American economic history has traditionally been told as a narrative of industrialization and affluence collapsing into globalization and industrial decay. Offering a reappraisal of this pattern, Manufacturing Catastrophe traces the successive rise and fall of the whaling, textile, garment, electronics, and high-tech industries in Massachusetts over the past two hundred years. It shows how business, labor, and political leaders repeatedly mobilized the lure of crisisDLcheap labor, low taxes, and generous manufacturing subsidiesDLto pull and push both capital and workers across the continents, repeatedly remaking the pioneering industrial cities of Fall River and New Bedford. WorkersDLranging from migrating Azorean seamen to British weavers to Quebecois farmersDLand capitalistsDLincluding mobile manufacturers, globetrotting whalers, and multinational conglomeratorsDLparticipated in the creation of regional growth and, with it, American industrial ascendance. Exploring the paradoxical and recurring coexistence of high unemployment and labor shortages in these cities, this book explains why recovery and growth have not necessarily translated into long-term prosperity. In doing so, it illuminates how economic catastrophe was, ironically, a critical ingredient in the making of America's industrial hegemony.
"Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Part I: From Farm to Factory, From Ship to Loom Chapter 1: The Irrational Revolution: The Failure of Early Massachusetts Industrialization Chapter 2: Economies in Motion: Crisis and Industry in the Whaling City Chapter 3: Labor in Motion: The Peopling of Industrial Massachusetts Part II: From Cloth to Clothes, From Crisis to Prosperity Chapter 4: Un-Making Industrial Massachusetts: Labor and Capital in an Age of Deindustrialization Chapter 5: Cut from the Same Cloth: The Remaking of Industrial Massachusetts Chapter 6: Towards Free Migration: The Reopening of Industrial Massachusetts Part III: From the Needle to High Tech, From Massachusetts to the World Chapter 7: Towards Free Trade: Globalization from the Ground Up Chapter 8: Reconstructing Industrial Ascendance: Massachusetts and the Reordering of American Capitalism Chapter 9: Industrial Twilight? Massachusetts and the Reordering of Global Capitalism Chapter 10: The ""New"" Economy: Making High-Tech Massachusetts Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index"
Shaun S. Nichols is an Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. He is a native of Fall River, Massachusetts.
Reviews for Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present
In this elegantly written, thoughtful first book, Nichols presents a micro-study of the New Bedford-Nantucket region in Massachusetts as it passed through several stages of industrialization between 1800 and 2020. * Douglas Steeples, Choice *