Comparative Economic & Social History of Europe and the United States

Bill Rankin, with Sven Beckert, spring 2005

I. “CAPITALISM”

Grand Narratives and Economic Theory

Diamond, Jared. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fate of Human Societies. 1997.

Dobb, Maurice. Studies in the Development of Capitalism. 1946.

Heilbroner, Robert. The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers. 1953.

Landes, David. The Unbound Prometheus. 1969.

Marx, Karl. Communist Manifesto, Capital. 1848, 1867.

Mendels, Franklin. “Protoindustrialization.” in Journal of Economic History 30 (1972).

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. 1944.

Tilly, Charles. “Did the Cake of Custom Break?” in Consciousness and Class Experience. 1979.

——— Coercion, Capital, and European States, 990-1992. 1992.

Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Sprit of Capitalism. 1904.

Industrialization in Global Perspective

Ashton, T. S. The Industrial Revolution. 1962.

Berg, Maxine and Pat Hudson. “Rehabilitating the Industrial Revolution.” in Economic History Review 45 (1992).

Crafts, N. F. R. “Economic Growth in France and Britain.” in Journal of Economic History 1 (1984).

Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. 1991.

Daunton, M. J. Progress and Poverty: An Economic and Social History of Britain, 1700-1850. 1995.

Engerman, Stanley. “The Slave Trade: A Comment on the Williams Thesis.” Business History Review 46 (1972).

Farnie, Douglas and David Jeremy, eds. The Fibre that Changed the World. 2004.

Floud, Roderick and Donald McCloskey, eds. The Economic History of Britain since 1700. 1981.

Fogel, Robert. Railroads and American Economic Growth. 1964.

Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective. 1962.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Age[s] of Revolution, Capital, Empire. 1962, 1975, 1987.

North, Douglass. The Economic Growth of the United States 1790-1860. 1961.

Maddison, Angus. “Explaining the Economic Performace of Nations.” in Convergence of Productivity. 1994.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy. 2000.

Tilly, Richard. “Cyclical Trends and the Market Response.” in German Industry. 1991.

——— “Germany.” in Patterns of European Industrialisation. 1991.

——— “On the Development of German Big Banks.” in German Yearbook on Business History (1993).

Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. 1944.

The Development of Market Society

Clark, Christopher. The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780-1860. 1990.

Fields, Barbara. “The Advent of Capitalist Agriculture.” in Essays on the Postbellum Southern Economy. 1985.

Hahn, Steven. The Roots of Southern Populism: Yeoman Farmers and the Transformation of the Georgia Upcountry. 1983.

Koehn, Nancy. “Josiah Wedgwood and the First Industrial Revolution.” in Creating Modern Capitalism. 1997.

Kullikoff, Allan. The Agrarian Origins of American Capitalism. 1992.

McKendrick, Neil, et al. The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England. 1982.

Reddy, William. The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900. 1984.

Zakim, Michael. Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men’s Dress in the American Republic, 1760-1860. 2003.

International Competition and National Reorganizations after 1870

Berghahn, Volker. The Americanisation of West German Industry, 1945-1973. 1986.

Bernstein, Michael. The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929-1939. 1987.

Chandler, Alfred. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business. 1977.

——— Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism. 1990.

Fear, Jeffrey. “German Capitalism.” in Creating Modern Capitalism. 1997.

Hawley, Ellis. The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly. 1966.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Industry and Empire: An Economic History of Britain since 1750. 1968.

Scranton, Philip. Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925. 1997.

Sklar, Martin. The Corporate Reconstruction of American Capitalism, 1890-1916. 1988.

Stein, Judith. Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism. 1998.

Sugrue, Thomas. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. 1996.

Veeser, Cyrus. A World Safe for Capitalism: Dollar Diplomacy and America’s Rise to Global Power. 2002.

Wright, Gavin. Old South, New South: Revolutions in the Southern Economy since the Civil War. 1986.

II. CLASS & LABOR ORGANIZATION

Theories of Class and Class Formation

Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. 1984 [1979].

Braverman, Harry. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. 1975.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal, 1890-1940. 1989.

Giddens, Anthony. The Class Structure of the Advanced Societies. 1973.

Katznelson, Ira and Aristide Zolberg, eds. Working-Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns. 1986.

Scott, Joan. Gender and the Politics of History. 1988.

Way, Peter. “Labor’s Love Lost.” in Journal of American Studies 28 (1994).

Weber, Max. “Class, Status, Party.” in Essays in Sociology. [1922].

Elite Formation and Intra-Elite Competition

Beckert, Sven. The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie. 2001.

Cain, P. J. and A. G. Hopkins. “Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas.” in EHR (1986).

Dalzell, Robert. Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. 1987.

Faust, Drew. James Henry Hammond and the Old South. 1982.

Ferguson, Niall. The House of Rothschild (vol. 1: 1798-1848). 1998.

Genovese, Eugene. The Political Economy of Slavery. 1965.

Howe, Antony. The Cotton Masters, 1830-1860. 1984.

Kocka, Jürgen. “The European Pattern and the German Case.” in Bourgeois Society in 19th-Century Europe. 1993.

Montgomery, Maureen. “Gilded Prostitution”: Status, Money, and Transatlantic Marriages, 1870-1914. 1989.

Scobey, David. Empire City: The Making and Meaning of the New York City Landscape. 2002.

Non-Elite Culture

Bodnar, John. The Transplanted: A History of Immigrants in Urban America. 1985.

Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939. 1990.

——— A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. 2003.

Cott, Nancy. Bonds of Womanhood: “Women’s Sphere” in New England, 1780-1835. 1977.

Crew, David. Town in the Ruhr: A Social History of Bochum, 1860-1914. 1979.

Evans, R. J., ed. The German Working Class, 1888-1933: The Politics of Everyday Life. 1982.

Gutman, Herbert. Work, Culture, and Society in Industrializing America. 1976.

Holt, Thomas. The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938. 1992.

Pelling, Henry. Popular Politics and Society in Late Victorian England. 1968.

Roberts, James. “Drink and Industrial Discipline.” in The Industrial Revolution and Work. 1992.

Rosenzweig, Roy. Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in Worcester, 1870-1920. 1983.

Seccombe, Wally. “Patriarchy Stabilized: The Male Breadwinner Wage Norm.” in Social History 11 (1986).

Thernstrom, Stephan. The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the American Metropolis, 1880-1970. 1973.

Thompson, E. P. “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” in Past and Present 38 (1968).

——— “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the 18th Century.” in Past and Present 50 (1971).

Zunz, Olivier. Making America Corporate, 1870-1920. 1990.

Organizing for Radicalism and Reform

Buhle, Mari Jo. Women and American Socialism, 1870-1920. 1981.

Clarke, P. F. Lancashire and the New Liberalism. 1971.

Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy in the History of the US Working Class. 1986.

Dublin, Thomas. Women at Work: The Transformation of Work and Community in Lowell, 1826-1860. 1975.

Dubofsky, Melvyn and Warren Van Tine, eds. Labor Leaders in America. 1987.

Feldman, Gerald and Klaus Tenefelde, eds. Workers, Owners, and Politics in Coal Mining. 1990.

Fink, Leon. “The Uses of Political Power.” in Working Class America. 1983.

——— Workingmen’s Democracy: The Knights of Labor and American Politics. 1983.

Foner, Eric. Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and its Legacy. 1983.

Geary, Dick. European Labour Protest 1848-1939. 1981.

Hobsbawm, Eric. Labouring Men. 1964.

——— Workers. 1984.

Joyce, Patrick. Work, Society, and Politics: The Culture of the Factory in Later Victorian England. 1980.

Kocka, Jürgen. “White Collar Employees and Industrial Society.” in The Social History of Politics. 1985.

——— “Problems of Working-Class Formation in Germany.” in Working-Class Formation. 1986.

Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism. 1987.

——— Workers’ Control in America. 1979.

Moss, Bernard. The Origins of the French Labor Movement, 1830-1914: The Socialism of Skilled Workers. 1976.

Neufeld, Michael. The Skilled Metalworkers of Nuremberg: Craft and Class in the Industrial Revolution. 1989.

Phillips, Gordon. “The British Labour Movement Before 1914.” in Labour and Socialist Movements. 1989.

Sewell, William. Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848. 1980.

Stedman Jones, Gareth. Languages of Class. 1983.

Tax, Meredith. The Rising of the Women: Feminist Solidarity and Class Conflict, 1880-1917. 1980.

Thompson, E. P. The Making of the English Working Class. 1963.

Tilly, Louise. “Paths to Proletarianization: Women, the Sexual Division of Labor, and Protest.” Signs 7 (1981).

Wilentz, Sean. Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850. 1984.

Exceptionalisms?

Blackbourn, David and Geoff Eley. Peculiarities of German History. 1984.

Foner, Eric. “Why is there no Socialism in the United States?” in History Workshop Journal 17 (1984).

Friedman, Gerald. “The State and the Making of the Working Class.” in Theory and Society 17 (1988).

Hattum, Victoria. “Institutions and Political Change.” in Politics and Society 20 (1992).

Marshall, Thomas. Social Policy in the Twentieth Century. 1965.

Moore, Barrington. The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. 1966.

Skocpol, Theda. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States. 1992.

Voss, Kim. The Making of American Exceptionalism: The Knights of Labor and Class Formation. 1993.

Wilentz, Sean. “Against Exceptionalism.” Internal Labor and Working Class History. 1984.