HIST161 - AMERICAN CAPITALISM

A broad overview of American economic history will be provided by focusing on the following topics: European colonization of the western hemisphere in long-term global perspective; mercantilism and the British colonial economy; the economics of slavery; metro-industrialization, agricultural expansion and technological innovation in the nineteenth century; the growth and role of credit institutions; financial panics and business cycles; the rise and embedding of the corporation; the evolution of federal government interventions into the economy; women and work; the dynamics of mass consumerism; the Great Depression and the New Deal; political economic shifts in post-World II America; forms of globalization; deindustrialization; the “financialization” of the American economy; and the economic disorders of our own times.