Robert Fogel – författare

Two distinguished historians, one an advocate of the new scientific or “cliometric” history and the other a traditional historian, debate the validity of their respective methods of studying the past.  While they differ sharply on many issues, in the end they agree that history is a vigorous, evolving discipline able to absorb the best of both scientific and humanistic thought.“Fogel asserts persuasively that cliometrics is best characterized by the explicit use of social science theory, and only secondly by its use of quantification…. Elton elegantly defends the traditional virtues of catholicity of method, skepticism toward sources, and informed scholarship.  The two scholars’ evident respect for each other enriches the debates as well as humanizes it.” –David Keymer, Library Journal“Both scholars are leading representatives of their modi operandi, and both have laid down path-breaking, interpretations of their subjects of study, leaving controversy and new methodology in their wake.  It is therefore an event unto itself that two such professors of history should pause for a moment to meet at the fork in the road and debate the roads to the past.” –Mark R. Horowitz, History Today“Anyone interested in historiography will find [this book] useful.” –Vincent A. Lapomarda, America

Historians have so far made few attempts to assess directly the costs and benefits of Britain's investment in empire. This book presents answers to some of the key questions about the economics of imperialism: how large was the flow of finance to the empire? How great were the profits on empire investment? What were the social costs of maintaining the empire? Who received the profits, and who bore the costs? The authors show that colonial finance did not dominate British capital markets; returns from empire investment were not high in comparison to earnings in the domestic and foreign sectors; there is no evidence of continued exploitative profits; and empire profits were earned at a substantial cost to the taxpayer. They depict British imperialism as a mechanism to effect an income transfer from the tax-paying middle class to the elites in which the ownership of imperial enterprise was heavily concentrated, with some slight net transfer to the colonies in the process.

Focusing primarily on the middle class, this study delineates the social, intellectual and psychological transformation of the American family from 1780-1865. Examines the emergence of the privatized middle-class family with its sharp division of male and female roles.

Out of Work chronicles the history of unemployment in the United States. It traces the evolution of the problem of joblessness from the early decades of the nineteenth-century to the Great Depression of the 1930s. Challenging the widely held notion that the United States was a labour-scarce society in which jobs were plentiful, it argues that unemployment played a major role in American history long before the crash of the stock market in 1929. Focusing on the state of Massachusetts, Professor Kevssar analyses the economic and social changes that gave birth to the prevalent concept of unemployment. Drawing on previously untapped sources - including richly detailed statistics and vivid verbatim testimony - he demonstrates that joblessness was a pervasive feature of working-class life from the 1870s to the 1920s. The book describes the ingenious, yet quite costly, strategies that unemployed workers devised to cope with the joblessness in the absence of formal governmental assistance. It also explores the many dimensions of working-class life that were profoundly affected by recurrent layoffs and the chronic uncertainty of work. Finally, it demonstrates that the fundamental contours of the Massachusetts experience were repeated, sooner or later, throughout the United States.

In the first comprehensive study of American working-class recreation, Professor Rosenzweig takes us to the saloons, the ethnic and church picnics, the parks and playgrounds, the amusement parks, and the movie houses where industrial workers spent their leisure hours. Focusing on the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, he describes the profound changes that popular leisure underwent. Explaining what these pastimes and amusements tell us about the nature of working-class culture and class relations in this era, he demonstrates that in order fully to understand the working class experience it is necessary to explore the realm of leisure. For what workers did in the corner saloon, the neighbourhood park, the fraternal lodge hall, the amusement park, and the nickelodeon had a good deal of bearing on what happened inside the factories, the union halls, and the voting booths of America's industrial communities.

In a departure from the longstanding emphasis on the frontier in American historical writing, Hal Barron employs a range of sources to reconstruct the social and economic history of a nineteenth-century rural community - Chelsea, Vermont -which was profoundly affected by population loss and economic stagnation at a time when most of the country was experiencing geographical expansion and economic growth. The author's lucid, accessible account explores the hard choices faced by the people of Chelsea as the economic vitality drained out of their community and shows how they dealt with these choices. Using new methods of social history to place Chelsea in the larger context of nineteenth-century American culture and society, this book provides an innovative contribution to the history of rural America.

In the historical literature of the American Civil War, the president, the generals, and the cabinet secretaries have won the war of words. Of the hundreds of men who served in the House of Representatives during this struggle, only a handful typically appear in general discussions of the period. Yet without a deeper understanding of the contributions of the members of Congress to the successful prosecution of the war we cannot fully appreciate the desperate nature of that conflict and its significance in the building of the nation. This book explores important aspects of the Civil War from the perspective of Capital Hill. It is an effort to reconnoiter some of the possibilities for understanding the congressmen, their relations with one another, and their interaction with President Lincoln. Designed as an exploration rather than as a full-scale history of the Civil War Congress, this book reveals a legislature in which the average length of service was very short, although a relatively small core of national public figures provide continuity.

This book examines a trans-Atlantic chain migration from a Norwegian fjord district to settlements in the nineteenth-century rural Upper Middle West and considers the social and economic conditions experienced in Europe as well as the immigrants' cultural adaptations to America.

Of all the terms that Americans define themselves as members of society, few are as elusive as 'middle class'. This book traces the emergence of a recognizable and self-aware 'middle class' between the era of the American Revolution and the end of the nineteenth century. The author focuses on the development of the middle class in larger American cities, particularly Philadelphia and New York. He examines the middle class in all its complexity, and in its day-to-day existence - at work, in the home, and in the shops, markets, theaters, and other institutions of the big city. The book places the distinct language of class - in particular the term 'middle class' - in the context of the concrete, interwoven experiences of specific anonymous Americans who were neither manual workers nor members of urban upper classes.

Ethnic Differences, first published in 1989, explores how and why the Irish, Italians, Jews, and blacks of Providence, Rhode Island differed in their schooling and economic success. Drawing on evidence from thousands of students records of public, Catholic, and private schools, as well as on census manuscripts, city directories, and other sources, the book offers an integrated study of American ethnicity, education, and social structure. Joel Perlmann examines the extent to which differing career patterns, and reconsiders the relation between ethnicity and social class.

By the early 1850s, St Louis was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. In this book, Jeffrey Adler analyzes the forces that determined the role of western cities in the national economy. He devotes particular attention to the ways in which Yankee merchants forged ties that linked St Louis to the New York and Boston markets. Northeastern businessmen fuelled the ascent of St Louis and made the city a Yankee colony in the West. During the mid-1850s powerful political and cultural forces altered the sources of urban growth in the West. As a result, the economy of St Louis collapsed. Yankee merchants stopped migrating to the city and ceased investing in local businesses. This book demonstrates that the sectional crisis abruptly transformed St Louis's role in the national economy, redirecting the flow of capital and migrants away from St. Louis and toward a smaller western city - Chicago.

This book examines return migration to Italy from the United States from 1870 to 1929. Many imigrants did not intend to settle permanently in the United States, but to make money in order to buy land in Italy. The book documents the flow from America back to Italy of individuals and remittances and discusses the strategies used by returnees in investing American savings. The Italian government and Italian society in general took a great deal of interest in return migration. Initially, Italy opposed mass emigration. In time, the government promoted emigration and return migration as the best way of creating savings, which would in turn promote the modernization of the Italian economy, especially in the south. Eventually, return migration and remittances were regarded by many Italians as the best way to solve the thorny southern question.

By the early 1850s, St Louis was one of the fastest-growing cities in America. In this book, Jeffrey Adler analyzes the forces that determined the role of western cities in the national economy. He devotes particular attention to the ways in which Yankee merchants forged ties that linked St Louis to the New York and Boston markets. Northeastern businessmen fuelled the ascent of St Louis and made the city a Yankee colony in the West. During the mid-1850s powerful political and cultural forces altered the sources of urban growth in the West. As a result, the economy of St Louis collapsed. Yankee merchants stopped migrating to the city and ceased investing in local businesses. This book demonstrates that the sectional crisis abruptly transformed St Louis's role in the national economy, redirecting the flow of capital and migrants away from St. Louis and toward a smaller western city - Chicago.

Before the Civil War, millions of migrants streamed westward into and through the Midwest, challenging the stability of the fledgling communities throughout that region. The Politics of Community examines the impact of westward migration on political development and behaviour in Ohio, the most populous midwestern state during the nineteenth century. After 1815, the political participation of wave after wave of migrants posed continual challenges to the stability of the state's political system and especially to the conduct of politics within the communities. As a result, Ohio's politicians, jurists, and voters reassessed many of their basic political assumptions and altered their political institutions and rules to take account of the substantial number of transient voters. Professor Winkle explores the influence of migration on rules of suffrage, conduct of elections, patterns of voting, recruitment of political leaders, and local party organizations, as they all emerged before the Civil War.

This 1982 book examines the changes in hospital care in New York that occurred around the turn of the twentieth century. It represents a fundamental departure from traditional medical history, which has usually emphasised 'progress' through science and technology. Professor Rosner identifies the economic, political and demographic pressures that brought about a reshaping of the health care system, and analyses the dramatic reorganisation of hospitals that took place. He also discusses major scientific advances such as the discovery of anaesthetic properties of ether, nitrous oxide and chloroform, and the consequent increase in surgical solutions to medical problems.

Fifty years ago, enactment of the Wagner National Labor Relations Act gave American organized labour what it has regarded ever since as one of its greatest assets: a legislative guarantee of the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively. Yet although the Wagner Act's guarantees remain substantially unaltered, organized labour in America today is in deep decline. Addressing this apparent paradox, Christopher Tomlins offers here a critical examination of the impact of the National Labor Relations Act on American unions. By studying the intentions and goals of policy makers in the context of the development of labour law from the late nineteenth century, and by looking carefully at the course of labour history since the act's passage, Dr Tomlins shows how public policy has been shaped to confine labour's role in the American economy, and that many of the unions' problems stem from the laws which purport to protect them.

Recent years have witnessed a growing interest in the social history of crime an-long a variety of disciplines. This book examines the rapid spread of uniformed police forces throughout late nineteenth-century urban America. It suggests that, initially, the new kind of police in industrial cities served primarily as agents of class control, dispensing and administering welfare services as an unintentioned consequence of their uniformed presence on the streets. This narrowed role hampered their ability to control crime, and, as modern social services developed and the police came increasingly to concentrate on crime control, they acquired a functional speciality at which they had never been particularly successful.