Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth

Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth
Author :
Publisher : Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages : 449
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781421400518
ISBN-13 : 1421400510
Rating : 4/5 (510 Downloads)

Book Synopsis Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth by : Sean Patrick Adams

Download or read book Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth written by Sean Patrick Adams and published by Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A look at the role of state policies in North-South economic divergence and in American industrial development leading up to the Civil War. 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.


Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth Related Books

Old Dominion Industrial Commonwealth
Language: en
Pages: 449
Authors: Sean Patrick Adams
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-12-01 - Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A look at the role of state policies in North-South economic divergence and in American industrial development leading up to the Civil War. In 1796, famed engin
Old Dominion, New Commonwealth
Language: en
Pages: 657
Authors: Ronald L. Heinemann
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2008-05-02 - Publisher: University of Virginia Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"On the morning of 26 April 1607, three small ships carrying 143 Englishmen arrived off the Virginia coast of North America, having spent four months at sea....
Home Fires
Language: en
Pages: 281
Authors: Sean Patrick Adams
Categories: Technology & Engineering
Type: BOOK - Published: 2014-04-17 - Publisher: JHU Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

“Easily the most thorough and best-grounded account of the coal-based system of heating in the nineteenth-century United States . . . authoritative.” —The
The Deep River Coalfield
Language: en
Pages: 244
Authors: James H. Chapman
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-07-21 - Publisher: McFarland

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

 The region along Deep River in central North Carolina once boasted a small but significant coal mining industry that from the early 1800s to the end of the
Capitalism Takes Command
Language: en
Pages: 368
Authors: Michael Zakim
Categories: History
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-12-21 - Publisher: University of Chicago Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Most scholarship on nineteenth-century America’s transformation into a market society has focused on consumption, romanticized visions of workers, and analysi