Farm, Shop, Landing

Bruegel Martin Bruegel

Description

At the turn of the nineteenth century, when the word "capital" first found its way into the vocabulary of mid-Hudson Valley residents, the term irrevocably marked the profound change that had transformed the region from an inward-looking, rural community into a participant in an emerging market economy. In Farm, Shop, Landing Martin Bruegel turns his attention to the daily lives of merchants, artisans, and farmers who lived and worked along the Hudson River in the decades following the American Revolution to explain how the seeds of capitalism were spread on rural U.S. soil.Combining theoretical rigor with extensive archival research, Bruegel's account diverges from other historiographies of nineteenth-century economic development. It challenges the assumption that the coexistence of long-distance trade, private property, and entrepreneurial activity lead to one inescapable outcome: a market economy either wholeheartedly embraced or entirely rejected by its members. When Bruegel tells the story of farmer William Coventry struggling in the face of bad harvests, widow Mary Livingston battling her tenants, blacksmith Samuel Fowks perfecting the cast-iron plough, and Hannah Bushnell sending her butter to market, Bruegel shows that the social conventions of a particular community, and the real struggles and hopes of individuals, actively mold the evolving economic order. Ultimately, then, Farm, Shop, Landing suggests that the process of modernization must be understood as the result of the simultaneous and often contentious interplay of social and economic spheres.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Types of rural communities
• Economic history
• History of the Americas

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 24 avril 2002
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822383390
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Farm, Shop, Landing

           

Farm, Shop,

Landing

The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, –

D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Durham & London



©  Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper  Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan Typeset in Bembo by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in- Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

This project won the Dixon Ryan Fox prize for best manuscript from the New York State Historical Association. The book has been published with the support of a grant from the Département d’Économie et Sociologie, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique in Paris.

To my mother  and the memory of my father , and to my sisters, brothers, and their families

Contents

Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Maps, ix Acknowledgments, xi Introduction:Everyday Life and the Making of Rural Development in the Hudson Valley,  Exchange and the Creation of the Neighborhood in the Late Eighteenth Century,  To Market, to Mill, to the Woods,  Natural Resources and Economic Development,  Farms Woven into the Landscape: Agricultural Developments, –s,  Country Shops and Factory Creeks, –s,  ‘‘Things, Not Thought’’: Wealth, Income, and Patterns of Consumption, –s,  The Culture of Public Life, Conclusion:Labor, the Manor, and the Market, Notes, 

Bibliography,  Index, 

Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Maps

Illustrations . Picking corn, . Representing the harvest of rye and oats, . Representing the harvest of wheat, . Women’s work, men’s work, . A break from haying, . The mill village of Columbiaville, circa , . Marks Barker’s flour mill on Stockport Creek, early nineteenth century, . A farm family’s ideal winter evening,

Tables . Farm Animals and Utensils in Probate Inventories, –, . Determinants of Migration, Kinderhook –, . Size of Farms in Columbia County around , . Mean Number of Animals per Farm around , . Widows’ Annual Maintenance and Estimated Family Needs, , . Long-Distance Trade among Freighters’ Customers, Late Eighteenth Century, . Long-Distance Trade and Wealth in , Kingston Area, . Marketable Portions of Agricultural Production, , . Clocks and Watches in Greene County Inventories, –, . Value of Farmers’ Marketed Goods, –,