The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600-1870

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-1-4214-3711-8
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 244 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

An important examination of the foundational American ideal of economic equality—and how we lost it.

Winner of the Missouri Conference on History Book Award for 2021

The United States has some of the highest levels of both wealth and income inequality in the world. Although modern-day Americans are increasingly concerned about this growing inequality, many nonetheless believe that the country was founded on a person's right to acquire and control property. But in The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870, Daniel R. Mandell argues that, in fact, the United States was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining a "rough" or relative equality of wealth is essential to the cultivation of a successful republican government.

Mandell explores the origins and evolution of this ideal. He shows how, during the Revolutionary War, concerns about economic equality helped drive wage and price controls, while after its end Americans sought ways to maintain their beloved "rough" equality against the danger of individuals amassing excessive wealth. He also examines how, after 1800, this tradition was increasingly marginalized by the growth of the liberal ideal of individual property ownership without limits.

This politically evenhanded book takes a sweeping, detailed view of economic, social, and cultural developments up to the time of Reconstruction, when Congress refused to redistribute plantation lands to the former slaves who had worked it, insisting instead that they required only civil and political rights. Informing current discussions about the growing gap between rich and poor in the United States, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America is surprising and enlightening.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mandell, Daniel R

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftssysteme, Wirtschaftsstrukturen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Internationale Wirtschaft Volkswirtschaften einzelner Länder und Regionen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. English Origins
Chapter 2. Indians and Anglo-American Egalitarianism
Chapter 3. Revolutionary Ideologies and Regulations
Chapter 4. Wealth and Power in the Early Republic
Chapter 5. Raising Republican Children
Chapter 6. Clashes over America's Political Economy
Chapter 7. Separating Property and Polity

Chapter 8. Reviving the Tradition
Chapter 9. Reconstruction and the Rejection of Economic Equality
Epilogue
Notes
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Mandell, Daniel R
Daniel R. Mandell is a professor of history at Truman State University. He is the author of Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts, King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, End of Indian Sovereignty, and Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts, and The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1870.

Daniel R. Mandell is a professor of history at Truman State University. He is the author of Tribe, Race, History: Native Americans in Southern New England, 1780–1880, King Philip's War: Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty, and Behind the Frontier: Indians in Eighteenth-Century Eastern Massachusetts.