The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846

by Charles Grier Sellers

Book Overview

In The Market Revolution, one of America's most distinguished historians offers a major reinterpretation of a pivotal moment in United States history. Based on impeccable scholarship and written with... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195089200
• ISBN13: 9780195089202
• Release Date: May 1994
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 512 Pages
• Weight: 1.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

New Perspectives on the Growth of Capitalism in America

Did capitalism and democracy grow up together as natural outgrowths of each other over the course of American History? Or, were they antagonistic of each other? Did some Americans view the growth of capitalism as an impediment to the growth of democracy? The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815-1846, by Charles Sellers offers a strikingly new frame in which readers can think about these questions. His book is a survey of the United States during the Antebellum Era, or U.S. History before the Civil War. It deals with the story of how market capitalism developed and rooted itself into the political, social, and economic fabric of American society during that period. In his analysis Sellers highlights an important aspect in American social and political history, he examines how the small farmers and those who made up the rural majority viewed freedom. They sought to preserve the independence and equality of a self-sufficient, self-governing citizenry; they wanted government weak cheap and close to home. This was their ideal America, a yeoman republic where all American where independent, self-sufficient workers not controlled by aristocratic governments or by entrepreneurial elites (Sellers, 1991, pg. 32). Conversely, the antagonists in this story were those who pushed the encroachment of market capitalism into American society they created middle class mythology of democratic capitalism. They maintained democracy and capitalism where equal parts of each other and muffled the contradiction between capitalism and democracy in a mythology of consensual democratic enterprise. They were unabashed champions of enterprise and the bourgeois/middle class ethic (Sellers, 1991, 363). While The Market Revolution focuses on the story on economic transformation and the class conflict that erupted during Antebellum America on a national level, there are many works that take its story and focus it on a state level perspective. The Paradox of Progress: Economic Change, Individual Enterprise and Political Culture in Michigan, 1837-1878 (2003), by Martin J. Hershock is a book heavily influenced by Seller's theories and ideas. It explores Michigan's transition from a predominantly farming economy to the development of a political and social culture that favored market capitalism. Exploring how this transition was brought on by the forces of state government and business, and how the changes disrupted party politics during that period and leading to the formation of the Republican Party. Indicating that the initial goals of Republicans were to protect small farmers and stop the onslaught on capitalism's infusion into the state economy. And, for those who want to move on from the Civil War Ear there is The Populist Moment (1978), by Lawrence Goodwyn. This book continues the story of The Market Revolution, examining the conflicts of democracy, market capitalism and the farming classes during the Gilded Age. Showing how the farming class in the American South and

Passionately written, but a difficult read.

Charles Sellers sets an ambitious goal for himself. Using a multidisciplinary approach, he revisits an already well researched and controversial period in American history to formulate his hypothesis. He argues that the economic boom, which followed the war of 1812, began a cycle of transformation that lasted a generation, the outcome of which determined the capitalist market system that effects our daily lives even to this day. To buttress his argument Sellers uses a great many monographs on a variety of subjects, the most critical of which he outlines in a selective bibliographic essay. Sellers theorizes that it was a market revolution that established the "capitalist hegemony over economy, politics and culture." (5) While the constitution is the framework of American government and the foundation of its laws, in the early eighteenth century people's attitudes and the events they triggered transformed the nation politically, economically, socially, and culturally. Egalitarians opposed a more intrusive government that market elites saw necessary to promote capitalism. There have been outspoken men with powerful ideas in America's history and the period under discussion is no exception. Disagreement prodded a divided country toward its ultimate destiny. There was no grand design; contemporaneously there existed no perfect road map to the future. The clashing perspectives of land and market focused early American politics on three tightly linked questions: 1) How democratic - how responsive to popular majorities - would government be? 2) Would government power be extensive and concentrated at the federal level or limited and diffused among states? 3) To what extent and in what ways would government promote economic growth? In the brief span of a generation, these questions were answered between the end of war in 1815 and Democrat Pennsylvanian David Wilmot's antislavery amendment in the House, which inflamed differences over slavery. Suppressed anger encouraged new coalitions to form which, Sellers maintains, made the Civil War inevitable. The "great contradiction," as he refers to the Civil War, was caused by the failure of a compromise between the irreconcilability of slavery and liberal capitalism. Sellers' treatise is a thoughtful synthesis explaining what happened and why. In the political economy "public policy was an indispensable generator of market revolution." (435) Change began when Andrew Jackson defeated the British in New Orleans and the economic boom, which followed the War of 1812, pitted subsistence farmers against enterprising New York traders. According to Sellers abundant land and geography created a class struggle. As citizens moved inland they could subsist but impenetrable geographic barriers fostered familial and neighborly relationships. In contrast, along the coast, grain and other commodities could be grown or manufactured for trade with England. There commerce led to economic interdependence and the rising impor

Significant but not light reading

Market revolution fills the need for a signifiant economic history on the development of American capitalism.

Great Guide to the Forces Changing Early 19th c America

Solid all-around work on the social and economic forces that changed the United States from an Old World society, where privilege and rank were foremost, to a budding modern commercial civilization where individualism is prized and pluralistic republican principles predominate. A good read for anyone interested in the first half of the 19th century.

Sellers studies the capitalistic trends of the US Economy.

In this book, Sellers relates capitalism to historic trends within the United States. Although at time a bit heavy-handed, Sellers makes some important points. One weakness with the Market Revolution is sometimes the line between exchange economies and commercialism is crossed. As Steven Hahn warns, there is a distinct difference. In the eagerness to relate history and economy, Sellers blurs this line. Overall, this is an interesting and valuable book that provides enlightening insights into economic trends within the US.