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Political Economies 1787-1800
In the late eighteenth century, political thinkers did not envision an entity called “the economy” the way that most of us do today. They were, however, quite interested in the statesman’s practice they increasingly called “political economy,” the management of public resources in a manner akin to the management of a household’s resources. Thus those who discussed “political economy” necessarily envisioned a political body, unified enough that they could imagine it managing its own resources. In 1776, thirteen self-declared American states theoretically took control of their political economies. During the Revolutionary War and under the Articles of Confederation, the states, in carefully delimited ways, acted as a composite body with a political economy of its own. In 1787, the ratification of the federal constitution transformed American political economy once more. The Constitution, though a historically contingent compromise at the moment of its ratification, became a blueprint for a particular project of economic, political, and social ordering. Seen in this light, the history of US political economy is the story of an emerging One.
Soon, however, this One became a battleground. During the 1790s, two opposing political economies emerged, envisioned and promoted by famous rivals Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson. While Hamilton succeeded in establishing the Bank of the United States and other long-lasting elements of American state infrastructure, not all of his ideas came to fruition, and not all of them were successful. As some scholars have emphasized, the defeat of the Federalists in the election of 1800 represented the triumph of an alternative, and by some measures more enduring, American political economy. Seen in this light, the story of American political economy 1787–1800 is not the story of a One, but of a Two.
Recent scholarship, however, has moved beyond visions of early American political economy either as a constitutionally defined One or as a partisan Two. It insists, instead, on integrating the One and the Two into a post-constitutional landscape composed of many political economies – competing, overlapping, and continually evolving.
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- Title
- The Cambridge History of the American Revolution
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press
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- History
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- January 29, 2025