Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present

Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present

Nichols, Shaun S.

Paperback

Economics19th Century United States HistoryRegional: New England

ISBN10: 0197665322
ISBN13: 9780197665329
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: Jan 12 2024
Pages: 384
Weight: 1.20
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.40 Depth: 8.90
Language: English
American economic history has traditionally been told as a narrative of industrialization and affluence collapsing into globalization and industrial decay. Offering a reappraisal of this pattern, Manufacturing Catastrophe traces the successive rise and fall of the whaling, textile, garment, electronics, and high-tech industries in Massachusetts over the past two hundred years. It shows how business, labor, and political leaders repeatedly mobilized the lure of crisis--cheap labor, low taxes, and generous manufacturing subsidies--to pull and push both capital and workers across the continents, repeatedly remaking the pioneering industrial cities of Fall River and New Bedford. Workers--ranging from migrating Azorean seamen to British weavers to Quebecois farmers--and capitalists--including mobile manufacturers, globetrotting whalers, and multinational conglomerators--participated in the creation of regional growth and, with it, American industrial ascendance. Exploring the paradoxical and recurring coexistence of high unemployment and labor shortages in these cities, this book explains why recovery and growth have not necessarily translated into long-term prosperity. In doing so, it illuminates how economic catastrophe was, ironically, a critical ingredient in the making of America's industrial hegemony.

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