| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 112.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Andrew M. Schocket. Founding Corporate Power in Early National Philadelphia. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press. 2007. Pp. xiii, 274. $42.00.
This intelligent book considers a central issue of the early American republic and U.S. history: why was political democratization coeval with the consolidation of economic power by a relatively small group of elites? Andrew M. Schocket examines Philadelphia and argues that the early national city's reliance on business corporations produced economic inequity and gross disparities in power. Schocket suggests that Philadelphia's experience was a portent of the nation's and concludes that historians should question whether the American Revolution ushered in a lasting transformation of power relations.	1
The rise of business corporations was connected to the democratization of American politics. This antagonistic symbiosis was clearest in Pennsylvania, the most democratic state to emerge from the Revolution. There wealthy gentlemen, used to political power and deference, lost both and by the 1780s feared that their wealth might be next. Backers of the business corporation were some of the usual high Federalist suspects. Thomas Willing, Robert Morris, and William Bingham championed incorporation, which maximized the benefits of partnership and limited individual liability, as the solution to the state's economic problems. The Philadelphia business elites who looked to the corporate form were close-knit and unsympathetic to the egalitarian aims of the culture at large. This sentiment marked corporate culture in the city for the entire period considered by Schocket.	. . .

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