The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism

Allan Kulikoff

University of Virginia Press, 1992 - Business & Economics - 341 pages

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.

Contents

• Capitalist Transformation and Agrarian Society: 1
• The Transition to Capitalism in Rural America: 13
• The Rise and Demise of the American Yeoman Classes: 34
• The Languages of Class in Rural America: 60
• Was the American Revolution a Bourgeois Revolution?: 99
• The Revolution and the Making of the American Yeoman Classes: 127
• The Political Economy of Military Service in Revolutionary Virginia: 152
• Free Migration and Cultural Diffusion in Early America 16001860: 183
• Uprooted Peoples The Political Economy of Slave Migration 17801840: 226
• The Legacy of Capitalism: 264

About the author

Allan Kulikoff is Associate Professor of History at Northern Illinois University. He is author of Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism
• Author: Allan Kulikoff
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 1992
• ISBN: 0813914205, 9780813914206
• Length: 341 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Development / Economic Development