In Courts and Commerce, Deborah A. Rosen intertwines economic history, legal history, and the history of gender. Relying on extensive analysis of probate inventories, tax lists, court records, letter books, petitions to the governor, and other documents from the eighteenth century—some never before studied—Rosen describes the expansion of the market economy in colonial New York and the way in which the law provided opportunities for eighteenth-century men to expand their economic networks while at the same time constraining women's opportunities to engage in market relationships. The book is unusual in its range of interests: it pays special attention to a comparison of urban and rural regions, it examines the role of law in fostering economic development, and it contrasts the different experiences of men and women as the economy changed.
Courts and Commerce challenges the idealized image of colonial America that has dominated historiography on the colonial period. In contrast to scholars who have portrayed the colonial period as a golden age for communal values and who have described nineteenth-century developments as if they had no eighteenth-century precedents, Rosen demonstrates that the traditionally described communal model of eighteenth-century America is a myth, and that in many ways the two eras are marked more by continuity than by change.
Deborah Rosen demonstrates that a market economy based on arm’s-length relationships did not suddenly emerge in the nineteenth century but already existed during the eighteenth century; that women became marginalized from the economy well before industrialization sent their husbands off to factories; and that the law shaped economic development a century or more before judges began to redefine the substance of the law to protect manufacturers and railway owners against expensive lawsuits by injured employees, neighbors, and consumers.
This bold and thought-provoking work will find a welcome audience among scholars of colonial American history, economic, social, and legal history, and women's studies.
In the early twentieth century, shifting attitudes and new public health standards brought an unprecedented interest in and effort to regulate issues affecting reproduction and maternity. Maternal and infant health, nutrition, and medical care came under scrutiny, as did the issue of birth control. While the prior gained public support, the latter remained controversial. Though some reformers saw birth control as an important part of maternal welfare, others sought to separate it from more popular reforms. The careers of the four prominent but usually neglected reformers (Elizabeth Lowell Putnam, Ethel Sturges Dummer, Mary Ware Dennett, and Blanche Ames) examined in this book embody the struggle to define and resolve these tensions.
The study of these reformers offers a new perspective on more recognized leaders in the arena of reproductive health and rights, especially the U.S. Children's Bureau and Margaret Sanger. Putnam's elitism contextualizes the class politics of the Bureau, underscoring its sensitivity to the vulnerable and its innovative approach to public health. Dummer reminds us of roads not taken by policy makers in the Bureau, accentuating the differences between a child-centered and a woman-centered agenda. Dennett highlights the obstacles to women reformers in the formal political sphere, while Ames's penchant toward maternalism and compromise also led to difficulties. Together, they illustrate the complexities of formulating an effective approach to securing reproductive rights and health.
This book was published in June 1994 by a French publisher and became the winner of the Organization of American Historians foreign language book prize.
The Nationalist Ferment contributes significantly to the renewal of early U.S. diplomatic history. Since the 1980s, a number of diplomatic historians have turned aside from traditional diplomatic issues and sources. They have instead focused on gender, ethnic relationships, culture, and the connections between foreign and domestic policy.
Rossignol argues that in the years 1789–1812 the new nation needed to assert its independence and autonomous character in the face of an unconvinced world. After overcoming initial divisions caused by foreign policy, Americans met this challenge by defining common foreign policy objectives and attitudes, which both legitimized the United States abroad and reinforced national unity at home. This book establishes the constant connections between domestic and international issues during the early national period.
Youngstown, Ohio, and the surrounding Mahoning Valley supplied the iron that helped transform the United States into an industrial powerhouse in the nineteenth century. The story of the Mahoning Valley’s unorthodox rise from mid-scale iron producer to twentieth-century “Steel Valley” is a tale of innovation, stagnation, and, above all, extreme change. Located halfway between Pittsburgh and Cleveland, the Mahoning Valley became a major supplier of pig iron to America’s biggest industrial regions. For much of the nineteenth century, outside consumers relied on the Valley’s pig iron, but this reliance nurtured a reluctance on the part of Youngstown iron companies to diversify or expand their production.
In Iron Valley: The Transformation of the Iron Industry in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley, 1802–1913, Clayton J. Ruminski argues that Youngstown-area iron manufacturers were content to let others in the industry innovate, and only modernized when market conditions forced them to do so. Desperate to find new markets, some Youngstown iron manufacturers eventually looked toward steel and endured a rapid, but successful, industrial transformation that temporarily kept their old enterprises afloat in a rapidly evolving industry. Richly illustrated with rare photographs of Mahoning Valley ironmasters, mills, furnaces, and workers, Iron Valley sheds light on a previously underrepresented and vital region that built industrial America.
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