MANHATTANVILLE COLLEGE

 

History/Economics 2024                                                 Fall, 2002

American Economic History                                           Mr. Bowling
   
                                                                                                                                                 E. Albano

 

Requirements:

1.    Attendance.

2.    Participation.

3.    Readings.

4.    Successful completion of three examinations.

 

Books:

*Aaron Singer and Robert L. Heilbroner, The Economic Transformation of

          America: 1600 to the Present (New York, 4th ed., 1998).

Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and

Economic Development in Revolutiionary Philadelphia  (Chapel

Hill, 1986).

David Blanke, Sowing the American Dream: How Consumer Culture Took

Hold in the Rural Midwest (Athens, O., 2000).

Sarah H. Gordon, Passage to Union: How the Railroads Transformed American Life,

          1829-1929 (Chicago, 1998).

Elmus Wickar, The Banking Panics of the Great Depression (Cambridge,

2001).

John Brooks, The Go-Go Years: The Drama and Crashing Finale of Wall

Street’s Bullish 60s (New York, 1999).

Rudolph J. R. Peritz, Competition Policy in America; History, Rhetoric,

 Law (New York, 1996).

*Text.  Students are advised to read and master the contents of this book

          as soon as practicable.

 

Schedule:              Topics                                                Readings

 

Aug. 27-30            Introduction                             

                             Empire Building

Sept. 3-6               Colonial Trade & Trouble        

                             The Hamiltonian Vision                       Doerflinger

Sept. 10-13            Land Policies & Development  

                             Legal Foundations                              Blanke

                             Early Industrialism

Sept. 17-20            Transportation Revolution        

                             Agricultural Productivity

 

Sept. 24                F I R S T   E X A M I N A T I O N

 

Sept. 27                Free vs. Slave Labor                

                             Economics Effects of the Civil War

Oct. 1-4                Railway Age                            

                             Morgan & Co.                                   Gordon

                             Urbanism as a Way of Life

Oct. 8-11               Captains of Industry                           Wickar

                             Labor Conflicts and Settlements

                             The Multi-Ethnic Labor Force

Oct. 15-18             Looking Outward Anew           

                             Antitrust & Merger Mania

                             Origins of the Federal Reserve  

Oct. 22-25             Wartime Mobilization I             

                             Postwar Adjustment Troubles

 

Oct. 29                  S E C O N D   E X A M I N A T I O N

 

Nov. 1                   Consumerism, 1920s Style       

                             The Mystery of 1929 & After              Brooks

                             What was “New” about the New Deal

Nov. 5-8                The Union Drive                      

                             Wartime Mobilization II

                             The Keynesian Idea and its Critics

Nov. 12-15            Postwar Labor/Management     

                                Realignments

                             White Collar Organization Men

Nov. 19-22            The 50s/60s Macroeconomy    

                             Unemployment/Inflation Concerns

                             The Great Society & its Critics

Nov. 26                 Nixonomics                                        Peritz

                             The Oil Shock & its Aftereffects

                             Capitalist Renaissance

 

Nov. 29                 T H A N K S G I V I N G   H O L I D A Y

 

Dec. 3-6                The Digital Age

The Post-Cold War Global Economy

America Regit

 

                back to L. Bowling homepage