Volume 2: The Long Nineteenth Century
x + 1021 pp.
ISBN 0 521 55307 5
£60.00 ($99.95)
Volume 3: The Twentieth Century
x + 1190 pp.
ISBN 0 521 55308 3
£60 ($99.95)
Keywords Economics, History, USA
Unlike the last Cambridge volume I reviewed ‐ one in the Ancient History series ‐ these volumes are a credit to the printer’s and bookbinder’s arts. The pages of these volumes are sewn onto a flexible cloth backing, with a casing that also “gives”, so that the page openings lie flat ‐ fully photocopiable ‐ an acid test of thick squat tomes such as these. Also, the print is blacker and the pages less cluttered with footnotes, so that in this case at least, the US printer and binder have done a better job than the Ancient History artisans at Cambridge itself. Sorry to rabbit on about the medium rather than the message, but when so much effort has been made by so many scholars and editors, it is sad when they are ill‐served by penny‐pinching on the final lap. To recap then, The Cambridge Economic History of the United States is an excellently crafted series, a pleasure to handle, and good value compared with other in similar series.
The standing and format of Cambridge histories will be familiar to all librarians: stand‐alone chapters written by experts on stand‐alone topics, each with their own bibliographic footnotes, linked according to an overall editorial plan and control, designed to take full account of new knowledge in the subject, while at the same time offering a comprehensive account suitable for non‐experts (although I have met some exceptions!). Innovative to these volumes ‐ at least to me ‐ are the bibliographic essays that conclude each volume (apart from the indexes). The variety of ways in which the Cambridge histories treat their bibliographies is worth an essay itself, but these are particularly good. Each chapter in the volumes has a parallel supplement in which recommended sources are described and evaluated within a prose text. In the bibliographical essay to the chapter “War and the American economy in the twentieth century”, and under the section on “The Vietnam War”, we are told that T.A. Riddell’s unpublished dissertation (details given) contains a vigorous analysis of the efforts of the Department of Defense to provide estimates of its costs as requested by President Nixon, though R.W. Steven’s book (details given) has a briefer treatment. But Riddell’s analysis, although valuable, only covers four years. To illustrate editorial awareness, “those interested in the fiscal arrangements in the later years of the war should consult chapter 17 in this volume and its footnoted sources”. An editor who has read a contributor’s bibliography ‐ that impressed me! Bibliographical lacunae are noted as well.
The volumes cover the economic activity and changes in the USA, and also those regions such as Canada and the Caribbean whose economies have been closely allied to the US. Volume 2 is titled The Long Nineteenth Century, a title which illustrates the difficulties of dividing up history into neat chronological divisions. In this case the volume covers the period from the passage of the Constitution in 1789 until the start of the First World War. Apart from USA’s own civil war, this period was, globally speaking, generally a peaceful one, and a period of massive international and intercontinental movement of labour, capital and commodities. The USA started this period as a small but vigorous society, yet ended it as the world’s premier economic power ‐ a story which this volume chronicles in detail. There are 17 chapters, and among the major themes covered are the migration of labour from Europe, Africa and Asia to the Americas; the North American frontier and westward expansion; the adjustment to slave emancipation; industrialisation; and the social and political consequences of economic growth. Other topics include inequality, population, labour, agriculture, entrepreneurship, transportation, banking and finance, business law, and international trade. Volume 3 covers the “Great Depression”, the two world wars, as well as the long‐term trends that were a feature of the twentieth century. These include the changing technologies, the rise of the corporate economy, and the development of labour law. Many of the topics featured in the earlier volume feature again, with perhaps more stress on trade, foreign relations, government regulation and the public sector. It also had 17 chapters.
The prose is generally pretty lucid and the editors (and printers and bookbinders) have done an excellent job. It is recommended for general and specialist academic libraries.
