This paper presents new annual estimates of U.S. production of pig iron and imports of pig iron products dating back to 1827. These estimates are used to assess the vulnerability of the antebellum iron industry to foreign competition and the role of the tariff in fostering the industry's early development. Domestic pig iron production is found to be highly sensitive to changes in import prices. Although import price fluctuations had a much greater impact on U.S. production than changes in import duties, our estimates suggest that the tariff permitted domestic output to be about thirty to forty percent larger than it would have been without protection.

Veins of iron run deep in the history of America. Iron making began almost as soon as European settlement, with the establishment of the first ironworks in colonial Massachusetts. Yet it was Great Britain that became the Atlantic world’s dominant low-cost, high-volume producer of iron, a position it retained throughout the nineteenth century. It was not until after the Civil War that American iron producers began to match the scale and efficiency of the British iron industry. In Mastering Iron, Anne Kelly Knowles argues that the prolonged development of the US iron industry was largely due to geographical problems the British did not face. Pairing exhaustive manuscript research with analysis of a detailed geospatial database that she built of the industry, Knowles reconstructs the American iron industry in unprecedented depth, from locating hundreds of iron companies in their social and environmental contexts to explaining workplace culture and social relations between workers and managers. She demonstrates how ironworks in Alabama, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia struggled to replicate British technologies but, in the attempt, brought about changes in the American industry that set the stage for the subsequent age of steel. Richly illustrated with dozens of original maps and period art work, all in full color, Mastering Iron sheds new light on American ambitions and highlights the challenges a young nation faced as it grappled with its geographic conditions.

Historical Archaeology. No further description available.

This pioneering textbook takes a thematic approach to the subject, resulting in a comprehensive understanding of historic economic issues in the United States. Siegler takes a thematic approach, and provides both the theoretical foundations and historical background needed to gain an in-depth understanding of the subject. Every chapter examines a specific topic, and the chapters are linked to each other to provide an overall view. The chronological approach is represented with a useful timeline as an appendix to show where the specific topics fit in the chronology. Chapter topics include: long-run causes of economic growth; economic history of income and wealth inequality; slavery, segregation, and discrimination; immigration and immigration policies; and an economic history of recessions and depressions. This book is ideally suited as a primary text for undergraduate courses in US economic history, as well as suitable courses on history degree programmes.

This set provides insight into the lives of ordinary Americans free and enslaved, in farms and cities, in the North and the South, who lived during the years of 1815 to 1860. Throughout the Antebellum Era resonated the theme of change: migration, urban growth, the economy, and the growing divide between North and South all led to great changes to which Americans had to respond. By gathering the important aspects of antebellum Americans' lives into an encyclopedia, The World of Antebellum America provides readers with the opportunity to understand how people across America lived and worked, what politics meant to them, and how they shaped or were shaped by economics. Entries on simple topics such as bread and biscuits explore workers' need for calories, the role of agriculture, and gendered divisions of labor, while entries on more complex topics, such as aging and death, disclose Americans' feelings about life itself. Collectively, the entries pull the reader into the lives of ordinary Americans, while section introductions tie together the entries and provide an overarching narrative that primes readers to understand key concepts about antebellum America before delving into Americans' lives in detail.

The Routledge Companion to Spatial History explores the full range of ways in which GIS can be used to study the past, considering key questions such as what types of new knowledge can be developed solely as a consequence of using GIS and how effective GIS can be for different types of research. Global in scope and covering a broad range of subjects, the chapters in this volume discuss ways of turning sources into a GIS database, methods of analysing these databases, methods of visualising the results of the analyses, and approaches to interpreting analyses and visualisations. Chapter authors draw from a diverse collection of case studies from around the world, covering topics from state power in imperial China to the urban property market in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro, health and society in twentieth-century Britain and the demographic impact of the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. Critically evaluating both the strengths and limitations of GIS and illustrated with over two hundred maps and figures, this volume is an essential resource for all students and scholars interested in the use of GIS and spatial analysis as a method of historical research.

First Published in 1990. This is the companion title to R.P.T. Davenport-Hines', Capital, Entrepreneurs and Profits. This title responds to the little discussion surrounding the subject of business history. The editor recognised that although the interpretation of business history has been wide, the only distinguishing features was a dependence on, often British, business records which is reflected in the selection of volumes within this collection. This title intends to present a list of searching and analytical, and therefore more satisfying and instructive, histories of British companies from which lessons can be learned.

Historians and economists will find here what their fields have in common - the movement since the 1950s known variously as 'cliometrics', 'economic history', or 'historical economics'. A leading figure in the movement, Donald McCloskey, has compiled, with the help of George Hersh and a panel of distinguished advisors, a highly comprehensive bibliography of historical economics covering the period up until 1980. The book will be useful to all economic historians, as well as quantitative historians, applied economists, historical demographers, business historians, national income accountants, and social historians.

First Published in 2015. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an Informa company.

Winner of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Award for General Engineering from the Association of American Publishers Originally published in 1996. By applying their abundant natural resources to ironmaking early in the eighteenth century, Americans soon made themselves felt in world markets. After the Revolution, ironmakers supplied the materials necessary to the building of American industry, pushing the fuel efficiency and productivity of their furnaces far ahead of their European rivals. In American Iron, 1607-1900, Robert B. Gordon draws on recent archaeological findings as well as archival research to present an ambitious, comprehensive survey of iron technology in America from the colonial period to the industry's demise at about the turn of the twentieth century. Closely examining the techniques—the "hows"—of ironmaking in its various forms, Gordon offers new interpretations of labor, innovation, and product quality in ironmaking, along with references to the industry's environmental consequences. He establishes the high level of skills required to ensure efficient and safe operation of furnaces and to improve the quality of iron product. By mastering founding, fining, puddling, or bloom smelting, ironworkers gained a degree of control over their lives not easily attained by others.