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Early Industrialization in the Delaware and Susquehanna River Areas: A Regional Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Thomas C. Cochran
Thomas C. Cochran*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In recent years there has been some penetrating historical writing on the pre- and early conditions of rapid industrialization in Britain and western Europe. While not establishing any exact theoretical framework, these studies affirm a number of general propositions, such as: the importance of social, including political, preconditions; the necessity of an adequate business structure; and the value of studying change more minutely to see the effect of regional as well as national differences. An overall conclusion that emerges is that rapid change to substantially higher productivity is a very complex social process in which the same conditions may operate in various areas with differing force and effects. Furthermore, it appears that no single social science provides an adequate array of questions. Studies in anthropology, economics, geography, political science, social psychology, and sociology can contribute to theory, or isolate important variables, but these must in some fashion be tested against reality over time by materials supplied chiefly by historians.

The United States with its continental differences and semi-autonomous state administrations offers excellent opportunities for both regional and comparative study. One topic that is particularly attractive, because it has been relatively neglected, is the rapid industrialization of the Delaware and Susquehanna areas—southern New Jersey, eastern Maryland, northern Delaware, and eastern Pennsylvania. This article is a brief preview of the types of research that some of us will pursue in forthcoming years. The examples cited come more from Pennsylvania than from the other states because of a larger secondary literature.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , Spring 1977 , pp. 283 - 306
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1977 

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References

Notes

1 Deane, Phyllis, The First Industrial Revolution (Cambridge, 1965)Google Scholar; Mathias, Peter, The First Industrial Nation: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1914 (New York, 1969)Google Scholar; Landes, David, The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present (Cambridge, 1970)Google Scholar; Milward, Alan S. and Saul, S.B., The Economic Development of Continental Europe 1780-1870 (London, 1973)Google Scholar; and Habakkuk, J. H., American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labor Saving Inventions (Cambridge, 1962).Google Scholar

2 The Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation of Greenville, Delaware is planning an open-ended program of assisted research on the comparative growth of industrialism in the Delaware and Susquehanna River regions before about 1860, financed in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Projects will be subject to continuous planning, review, and direction from the Director Glenn Porter with the assistance of an inter-university advisory board.

3 “The Prospect for Intelligence,” Yale Review, 34 (March 1945), 450.

4 Mathias, Peter, “Capital, Credit and Enterprises in the Industrial Revolution,” The Journal of European Economic History, 2 (Spring 1973), 127.Google Scholar

5 See, for example, Cochran, Thomas C., Business in American Life, A History (New York, 1972)Google Scholar. In general, where material is well-known footnotes have not been supplied.

6 See Billias, George A., Law and Authority in Colonial America (Barre, Mass., 1965).Google Scholar

7 For the most complete discussion see Lindstrom, Diane, “Demand, Markets, and Economic Development: The Greater Philadelphia Region, 1815-1840” (Phd. thesis, University of Delaware, 1974).Google Scholar

8 Binder, Frederick Moore, Coal Age Empire: Pennsylvania Coal and its Utilization to 1860 (Harrisburg, 1974)Google Scholar; Livingood, James Weston, The Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade Rivalry 1780-1860 (Harrisburg, 1947).Google Scholar

9 Mitman, Carl W. in Dictionary of American Biography, VI, 209Google Scholar.

10 Warner, Sam B. Jr., “Innovation and the Industrialization of Philadelphia 1800-1850,” in Handlin, Oscar and Burchard, John, eds., The Historian and the City (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963), 63–69.Google Scholar

11 Daniel Hoadas, “Report,” MSS Elutherian Mills Library, Greenville, Delaware.

12 Habakkuk, American and British Technology, 124.

13 Lemon, James T. in The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Study of Early Southern Pennsylvania (Baltimore, 1972)Google Scholar contends on page 150 and following that the fame of Lancaster County before 1800, for example, rested more on careful cultivation than on soil or technical knowledge.

14 Clarence Danhoff, quoted by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd series, I (1963-1964), 121.

15 Arbuckle, Robert D., “John Nicholson and the Attempt to Promote Pennsylvania Industry in the 1790s,” Pennsylvania History, XLII (April 1975), 105.Google Scholar

16 Warner, “Innovation and Industrialization.”

17 Milward and Saul, Economic Development, 429.

18 See Cole, Arthur H. and Williamson, Harold F., The American Carpet Manufacture: A History and an Analysis (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1941).Google Scholar

19 History of Manufactures in the United States (New York, 1929), I, 403.

20 Tyler, David B., The American Clyde: A History of Iron and Steel Shipping on the Delaware from 1840 to World War I (Newark, 1958).Google Scholar

21 Hartz, Louis, Economic Policy and Democratic Thought: Pennsylvania 1776-1860 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1948).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Rubin, Julius, Canal or Railroad? Imitation and Innovation in the Response to the Erie Canal in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, Transactions, LI pt. 7, 1961).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 Rubin, Julius, “An Imitative Public Improvement: The Pennsylvania Mainline,” in Goodrich, Carter, ed., Canals and American Economic Development (New York, 1961), 107–14Google Scholar; Ransom, Roger L., “Interregional Canals and Economic Specialization in the Ante-Bellum United States,” in Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2nd series, V (Fall 1967), 12–35Google Scholar. Statistics from which to gauge external economic and social effects are lacking.

24 Arbuckle, “John Nicholson,” 99-111.

25 2 vols. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1917).

26 A beginning of comparative analysis was made in Gilchrist, David T., ed., The Growth of the Seaport Cities, 1790-1825: Proceedings of a Conference Sponsored by the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, March 17-19, 1966 (Charlottesville, 1967).Google Scholar