A person living in 1700 or 1500 or even earlier would not have been overwhelmed by the advances in daily living evident in 1800. But imagine Washington or Jefferson looking 100 years ahead to the automobile, light bulb, telephone, cross-country railroads (200,000 miles by 1900), factories full of heavy machinery and hundreds of other advances. The rate of change in human society began to pick up in the early 1800s and has been accelerating ever since. Arguably, even the 20th century did not have such a profound impact on the way people live their lives as the 19th.
Historians have analyzed American economic history from various perspectives, sometimes arguing that economic issues dominated American political developments, even to the writing of the Constitution. Those kinds of claims, often made by historians influenced by various Marxist theories, have been to a large extent discredited. There can be no doubt, however, that the economic development of America is central to our overall evolution as a nation. Although the first steam engine, the first locomotive, and much of the earliest textile machinery first appeared in England, the development of technological advances on a grand scale occurred in America.
It is an interesting coincidence that Adam Smith's The Wealth Of Nations, the "bible" of laissez-faire capitalism, was published in 1776, for the United States, created in the same year, has clearly been the most successful capitalist nation in history. Historian Carl Degler has written that the American colonies were part of "the great age of capitalist expansion."46 The Virginia colony was, after all, formed as an investment company, from which those who ventured their capital hoped to gain profits. It can scarcely be doubted that economic issues were the driving force behind events that brought about the American Revolution. Although the expansion of capitalism is not the whole American story, it certainly is an important part of it.
America was rather slow in starting to develop manufacturing and small industries. Around 1800 each family farm was, in effect, a small factory. Family members themselves created most of what they needed—from simple tools and nails to clothing and cooking utensils.
More substantial items, such as plows, harnesses and so on, were either imported or manufactured locally. Jefferson's Embargo and the War of 1812 both demonstrated that the United States could not remain dependent on foreign imports. Yankee ingenuity soon led to economic progress. Nevertheless, economic growth in the United States before 1820 was built on agriculture and commerce. The success of the "carrying trades"—shipbuilding, for example—diverted investment from more risky manufacturing ventures. Yet some innovations, especially in the textile industry, did appear.
The Industrial Revolution, which began in the 1700s in Great Britain and continued through the 18th and 19th centuries, profoundly altered a social and economic structure that had been stable for centuries. As technology spread abroad from Great Britain, mechanical devices were used to aid manufacture. American workers reacted to the new machines with uncertainty, concerned that wages might fall and that their economic status might be negatively affected (a fear that was realized in the later, post-Civil War industrial era.) American shipping had enjoyed a period of prosperity between 1793 and 1805 but suffered when England and France restricted America's rights as a neutral nation. Thus alternative sources of economic development were needed.
World History
