1/31/98, Paula Sherman wrote:
>There is a group of historians who say that colonial America was
>capitalistic to begin with(which I am leaning towards), but just as many
>say that it was not and only became capitalistic around 1815.
Dear Paula,
The American economic model was split at the beginning. The North was
capitalist-trending, and overturning Britain's ban on industrialization was
an important Northern motivation for Independence. The South was feudal
rather than capitalist, making most of its money from cotton exports, with
a good portion going to Britain.
If as you say capitalism began to become a significant force in the North c
1815, then that means the lead-up to the Civil War occupied 40+ years. The
capitalist North wanted protectionist policies to nurture industrial
development, while the South was firmly committed to free-trade so as to
maximize cotton revenues. This and similar conflicts are what caused the
Civil War: that war signified capitalism's defeat of feudalism and its
establishment as the hegemonous US economic pardigm.
>From that starting point it took the US some four score years to achieve
global (or at least free-world) military hegemony, thus establishing the
geopolitical context necessary for globalization to develop: the ultimate
capitalist dream.
rkm