Previews

Americans have feared corruption since the birth of the Republic, but all corruption is not the same. It has a history, and the history of modern corporate corruption, back in the news because of scandals at Enron and other corporations, begins in the Gilded Age. The ability to manipulate and corrupt public information in order to ensure private profit was a marker of the first modern American corporations, the transcontinental railroads. Such corruption, Richard White argues, was central to their operation. It made their promoters wealthy, it defrauded investors and wasted capital, and it helped bankrupt railroads and foster unsustainable development. Corruption was not just a sideshow or a political issue in the Gilded Age. It was critical to how the developing economy worked.

In 1715 virtually every Indian nation in the North American Southeast attacked the British colony of South Carolina. The Yamasee War, as the event has come to be known, nearly destroyed the colony and profoundly changed the entire region. William L. Ramsey explores the factors that brought so many Indian nations together and takes issue with traditional explanations that emphasize trader misconduct as a cause of war. Instead, Ramsey argues that what strained Carolina's economic and diplomatic relations with many southeastern Indian trade partners and allies was the colony's deepening involvement in the broader Atlantic economy.

By conducting a counterfactual exercise, . . .