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Debt-Driven Settlerism: Small Farmers And Bankers In The Trans-Appalachian South, 1800–1820, Phil Agee
Debt-Driven Settlerism: Small Farmers And Bankers In The Trans-Appalachian South, 1800–1820, Phil Agee
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This thesis examines how indebted small farmers contributed to the territorial expansion of the United States into Native lands of the trans-Appalachian South during the formative decades of the US republic. Taking on debt to purchase land and pay for the operating costs of farming, small farmers, the vast majority of whom were white, faced insolvency, land forfeiture, imprisonment, precarity, and poverty. In their struggles to manage debt, they operated under a creditor-friendly regime rooted in monetary and credit innovations of the colonial period. Indebtedness repeatedly compelled many small farmers to reenter the cycle of migration and settlement, serving as …