The American Way: A Geographical History of Crisis and Recovery

(Paperback)

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The geography of contemporary U.S. political economythe relocation of firms toward the sunbelt and abroad; the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt; and the rise of footloose producer services, NAFTA-inspired trade flowshas roots that run deep into our past. This innovative history by one of our most distinguished historical geographers traces their growth back to the seventeenth-century origins of liberalism, republicanism, and the regular financial crises by then endemic in capitalist societies. The problem the English and then the Americans faced was overcoming these crises while avoiding the political extremes of royal absolutism and later of socialism, communism, and fascism. The English way alternated between the doctrinaire ideologies and geographies of republicanism and liberalism. In 1776, by mixing elements of both, Americans created entirely new ideological alloys. Henceforth, policy regimes alternated between Democrats and Republicans and their distinctive fusions of liberal and republican ideology. Democrats combined publicanism's tenets of equality, diversified and volatile regions, and consumer revolution with liberalism's tenets of free trade, geographical consolidation, and dispersion (New Deal 'liberalism'). Republicans mixed liberalism's biases toward elites, regional specialization and stability, and producer revolution with republicanism's tilt toward nationalism, expansionism, and demographic concentration (Reagan's America). Muddying liberal and republican ideologies and geographies in ways that tempered their extremes, Americans would add one more twist. Thrice, upon the birth of the first, second, and third republics, they enlarged the geographical jurisdictions of the federal government, extended the domains of U.S. power, and redefined the nature of the state. Carville Earle defines these enlargements as the distributive and partisan 'sectional state' of the 1790s, the regulatory and redistributive 'national state' of the 1880s, and the neoliberal 'transnational state' of the 1980s. In tandem with the American dynamic of crisis-and-recovery, the author argues that these three 'states' have fashioned a dynamic and dialectical series of geographies that, as tools of ideology, have done much more to ensure the growth and viability of the U.S. economy, polity, and society.

Reviews

A magnificent piece of work. Not only is the book highly original in its combining of political and economic themes in a geographical history of the American past, it is based on a thorough review of appropriate literature and a considerable amount of pathbreaking original empirical research. -- John Agnew, UCLA
Will surely stand as a challenging and thought-provoking work in the years to come. . . . The abundance of historical data and argument [Earle] presents can only add to our understanding of American history. It is a fitting monument to his life's work as a historical geographer. * H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online *
In The American Way, Carville Earle advances a sweeping, even breathtaking in scope, synthesis of American political economy, which challenges scholars to rethink conventional interpretations of the nation's changing geographies associated with different periods of time. -- Edward K. Muller, University of Pittsburgh
[A] bold and sweeping work that attempts to provide an intellectual coherence to the patterns of historical geography from the colonial period to modern times. -- Sukkoo Kim * Economic Historical Services *
Earle provides depth and analysis toward a greater understanding of [U.S.] economic might. . . . Complemented by a liberal number of maps and a rich and varied bibliography. Recommended. * Choice Reviews *
The American Way is a provocative work that deserves our attention. * Eh.Net: The Economic History Network *
This is a stimulating book that may leave readers less optimistic than the author. Earle helps us appreciate why the debate about republican and Whig origins of the American Constitution will likely be unending. Earle's provocative vision gives historians and historical geographers, as well as Americans and their global neighbors, some ideas to challenge and even more to ponder. * American Historical Review *
In the The American Way Carville Earle advances a sweeping, even breathtaking in scope, synthesis of American political economy, which challenges scholars to rethink conventional interpretations of the nation's changing geographies associated with different periods of time. -- Edward K. Muller * University Of Pittsburgh *

Author Bio

Carville Earle (1942-2003) was Carl O. Sauer Professor of Geography at Louisiana State University.