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“Modernization” and American Social History
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BrownRichard D., Modernization: The Transformation of American Life, 1600–1865 (New York, 1976), $4.95 paperback.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
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- Copyright © Social Science History Association 1978
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1 The most succinct introduction to the distinctiveness of recent history remains Cipolla, Carlo M., The Economic History of World Population, 6th ed. (London, 1974).Google Scholar
2 Quoted by Coale, A.J., “The Demographic Transition,” in International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, International Population Conference (Liege, 1973), 1:64Google Scholar. In modernization even the obvious is not always true; for the persistence of very high fertility among the affluent Kuwaitis see Hill, Allan G., “The Demography of the Kuwaiti Population of Kuwait,” Demography, 12 (August 1975), 537–48.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
3 One can believe that modernization is an important issue and still find it unusable for the periodization of American history—either because America was “born modern,” or because modernity is a problematic aspect of modern societies. For the first view, see Lipset, S.M., The First New Nation (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, which is endorsed by Shorter, Edward, The Making of the Modem Family (New York, 1975), 14Google Scholar. For the second, see the interesting perspective on working class history by Rodgers, Daniel T., “Tradition, Modernity, and the American Industrial Work: Reflections and Critique,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 7 (Spring 1977), 655–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Bushman, Richard L., From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the Social Order in Connecticut, 1690–1765 (Cambridge, 1967)Google Scholar. Thernstrom, Stephen, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, 1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wiebe, Robert H., The Search for Order, 1877–1920 (New York, 1967)Google Scholar.
5 See, for example, Zuckerman, Michael, Peaceable Kingdoms: New England Towns in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.
6 Unlike Brown and the other historians cited above, Wiebe’s origins cannot be traced to Harvard. Other recent widely-cited works of the “Harvard school of implicit modernization” include Rothman, David J., The Discovery of the Asylum: Social Order and Disorder in the New Republic (Boston, 1971)Google Scholar, and Nelson, William E., Americanization of the Common Law: The Impact of Legal Change on Massachusetts Society 1760–1830. (Cambridge, 1975)Google Scholar. For a short summary of the modernization plot, see the influential, Education in the Forming of American Society: Needs and Opportunities for Study (Chapel Hill, 1960), 23–25, by Bernard Bailyn. The approach goes back at least to Perry Miller and is best expressed in his intricate intellectual and sociological analysis of Puritan declension, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, 1953). Harvard-trained American social historians, of course, subscribe to the approach in varying degrees. I am perhaps describing a marked tendency rather than a school. Unfortunately there are, to my knowledge, no studies of the Harvard group. Given its importance, especially in studies of colonial New England, an historian of history should analyze the movement.
7 For corrections to Zuckerman, see Murrin, John, “Review Essay,” History and Theory (1972), 245–72Google Scholar, and Cook, Edward M. Jr., The Fathers of the Towns: Leadership and Community Structure in Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore, 1976)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; to Nelson. see Zobel, Hiller B., “Some Agonies and Misuses of Legal History,” New England Quarterly, 50 (March 1977), 138–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; to Rothman, see Rosenkrantz, Barbara Gutman, “Booby-Hatch or Booby-Trap: A New Look at Nineteenth-Century Reform,” Social Research, 39 (Winter 1972), 733–43Google Scholar. Lengthy reviews, even if very critical, are measures of the importance of historical works.
8 Michael B. Katz treats the difference between the early boom conditions in Hamilton, Ontario in 1851 and its post-depression state in 1861 within the modernization framework. He even locates a key transition between the two censuses! Nevertheless the book is probably the best among the various studies of nineteenth-century North American cities. Katz, Michael B., The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth-Century City (Cambridge, 1975)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Further, one of the most subtle specifications of the extent and limits of change was conceptualized within the modernization framework. See Lockridge, Kenneth A., A New England Town: The First Hundred Years (New York, 1970)Google Scholar. These qualities are not so evident in his more social-scientific work, which is critical of modernization theory. Literacy in Colonial New England: An Enquiry into the Social Context of Literacy in the Early Modern West (New York, 1974). He misunderstands, on page 101 for example, the implications of John Uno’s History of the Baptists in Virginia.
9 On the excessive number of transitions in Ancri:an history, see Cunliffe, Marcus, “American Watersheds,” American Quarterly, 13 (Winter 1961), 480–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The appearance of David H. Fischer’s America: A Social History should initiate a sharp and productive debate on the periodization issue.
10 Murrin, John M., “The Myths of Colonial Democracy and Royal Decline in Eighteenth-Century America: A Review Essay, Cithara, 5 (1965), 53–69Google Scholar; and “The Legal Transformation: The Bench and Bar of Eighteenth-Century Massachusetts,” in Stanley N. Katz, ed., Colonial America: Essays in Politics and Social Development (Boston, 1971), 415–49.
11 Inkeles, Alex and Smith, David M., Becoming Modern: Individual Change in Six Developing Countries, (Cambridge, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Brown, Modernization, 101.
13 Rothman, Discovery of the Asylum; Katz, Michael B., The Irony of Early School Reform: Educational Innovation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Massachusetts (Cambridge, 1968)Google Scholar; for a review, see Muraskin, William A., “The Social-Control Theory in American History: A Critique,” Journal of Social History, 9 (June 1976), 559–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
14 For suggestions about the role of modern values in American fertility decline, see Wells, Robert V., “Family History and Demographic Transition,” Journal of Social History, 9 (Fall 1975), 1–19CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, and Vinovskis, Maris A., “Socioeconomic Determinants of Interstate Fertility Differentials in the United States in 1850 and 1860,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (Winter 1976), 396CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the economic argument, see Easterlin, Richard, “Population Change and Farm Settlement in the Northern United States,” Journal of Economic History, 36 (March 1976), 45–75.Google Scholar
15 Brown, Modernization, 103.
16 Ibid., 115.
17 Cott, Nancy F., The Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780–1830 (New Haven, 1977)Google Scholar.
18 Brown, Modernization, 161.
19 Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (New York, 1970)Google Scholar.
20 Pleck, Elizabeth H., “Two Worlds in One,” Journal of Social History, 10 (Winter 1976), 178–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21 Elder, Glen H. Jr., “Approaches to Social Change and the Family: A Sociological Perspective, forthcoming in Demos, John and Boocock, Sarane Spence, eds., Turning Points: Historical and Sociological Essays on the Family (Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar.