Manufacturing Catastrophe

Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present
Erscheinungsjahr 2024
ISBN: 978-0-19-766531-2
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 378 Seiten, Format (B × H): 235 mm x 156 mm, Gewicht: 662 g

American economic history has traditionally been told as a narrative of industrialization and affluence collapsing into globalization and industrial decay. Offering a reappraisal of this pattern, Manufacturing Catastrophe traces the successive rise and fall of the whaling, textile, garment, electronics, and high-tech industries in Massachusetts over the past two hundred years. It shows how business, labor, and political leaders repeatedly mobilized the lure of crisis—cheap labor, low taxes, and generous manufacturing subsidies—to pull and push both capital and workers across the continents, repeatedly remaking the pioneering industrial cities of Fall River and New Bedford. Workers—ranging from migrating Azorean seamen to British weavers to Quebecois farmers—and capitalists—including mobile manufacturers, globetrotting whalers, and multinational conglomerators—participated in the creation of regional growth and, with it, American industrial ascendance. Exploring the paradoxical and recurring coexistence of high unemployment and labor shortages in these cities, this book explains why recovery and growth have not necessarily translated into long-term prosperity. In doing so, it illuminates how economic catastrophe was, ironically, a critical ingredient in the making of America's industrial hegemony.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Nichols, Shaun S.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Regional- & Stadtgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Geschichte der VWL
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Geschichte der Industrialisierung

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Acknowledgments

- Preface

- Introduction

- Part I: From Farm to Factory, From Ship to Loom

- Chapter 1: The Irrational Revolution: The Failure of Early Massachusetts Industrialization

- Chapter 2: Economies in Motion: Crisis and Industry in the Whaling City

- Chapter 3: Labor in Motion: The Peopling of Industrial Massachusetts

- Part II: From Cloth to Clothes, From Crisis to Prosperity

- Chapter 4: Un-Making Industrial Massachusetts: Labor and Capital in an Age of Deindustrialization

- Chapter 5: Cut from the Same Cloth: The Remaking of Industrial Massachusetts

- Chapter 6: Towards Free Migration: The Reopening of Industrial Massachusetts

- Part III: From the Needle to High Tech, From Massachusetts to the World

- Chapter 7: Towards Free Trade: Globalization from the Ground Up

- Chapter 8: Reconstructing Industrial Ascendance: Massachusetts and the Reordering of American Capitalism

- Chapter 9: Industrial Twilight? Massachusetts and the Reordering of Global Capitalism

- Chapter 10: The "New" Economy: Making High-Tech Massachusetts

- Conclusion

- Notes

- Bibliography

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Shaun S. Nichols is an Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. He is a native of Fall River, Massachusetts.