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"This is an extremely well-researched and sophisticated contribution to American rural history. Bruegel has written a detailed local study on the development of the Hudson River Valley, which has important methodological and interpretive implications for many other regions and fields."-- Peter Coclanis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
List of contents
Illustrations, Tables, Figures, and Maps ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction: Everyday Life and the Making of Rural Development in the Hudson Valley 1
1. Exchange and the Creation of the Neighborhood in the Late Eighteenth Century 13
2. To Market, to Mill, to the Woods 41
3. Natural Resources and Economic Development 64
4. Farms Woven into the Landscape: Agricultural Developments, 1810-1850s 90
5. Country Shops and Factory Creeks, 1807-1850s 126
6. "Things, Not Thought": Wealth, Income, and Patterns of Consumption, 1800-1850s 159
7. The Culture of Public Life 187
Conclusion: Labor, the Manor, and the Market 216
Notes 227
Bibliography 275
Index 299
About the author
Martin Bruegel is Chargé de recherche at the Laboratoire de recherche sur la Consommation in the Département d’Economie et Sociologie at the Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique at Ivry sur Seine, France.
Summary
Tells the story of farmer William Coventry struggling in the face of bad harvests, widow Mary Livingston battling her tenants, blacksmith Samuel Fowks perfecting the cast-iron plough, and Hannah Bushnell sending her butter to market, the so-called "market revolution" sheds its inevitability-as well as its anonymity.
