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Book Reviews
| Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry. By Lawrence A. Peskin. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. xi, 294p. Illustrations, notes, bibliographical essay, index. $49.95.)
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Manufacturing Revolution is an exceptional study of the actors, events, and especially the ideas that laid the groundwork for industrialization in the early American republic. For Peskin, people and circumstances matter far more than the "broad impersonal forces" offered by Marx's angst-ridden stage theory, Smith's celebrated invisible hand, or market trends (pp. 1, 3). The result is a rich narrative of the way groups of individuals—mechanics, merchant-manufacturers, farmers, artisans, politicians, and publicists—promoted their personal, communal, and ultimately, they believed, the national interest in self-sufficiency. |
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Remarkably concise, this book (only 225 text pages) covers a lot of ground without oversimplifying the subject. The slow process towards economic independence began, almost accidentally, as colonists opposed parliamentary acts they believed undermined the "harmonious reciprocal dependence" provided by British mercantilism. As this "British system" disintegrated, evidenced by the 1774 nonimportation associations and ultimately revolution, many colonists argued for a more diversified economy, including a stronger manufacturing sector. Peskin suggests that "manufacturing of all sorts expanded rapidly in the 1780s" (p. 61), until derailed by the commercial opportunities of the Napoleonic Wars. During this postwar "critical period" mechanics like Mathew Carey, an Irish immigrant to Philadelphia, invoked anti-English rhetoric to win mild government support for manufacturing. Guided by what Peskin calls "popular neomercantilism" these "mechanic protectionists" advocated an expanded domestic market and (unlike their European counterparts) de-emphasized the importance of foreign trade. |
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