Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Courting American Capital: Public Relations And The Business Of Selling Ivorian Capitalism In The U.S., 1960-1980, Abou B. Bamba

History Faculty Publications

This chapter is an invitation to reimagine the roles assigned to players in the history of capitalism on the global stage. It challenges aspects of the historiography of capitalism in the twentieth century, which tend to center on historical actors and institutions of the Global North. Even when actors in the Global South are discussed, it is usually to portray them as passive victims of an intractable system. By focusing on the Ivory Coast and its economic diplomacy toward the United States, I seek to destabilize this general picture.

A Beer For The People: Black Capitalism And The Brewing Industry In Civil Rights Era Wisconsin, John L. Harry

Theses and Dissertations

The term “Black Capitalism” was coined by Richard Nixon during the 1968 presidentialcampaign as a means of both quelling the unrest of the previous decade regarding the more volatile factions within the larger civil rights movement as well as helping African Americans enter the economic mainstream. Once president, Nixon’s rhetoric became a policy through the creation of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise and loans through the Small Business Administration. In 1970, a group of Black businessmen in Milwaukee took advantage of these programs to become the first Black brewery owners in Wisconsin when they purchased Peoples Brewing Company in …

Safekeeping: Slavery, Capitalism, And The Carceral State In Washington, D.C., 1830-1863, Brandon Wilson

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the 1830s, incarceration emerged as a two-pronged solution for racial control and economic expansion. Local and federal government built jails around the District of Columbia to detain "rowdy negro boys," men, and women, as a means to stymie their rapid movement and fuel a burgeoning domestic slave trade. People were jailed, fined, and often sold to the Deep South, providing a wellspring of capital for enslavers, justified through the lens of criminality. For the crime of petty theft, missing free papers, or in at least one case "using foul language," black people of the Washington region could find themselves …

Red Sea, White Tides, And Blue Horizons, John P. Devine

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Eric Hobsbawm, in his effort to explain the fundamental divide which produced the Second World War, convincingly argues that “the crucial lines in this civil war were not drawn between capitalism as such and communist social revolution, but between ideological families: on the one hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment and the great revolutions including, obviously the Russian revolution’, on the other hand, its opponents.” This thesis argues that the American Civil War was a “great revolution” that represented a crucial transformative point in the formation of these two waring factions. The struggle was especially influential on the theory …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

Aggregate Demand And Defensive Spending In The United States From The Second World War To The End Of The Twentieth Century, Sam Martin

Student Writing

No abstract provided.

Capitalism And The Science Of History: Appleby, Marx, And Postmodernism, Patrick D. Anderson

Grand Valley Journal of History

Joyce Appleby has written an extensive amount on the origins and development of capitalism, but her work is influenced by her belief that history is a science with at least some objectivity. She rejects Marxism as a relic of past historians with naïve beliefs about finding the laws of nature, but she also rejects postmodern criticisms of history because they undermine any chance for objectivity. Appleby believes the historian can be objective even if politics necessarily colors his or her work. For Appleby, her support of capitalism leads her to make policy recommendations with her historiography, recommendations that change with …

The Historical Background Of The Communist Manifesto, George R. Boyer

George R. Boyer

[Excerpt] The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published 150 years ago in London in February 1848, is one of the most influential and widely-read documents of the past two centuries. The historian A. J. P. Taylor (1967, p. 7) has called it a "holy book," and contends that because of it, "everyone thinks differently about politics and society." And yet, despite its enormous influence in the 20th century, the Manifesto is very much a period piece, a document of what was called the "hungry" 1840s. It is hard to imagine it being written in any other decade of the 19th …

The Myth Of Endless Accumulation: A Feminist Inquiry Into Globalization, Growth, And Social Change, Martha Freymann Miser

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This theoretical dissertation examines the concept of growth and its core assumption—that the continual accumulation of wealth is both socially wise and ecologically sustainable. The study challenges and offers alternatives to the myth of endless accumulation, suggesting new directions for leadership and social change. The central question posed in this inquiry: Can we craft a more ethical form of capitalism? To answer this question, the study examines conventional and critical globalization studies; feminist scholarship on standpoint, political economy, and power; and the Enlightenment notions of progress and modernism, drawing on a number of works, including Aristotle on the three intelligences, …

The Great Transition: The Dynamics Of Market Transitions And The Case Of Russia, 1991-1995, Jeffrey K. Hass

Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications

The market transition in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union brings us back to essential issues that Marx and Weber addressed: the genesis of capitalism and the process of economic change. What is the transition and what does it involve - restructuring incentives, creating new laws, learning new culture, or creating new power structures? The answer partially depends on the particular transition (initial conditions, targets, actors' perceptions); but necessary general frameworks remain elusive, and current economic policies and analyses reveal that we understand little more about economic change than a century ago. Recent works on market transitions have furthered …

Economic Interdependence Along A Colonial Frontier: Capitalism And The New River Valley, 1745-1789, B. Scott Crawford

History Theses & Dissertations

Historians have generally placed the beginning of capitalism in the United States in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. This assumes that the industrialization of the New England states fostered in a modern economic environment for the country as a whole. However, evidence of modern economic principles existed on the Virginia frontier as early as the mid-eighteenth century. As frontier settlers aspired to emulate eastern society, they not only sought to recreate a lifestyle similar to the one they left behind, but also set up similar governing practices, which in turn created social stratification similar to that which existed in the …

The Paradox Of Ideology, Justin Schwartz

Justin Schwartz

A standard problem with the objectivity of social scientific theory in particular is that it is either self-referential, in which case it seems to undermine itself as ideology, or self-excepting, which seem pragmatically self-refuting. Using the example of Marx and his theory of ideology, I show how self-referential theories that include themselves in their scope of explanation can be objective. Ideology may be roughly defined as belief distorted by class interest. I show how Marx thought that natural science was informed by class interest but not therefore necessarily ideology. Capitalists have an interest in understanding the natural world (to a …

The Fruits Of Merchant Capital: Slavery And Bourgeois Property In The Rise And Expansion Of Capitalism (Book Review), Edward L. Ayers

History Faculty Publications

Review of the book,The Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese. New York: Oxford University Press, 1983.

2. The Renaissance Of Northern Europe, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section VI: Renaissance Humanism

The Renaissance north of the Alps was akin to the Italian Renaissance, but it appeared later and developed distinctive features of its own. It had a dual origin in infection and invention. Infection was the result of the brisk traffic of merchants, scholars, princes, soldiers, Churchmen, and artists which passed between Italy and the North, carrying tidings of the new developments in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan. In addition, northern Europeans hit on ideas of their own. Since they, like the Italians, were experiencing the growth of trade, urban life, and the centralized state, their response to these events was …

1. The Renaissance In Italy, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section VI: Renaissance Humanism

Italian wealth in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was a fertile seedbed in which Renaissance civilization flowered. We have already noted how Italy led the way in the development of commercial capitalism. This flourishing economy placed in the hands of a vigorous class of self-made men sufficient wealth to give Italian civilization a gilding of luxury and display such as the Western World had not seen since the fall of Rome. [excerpt]

4. The Rise Of Capitalism, Robert L. Bloom, Basil L. Crapster, Harold A. Dunkelberger, Charles H. Glatfelter, Richard T. Mara, Norman E. Richardson, W. Richard Schubart

Section V: The Rise of Capitalism and the National State to 1500

It will be seen from the foregoing that some of the spirit and practices of modern capitalism were already apparent as early as the eleventh and twelfth centuries. European thought was becoming more secular with the development of a mercantile culture which stressed the production of goods for profit in contrast with the former emphasis on production for use. Medieval man began exploiting opportunities for more effective production and is distribution of the products of farm, mine, and shop. From this search evolved the economic system we call capitalism. In its rudimentary form this institution was not unknown during the …