Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth

Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth
Author :
Publisher : JHU Press
Total Pages : 340
Release :
ISBN-10 : 080187968X
ISBN-13 : 9780801879685
Rating : 4/5 (685 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth by : Sean P. Adams

Download or read book Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth written by Sean P. Adams and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2004-12-13 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In 1796, famed engineer and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe toured the coal fields outside Richmond, Virginia, declaring enthusiastically, "Such a mine of Wealth exists, I believe, nowhere else!" With its abundant and accessible deposits, growing industries, and network of rivers and ports, Virginia stood poised to serve as the center of the young nation's coal trade. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, Virginia's leadership in the American coal industry had completely unraveled while Pennsylvania, at first slow to exploit its vast reserves of anthracite and bituminous coal, had become the country's leading producer. Sean Patrick Adams compares the political economies of coal in Virginia and Pennsylvania from the late eighteenth century through the Civil War, examining the divergent paths these two states took in developing their ample coal reserves during a critical period of American industrialization. In both cases, Adams finds, state economic policies played a major role. Virginia's failure to exploit the rich coal fields in the western part of the state can be traced to the legislature's overriding concern to protect and promote the interests of the agrarian, slaveholding elite of eastern Virginia. Pennsylvania's more factious legislature enthusiastically embraced a policy of economic growth that resulted in the construction of an extensive transportation network, a statewide geological survey, and support for private investment in its coal fields. Using coal as a barometer of economic change, Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth addresses longstanding questions about North-South economic divergence and the role of state government in American industrial development, providing new insights for both political and economic historians of nineteenth-century America.


Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth Related Books

Old Dominion, Industrial Commonwealth
Language: en
Pages: 340
Authors: Sean P. Adams
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2004-12-13 - Publisher: JHU Press

GET EBOOK

Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In 1796, famed engineer and architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe toured the coal fields outside Richmon
The World of Antebellum America
Language: en
Pages: 840
Authors: Alexandra Kindell
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2018-09-20 - Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

GET EBOOK

This set provides insight into the lives of ordinary Americans free and enslaved, in farms and cities, in the North and the South, who lived during the years of
Secularism in Antebellum America
Language: en
Pages: 349
Authors: John Lardas Modern
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-12-15 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

GET EBOOK

Ghosts, railroads, Sing Sing, sex machines - these are just a few of the phenomena that appear in this pioneering account of religion and society in 19th-centur
Navigating Failure
Language: en
Pages: 346
Authors: Edward J. Balleisen
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2003-01-14 - Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

GET EBOOK

The "self-made" man is a familiar figure in nineteenth-century American history. But the relentless expansion of market relations that facilitated such stories
African Muslims in Antebellum America
Language: en
Pages: 215
Authors: Allan D. Austin
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2012-11-12 - Publisher: Routledge

GET EBOOK

A condensation and updating of his African Muslims in Antebellum America: A Sourcebook (1984), noted scholar of antebellum black writing and history Dr. Allan D