The First American Frontier

Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860

Wilma A. Dunaway

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780807845400, 9780807822364
• eBook ISBN: 9780807861172
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

In The First American Frontier, Wilma Dunaway challenges many assumptions about the development of preindustrial Southern Appalachia’s society and economy. Drawing on data from 215 counties in nine states from 1700 to 1860, she argues that capitalist exchange and production came to the region much earlier than has been previously thought. Her innovative book is the first regional history of antebellum Southern Appalachia and the first study to apply world-systems theory to the development of the American frontier. Dunaway demonstrates that Europeans established significant trade relations with Native Americans in the southern mountains and thereby incorporated the region into the world economy as early as the seventeenth century. In addition to the much-studied fur trade, she explores various other forces of change, including government policy, absentee speculation in the region’s natural resources, the emergence of towns, and the influence of local elites. Contrary to the myth of a homogeneous society composed mainly of subsistence homesteaders, Dunaway finds that many Appalachian landowners generated market surpluses by exploiting a large landless labor force, including slaves. In delineating these complexities of economy and labor in the region, Dunaway provides a perceptive critique of Appalachian exceptionalism and development.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The First American Frontier
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ILLUSTRATIONS
• MAPS AND FIGURES
• TABLES
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• 1 THE TRANSITION TO CAPITALISM ON AMERICAN FRONTIERS: TOWARD A PARADIGM SHIFT
• 2 SLAVES, SKINS, AND WAMPUM: DESTRUCTION OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIAN PRECAPITALIST MODE OF PRODUCTION, 1540–1763
• 3 SETTLERS, SPECULATORS, AND SQUATTERS: COMPETITION FOR APPALACHIAN LAND RESOURCES, 1790–1860
• 4 THE POOR MAN HAD NO CHANCE: FORMATION OF A LANDLESS AGRARIAN SEMIPROLETARIAT
• 5 MAKIN’ DO OR CHASING PROFITS?: THE AGRARIAN CAPITALISM OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIA
• 6 DIGGERS OF THE COUNTRY: INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTION FOR EXPORT
• 7 THE SPATIAL ORGANIZATION OF EXTERNAL TRADE
• 8 THE PERVASIVE REACH OF GLOBAL COMMODITY CHAINS
• 9 APPALACHIAN COMMUNITIES AND NONECONOMIC ARTICULATION WITH THE CAPITALIST WORLD SYSTEM
• 10 ECONOMIC CRISIS AND DEEPENING PERIPHERALIZATION
• APPENDIX : ESSAY ON QUANTITATIVE METHODS
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX