January 24, 2022

• British cotton trade with India
• The Great Game: contested trade routes through Afghanistan
• Mercantilism: Zero-Sum Economics
• The Industrious Revolution
• The early British cotton industry
• How textiles were made
• Making thread slowly
  • Removing seeds
  • Carding cotton
  • Distaffs
  • Spinning wheels
• Production bottlenecks – only occur if one step becomes faster
• Making thread faster…and faster
• Drum carder → pressure to improve spinning wheel
• Weaving speeded up with flying shuttle → pressure to improve spinning wheel
• James Hargreaves – the Spinning Jenny
• Putting Out System
• Richard Arkwright – the Water Frame
• Samuel Crompton – the Spinning Mule

January 31, 2022

• Canals
  • History
  • Importance for textile factories
  • Leeds/Liverpool canal & Bingley locks
• Great Transformations that changed the way people live and work
  • Agriculture
  • Factories
• In 1784 Samuel Greg opened the first cotton mill outside Manchester
• This was a revolutionary new form of workplace
• Joshua Freeman: Behemoth-a History of the Factory
• Wool industry opposed British cotton textile manufacturing
• Initially it was difficult to attract workers
• The mills were hot, noisy, and dangerous; the work was tedious; the days were long
• Luddites and Saboteurs
  • Anger over lost home textile making opportunities
  • Revolt against harsh and dangerous factory working conditions
• Workhouses created to force indigents to perform labor to be fed
• Provided many factory workers–because workhouses were even worse
• Essentially the government compelled people to work in the factories

DATE	EVENT
1534	New France Founded
1607	Colony of Virginia founded at Jamestown
1756-1763	Seven Years’ War – Treaty of Paris
1747	George Croghan’s trading post on lake Erie
1749	Ohio Company founded
1754	Jumonnville’s Glen  –  Fort Necessity – Albany Conference
1763	Royal Proclamation of 1763, no settlement beyond Alleghenies
1763	Grenville’s Navigation Acts
1764	Sugar Act
Mar. 22, 1765	Stamp Act
1765	Stamp Act Congress
1765	Quartering Act
1766	Repeal of Stamp Act, Declaratory Act
1766	Sons of Liberty, Liberty Pole in NY
Jun. 15-Jul. 2, 1767	Townshed Acts
1768	Adams’ Circular Letter
March 5, 1770	Boston Massacre
1772	Gaspee Affair
Dec. 16, 1773	Boston Tea Party
March-June 1774	Intolerable Acts, Quebec Act
Sept. 5, 1774	First Continental Congress
Apr. 19, 1775	Lexington & Concord
May 10, 1775	Ethan Allen seizes Ft. Ticoneroga
June 17, 1775	Bunker Hill
June 19, 1775	Washington placed at head of Continental Army
July 9, 1775	Olive Branch Petition
Nov. 3, 1775	Fort St. John taken
Nov. 13, 1775	Americans take Montreal
Dec. 30-31, 1775	Battle of Quebec
Jan. 26, 1776	Knox delivers Ticonderoga artillery to Washington in Boston
March 4, 1776	Cannon installed on Dorchester Heights
March 5-17, 1776	British abandon Boston
June 1776	British fleet arrives in New York harbor
July 4, 1776	Declaration of Independence
Aug 22-27, 1776	Battle of Brooklyn
Sept 11, 1776	Richard Howe meets with Benjamin Franklin
Sept 15, 1776	British occupy Manhattan
Sept 16, 1776	Battle of Harlem Heights
Oct 28, 1776	Battle of White Plains
Nov 16, 1776	Battle of Ft. Washington
Nov 20, 1776	Battle of Ft. Lee
Dec 20, 1776	Thomas Paine publishes The American Crisis
Dec 26, 1776	Washington Crosses Delaware
Dec 26, 1776	Battle of Trenton
Jan 3, 1777	Battle of Princeton

Patrick Griffin – American Leviathan

In class one we saw that the proximal cause of the Seven Years’ War was a dispute between the French and British over the Ohio territory. Following the British victory in the war colonial settlers, particularly with financial interests in this region, believed they would be free to settle intros area. So they were greatly disappointed by the Royal Proclamation of 1763 that prohibited settlement beyond the Allegheny Mountains.

Griffin’s book deals with settlers who defied the British and relocated in this forbidden zone. The Leviathan in the title refers to the lawless “state of nature” that existed in this original American Wild West.

Thomas E. Ricks – First Principles 

Ricks is a Washington Post reporter who had previously written a number of books regarding the American military. He says he found himself so amazed and disappointed by the outcome of the 2016 Presidential election that he decided he wanted to look into the first principals upon which the United States was founded.

To this end he examined the correspondence and other writings of Americans in the revolutionary era to see what they were reading. He made a list of the most prominently reported titles and set out to read these works for himself. This book describes what he learned.

Bernard Bailyn – The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution

What shaped the shining of the American revolutionaries? This book is one of the classic works on this topic. It is now in its 50th anniversary edition. 

Pauline Maier – From Resistance to Revolution and American Scripture

These are two more classics in the field of trying to discern the thought processes of the revolutionary leaders.

Kevin Phillips – The Cousins Wars

This is two weeks in a row for Phillips. Here he describes his theory that the English Civil War, the American Revolution, and the American Civil War are actually the same war, fought by the same groups of people, at different times and different locations. 

Kevin Phillips – 1775: a Good Year for Revolution

Phillips says he wrote this book to counter the widespread belief that the revolution was inevitable; a view set forth by triumphalist historians in the post WWII period. He reviews a number of strands of colonial discontent with the British. He is more of a journalist than a historian, so the book does not presuppose that the reader is already familiar with the subject matter.

Tim Marshall – Prisoners of Geography

To Marshall, geography is destiny. He ranges across the world describing how the course of various countries’ history was affected by the peculiarities of their geographic constraints. It is similar in approach to Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs, and Steel in that it places a large part of nations’ destinies as being the result of externalities that are largely outside their control. This book has no direct bearing on the American revolution, but it is useful in understanding the reasons why certain countries behave as they do.

Fred Anderson – Crucible of War

This is a large and comprehensive history of the Seven Years’ War. At 912 pages, it is not for the casual reader, but I found it essential in understanding the mindset of American colonists leading up to the revolution. It is a good source on the extent of George Washington’s military experiences before the revolution.

Last	First	Title	Date	Publisher
Ackerman	Bruce	We the People: Foundations	1991	Harvard Univ. Press
Ackroyd	Peter	Revolution: The History of England from 1688 to 1815	2015	Thomas Dunn Books
Anderson	Fred	Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire	2000	Vintage
Atkinson	Rick	The British are Coming: The War for America Lexington to Princeton	2019	Henry Holt
Bailyn	Bernard	The Origins of American Politics	1970	Vintage
Bailyn	Bernard	The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction	1988	Vintage
Bailyn	Bernard	The Barbarous Years	2013	Vintage
Bailyn	Bernard	The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution	2017	Harvard Univ. Press
Brands	Henry	The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin	2002	Anchor
Breen	Timothy	“How Did the Colonies Unite?,” The New York Review of Books, Mar 11, 2021
Chernow	Ron	Alexander Hamilton	2004	Penguin Books
Di Spigna	Christian	Founding Martyr: The Life and Death of Dr. Joseph Warren	2018	Crown
Ellis	Joseph	American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies in the Founding of the Republic	2008	Vintage
Ellis	Joseph	American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson	1998	Vintage
Ellis	Joseph	Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation	2002	Vintage
Ferling	John	A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic	2003	Oxford Univ. Press
Ferling	John	John Adams: A Life	1992	Henry Holt
Fischer	David Hackett	Paul Revere’s Ride	1995	Oxford Univ. Press
Fischer	David Hackett	Washington’s Crossing	2006	Oxford Univ. Press
Fleming	Thomas	Washington’s Secret War: The Hidden History of Valley Forge	2005	Smithsonian
Flexner	James	Washington: The Indispensible Man	1974	Little, Brown & Co.
Franklin	Benjamin	Autobiography
Griffin	Patrick	American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier	2007	Hill and Wang
Hitchens	Christopher	Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man	2008	Grove Press
Ketchum	Richard	The Winter Soldiers: The Battles for Trenton and Princeton	1973	Henry Holt
Ketchum	Richard	Saratoga: The Turning Point in America’s Revolutionary War	1999	Henry Holt
Ketchum	Richard	Divided Loyalties: How the American Revolution Came to New York	2003	Henry Holt
Lepore	Jill	This America: The Case for the Nation	2019	W. W. Norton
Lepore	Jill	These Truths: A History of the United States	2018	W. W. Norton
Lepore	Jill	The Whites of Their Eyes	2020	Princeton Univ.
Loewen	James	Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong	2007	Atria Books
Mackesy	Piers	The War for America 1775-1783	1964	Harvard Univ. Press
Marshall	Tim	Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps that Explain Everything About the World	2016	Scribner
McCullough	David	JohnAdams	2001	Simon & Schuster
Meier	Pauline	From Resistance to Revolution: colonial radicals and the development of American opposition to Britain, 1775-1776	1972	W. W. Norton
Nagy	John	George Washington’s Secret Spy War: The Making of America’s First Spymaster	2016	St. Martin’s Press
Nash	Gary	The Unknown American Revolution	2005	Viking
Norton	Mary Beth	1774: The Long Year of Revolution	2020	Vintage
Philbrick	Nathaniel	Bunker Hill: A City, A Siege, A Revolution	2014	Penguin Books
Philips	Kevin	1775: A Good Year for Revolution	2012	Viking
Phillips	Kevin	The Cousins’ Wars	1999	Basic Books
Puls	Mark	Samuel Adams: Father of the American Revolution	2006	Palgrave MacMillan
Ricks	Thomas	First Principles: What America’s Founders Learned from the Greek and Romans	2020	Harper
Stoll	Ira	Samuel Adams: A Life	2008	Simon & Schuster
Taylor	Alan	American Colonies: The Settling of North America	2001	Penguin Books
Vowell	Sarah	Lafayette in the Somewhat United States	2016	Riverhead Books
Wilentz	Sean	The Politicians and the Egalitarians: The Hidden History of American Politics	2016	W. W. Norton
Wilentz	Sean	The Rise of American Democracy	2005	W. W. Norton
Wood	Gordon	The Creation of the American Republic 1776-1787	1998	Univ. North Carolina
Woodard	Colin	American Nations	2012	Penguin Books

Beginning about 200 years ago a profound shift took place in the way European economic life was organized. This is often termed the Industrial Revolution, but it might more appropriately be called the Capitalist Revolution. This was a time when water- and steam-powered machinery began to replace human and animal muscle power. More fundamental than the source of motive power was the change in the sizes of business enterprises. The new machines required enterprises of a vastly greater scale than had ever before been seen in human history. this would require capital investment possible only to individuals of great wealth, often requiring the active backing of governments in the form of economic, legislative, and military assistance.

As it happened the first such capitalist enterprises were cotton mills. This occurred because of a particular confluence of events. First was the so-called industrious revolution where individuals were motivated to industriously seek additional disposable income to finance the purchase of goods that signaled higher status. Second were the voyages of Columbus and da Gama that made widespread international trade possible–particularly trade in fine cotton muslins from India. The third was a sudden profusion of inventions that made it possible to mass-produce cotton textiles.

The result was the construction of huge cotton textile factories employing at first hundreds and then thousands of people. Sven Beckert in his book Empire of Cotton: a Global History uses the term War Capitalism to describe this process. According to Beckert War Capitalism has several distinctive features. Granting exclusive trade rights or manufacturing licenses. Naval support of international trade routes. The slave trade, both by making slavery legal and by providing legal protection to slave owners. Supporting the acquisition f land for factories and cotton plantations. Passing legislation that essentially compelled people to work in cotton textile factories. Providing the economic framework for banking and contract enforcement.

Class two described in detail the difficult and time-consuming methods for making thread and weaving it into fabrics that had been practiced for thousands of years. Then incremental improvements were made to accelerate various steps in the process. Each acceleration revealed a bottleneck where the energies of inventors had to concentrate to continue the press of making fabric faster and faster. 

Eventually, the machines reached such size and complexity that individuals could no longer participate unless they had significant economic backing. This would end the cottage industry workshop system in favor of large factories.

________

Class three described the construction of the first cotton textile factory, Quarry Mill Bank, in Manchester by Samuel Gregg in 1784. In present-day American political discourse manufacturing jobs in factories are often held up as highly desirable. This was far from true in the eighteenth century. Hours were long, often 14-hour days six days a week, the pay was low, factories were hot, noisy, and dangerous. In short, very few people were willing to do factory work unless under duress.

Before long there was active opposition to factory work. This motivated partly by the mindless drudgery of factory work and partly in outrage over the loss of home workshops to factory competition. Their hero was a perhaps mythical character named Ned Ludd who supposedly went about the countryside destroying mill equipment. 

Eventually, the government would establish military barracks in factory areas to protect the factories and to prosecute Luddites intent upon breaking the machines.

Class four described how workers were recruited to factories. The government set up workhouses where people were assigned tasks so difficult, demeaning, and brutal that factory work seemed preferable by comparison. Large numbers of children from orphanages and hard-up families were brought in because they could be paid less, were less able to resist, and could be, because of their small size, be assigned jobs under or inside dangerous machinery.

American sociologist and photographer Lewis Hine made thousands of photographs documenting child labor in factories the southern United States in the early twentieth century. 

The Keating-Owen Child Labor Act of 1916 outlawed the most egregious of these practices but was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in Hamer v Dagenhart in 1918. Successful legislation against child labor in the U.S. only became possible in the wake of FDR’s threat to increased the size of the Supreme Court.