Changes in the Land

2012-06-21T22:54:36Z

32.164.50.35: Created page with "Since the mid-1980s, William Cronon’s contributions to environmental history remain pivotal. ''Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West'' (1992) combined environmenta..."

The Radicalism of the American Revolution

2012-06-21T22:53:01Z

32.164.50.35: Created page with "Gordon Wood’s ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution'' challenges the argument that as revolutions go the America’s lacked sufficient social or economic change to truly ..."

Gordon Wood’s ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution'' challenges the argument that as revolutions go the America’s lacked sufficient social or economic change to truly be revolutionary. Historians and philosophers (Wood cites Hannah Arendt’s ''On Revolution'' as one example) have argued that the French and other “modern revolutions” arose out of “internal violence, class conflict, and social deprivation.” (3). In contrast, America seemed to lack the wide scale poverty and political oppression present in other revolutions. None of the revolutionaries attempted to reshape the new country’s “social order”, instead they settled for more conservative measures that resulted in a government distinct from Britain’s but also sharing many striking characteristics. In fact, one could argue, as Wood notes, that Americans were simply an exaggerated version of English citizens, expanding upon the emphasis on liberty and freedom present in British society. Even the American’s eventual repudiation of the English monarchy in some ways serves as an example of this exaggeration.

Wood takes issue with Progressive and neo-Progressive interpretations arguing they misread the period’s sensibilities. ''The Radicalism of the American Revolution'' focuses on the radical change that the revolution brought to how Americans organized themselves, their relation to others, the nation’s economic transformation and the resulting government. Organized into three sections: Monarchy, Republicanism, and Democracy, Wood begins with the hierarchical social structure of the colonies under the English crown continues with the concept of Republicanism and its effects on colonial society finishing with the rise of America’s modern democracy. According to Wood, the American Revolution radically altered relationships in American culture that later greatly impacted its economic and political growth. The revolutionaries did have revolutionary ideas for the time, but modern historians failed to consider changing perceptions of long standing concepts such as equality, interest, and the “disinterested gentlemen”.

Under the monarchy, colonial America was a series of hierarchical relations, where everyone had superior and inferiors. This hierarchy featured a system of dependency and social obligation. The weakness of the state along with its multiple forms (since colonies lacked a unified centralized power each had its own government structures) resulted in a society in which a patron-client paternalistic dynamic developed between colonists. Traditional relationships of the period were of this nature. For leaders of society, often referred to as “gentlemen”, reputation was of the utmost importance. If one failed to maintain his reputation or allowed others to disparage it, the individual might lose social and political authority. The weakness of the state expanded the power of such men since they were able to support others and in the thought of the day, provide an economy for locals through their consumption. Attached to these relationships were assumptions concerning various concepts such as equality, interest (government was best run by “disinterested gentlemen” who had attained such wealth that they were incorruptible, not allowing personal interest to interfere with the common good), and the idea of work (work meant you were not a gentlemen even if rich which later led to odd alliances after the revolution between more proletarian workers and factory owners who were not considered of the highest class because they still engaged in labor).
The concept of republicanism permeated colonial society. Wood argues it inhabited segments of the British colonies well before the revolution, however, the revolution greatly accelerated republicanism’s influence. Population expansion, migration, capitalism and republicanism all combined to undermine the patron-client relationships that had been so ubiquitous under the crown. The rapid population shifts led to a society in which it became harder to maintain stable populations under which hierarchical social structure held. The expansion of the economy increased business activity such that merchants no longer depended on one’s reputation, instead the “mutual mistrust” between businessmen encouraged the use of contracts. Moreover, expanding businesses needed access to credit, contributing to the growth of the banking industry, but at the expense of the old client-patron relationship, as the benevolence of the local “gentlemen” became less relevant.

Attitudes about work and the accumulation of wealth changed, as capitalism expanded. Revolutionaries like John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson believed that the old monarchical society unfairly excluded individuals of skill because of its hierarchical nature. Instead, they wanted to create a society led by an “aristocracy of virtue and talent”. They promoted ideas such as an “equality of opportunity” rule by “disinterested gentlemen” and the exclusion of “interest” from the decisions of government. However, as Wood explains in his third section Democracy, the concepts the revolutionaries promoted were co-opted by others who then redefined or altered their meanings. For example, if revolutionaries such as Jefferson believed in an “equality of opportunity”, others expanded on this ideal suggesting social equality (with the exception of women and slaves, though Wood does note women’s legal rights were expanded after the revolution) which few of the revolution’s leaders would have endorsed. Another example relates to the ideas of work and self-interest. As the economy expanded following the revolution, an early populist rhetoric surfaced that called into question previous understandings of interest and “gentlemen”. To be considered a gentleman prior to the revolution meant one had wealth but also did not have to work. “Gentlemen” became the targets of diatribes that criticized them for idleness, their claims of “disinterest” lacked resonance since arguments were made that they acted in self-interest to maintain their station in society. In fact, as the idea of democracy spread, some leaders argued that interests should be in the public square competing. Old ideas such as Benjamin Franklin’s suggestion that members of Congress forgo salaries met with respected disagreement.

While some historians claim Jacksonian America created the United States’ modern democracy, Wood argues Jackson’s administration only “legitimized it” creating bureaucratic organizations and political parties but that the Revolution’s practitioners were truly responsible. Several former revolutionaries disagreed strongly with these and other changes to their principles. Yet, despite the misgivings of its former leaders, the American Revolution accelerated a process that completely reshaped the paternalistic world of colonial America. The hierarchical monarchical society dependent on patron client relationships was replaced with a more egalitarian, self-interested, and openly commercial culture (previously the pursuit of “profit” had been looked down upon).

Wood’s book focuses exclusively on elites, few if any common people appear. In addition, much of Wood’s argument depends on the changing definitions of concepts or ideas. However, both are malleable and subject to change. This change does not always merit the designation as “revolutionary”. Essentially, though the revolutionaries wanted to “radically” change society by the standards of the period, they hoped to replace one society of dependency with another i.e. monarchy/ruler-subject/nobility swapped for republicanism/master-slave/"aristocracy of talent"). They lost control when others appropriated ideas like equality and interest redefining them in their own favor. The expansion of democracy to universal male suffrage in most states by 1825 serves as an example of the expansion of concept many revolutionaries would have opposed. When “proto-industrialization” unfolded in the early nineteenth century traditional relationships eroded further. As the economy expanded, so did the people’s taste for “luxuries” stimulating growth, thus no longer were such goods reserved for the wealthy. “Prosperity” had been thought to be detrimental to average Americans since it robbed them of initiative, but economic expansion proved this belief incorrect. Poverty was no longer seen as the motivation for citizens to work. The banking system that developed around these economic changes expanded access to credit for many Americans, befuddling many former revolutionaries who never adapted to the economic transformation of America they themselves helped create. The economic sphere radically reshaped most aspects of Americans lives including religion. The only thing that bound citizens together in this constantly changing nation was the American Revolution, even if views on what it meant or its basic value differed, the revolution itself served to bind people, “To be an American could not be a matter of blood; it had to be a matter of common belief and behavior. And the source of that common belief and behavior was the American Revolution: it was the revolution, and only the Revolution that made them one people.” (336).

Of course, Wood’s book has endured criticism. First, the South barely appears in Wood’s formation. His examples overwhelmingly arise from northern examples with some notable exceptions. Second, Wood pays gender little to no attention. Republicanism rested on the domesticity and labor of women who provided a vital workforce and ideological ferment (think Republican motherhood) but Wood ignores much of this.

The Marketplace of Revolution

2012-06-21T22:50:44Z

32.164.50.35: Created page with "Breen argues that a variety of consumer boycotts against taxes and other British policies helped Americans from widely divergent and often quarrelsome colonies to trust each othe..."

Breen argues that a variety of consumer boycotts against taxes and other British policies helped Americans from widely divergent and often quarrelsome colonies to trust each other better, paving the way for united action during the Revolution. However, those boycotts would not have been possible without the wide circulation of British goods in the colonies, which fostered a sense of shared experience among the colonists. The number of goods available increased and prices declined as the empire became more integrated. (Imports to the colonies grew by 50% from 1720 to 1770.) After the roughest early stages of frontier settlement, Breen argues, most Americans had some kind of connection to the market – whether they grew cotton or indigo on southern plantations, or raised foodstuffs in Pennsylvania, most farmers sold goods to obtain items like tea and sugar from other colonies, as well as manufactures like axes, hoes, ceramics, tablecloths, and belt buckles. (Britain was short on land but long on labor, which fostered industry, and the crown prohibited some kinds of manufacturing in the colonies anyway.) Breen writes that a major expansion of credit throughout the empire made all this possible, and Britain was keen to export its increasing industrial output to the colonies. The ability of people of varying means to purchase goods on overextended credit led to some anxiety about upended social hierarchy. Far more vexing indeed was the indebtedness of the upper classes, especially southern planters who realized when the market turned that they were at the mercy of British “factors,” or agents, who advanced them money for their crops. The new taxes of the 1760s highlighted the colonists’ economic vulnerability. Breen probably overplays the extent to which Americans experienced a liberating revolution of joy at shopping; the narrative sounds exactly like the one repeated so often for the 1920s and the 1950s, when technology and economic restructuring made a much greater variety of goods available to many more ordinary people than occurred in the late 18th century. Still, Americans of the time wanted to hold on to their economic options: “I, for myself,” one colonist wrote, “choose that there should be many Stores filled with every Kind of thing that is convenient and useful, that I might have my choices of Goods, upon the most reasonable or agreeable Terms; whether foreign or homemade; I would have Liberty of either, and to Deal as I judge best for myself.”