New England Metropolis

Boston and the Industrialization of New England, 1807–1850

Richard Garver

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• Print ISBN:
  9781625348913
  9781625348920
• Subtopic: Manufacturing
• eBook ISBN:
  9781685751722
• Index: History

At the outset of the nineteenth century, Boston was at its zenith as a maritime city even as New England was in decline. Many struggling farmers abandoned the area for more promising opportunities to the west. Yet by 1850, New England had been transformed into one of the most industrialized regions in the world. Former agricultural villages had become specialized manufacturing towns producing consumer goods for sale, and Boston merchant capitalists had established textile complexes that produced fabrics in huge quantities. Although Boston had been superseded by New York as a trading center, it thrived not only as a financial market but as an exchange hub in which these hinterland manufacturers acquired raw materials, capital, sales services, and transportation. With Boston at its metropolitan center, New England was transformed into an industrial geography that was unique nationally and internationally.

New England Metropolis demonstrates that, in contrast to the course of industrialization in other regions of the country, New England's transformation was driven by entrepreneurs in hundreds of rural villages and towns and by and Boston merchant capitalists who recruited underemployed agricultural household members to produce consumer goods for sale beyond the region, including in the slave economies of the South and the Caribbean. As Boston merchants adapted commercial, financial and transportation infrastructure they had developed to serve overseas trade to the needs of the region's manufacturers, industrialization halted New England's decline and, by 1850, had propelled it to prosperity.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Maritime Boston
• 2 Capital Accumulation
• 3 Rhode Island and the Inception of Industrialized Textile Manufacturing
• 4 The Rise of Manufacturing Across Rural New England
• 5 Embargo, Then War
• 6 Boston Merchant Capitalists’ Textile Experiment
• 7 Peace
• 8 The Panic of 1819 and Its Aftermath
• 9 Boston’s Emerging Role in New England’s Industrialization
• 10 The Boston Merchant Community’s Embrace of Textile Manufacturing
• 11 Rising Prosperity
• 12 The Consolidation of New England’s Industrial Economy
• 13 New England’s Transportation Challenge
• 14 Severe Depression to Record Industrial Growth
• 15 New England’s Railroad Bubble
• 16 The Emergence of Boston as a Manufacturing City
• Conclusion
• Tables
• Notes
• Index