History 901
NINETEENTH-CENTURY INDUSTRIALIZATION
Comparing the United States and Germany
This is a reading seminar in comparative industrial history. The first week's reading provides a very brief introduction to comparative
historiography and a more extensive survey of comparative methodology. Over the remainder of the semester, we will explore various facets of the process of
industrialization as it unfolded in the United States and Germany during the 19th century. Along the way you will certainly learn more about American and German industrialization, but the seminar is designed, first and foremost, to give you a rigorous theoretical and practical introduction to comparative history.
Organization
of the Course
Course Requirements. Working in teams of two, each student will lead class discussion four to five times during the semester (the number depending on enrollment). Over the course of the semester, students will also write two essays (approx. 10 pp.) based on class readings; these will focus on the assigned readings. For a final, more extensive paper (approx. 25 pages), students will be free to range more widely, choosing their own topic and doing outside reading. This paper a) must be comparative and b) should deal with some aspect of industrial history, very broadly defined. The first point is non-negotiable, although you may bring in a third country. The second is such a loose constraint that no negotiation should be necessary; indeed, it is difficult to think of any 19th-century topic that was not in some way related to the industrial changes underway at the time. Course grades will be based on: leadership of class discussion (25 percent), two essays (25 percent each), and final paper (25 percent).
Reading Materials. Since this is a small group, two copies of the assigned readings will be put on reserve at the Historical Society (under the last name of the first author for a given week). In addition, the following book will be available for purchase at People's Bookstore by the time we need it:
Gary Marks, Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany, and the United States in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989)
All readings are in English. As a rule, you should read them in the order listed. If you would like to do some background reading, see the handout.
Suggested Reading. If you want to improve your writing, analytical, or general historical skills, you might consult the following "classics":
Bloch, Marc. The Historian's Craft. Any edition.
David Hackett Fischer, Historians' Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought (New York: Harper & Row, 1970).
Jacques Barzun and Henry F. Graff, The Modern Researcher, 3d ed. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977).
William Strunk, Jr., and E. G. White, The Elements of Style, 3d ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1979).
For the mechanics of paper-writing, footnotes, etc., please follow the Chicago Manual of Style or consult Kate L. Turabian,
A Manual for Writers of Terms Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (latest edition), which is based on the Chicago manual.
Schedule of Readings
January 24
- Overview, mechanics, etc.
January 31 - Sampling of Historiography and Introduction to Comparative Methodology
Historiography
Carl N. Degler, "In Pursuit of an American History," American Historical Review 92 (February 1987): 1-12.
Raymond Grew, "The Comparative Weakness of American History," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 16 (Summer 1985): 87-101.
Hans-Jürgen Pulhle, "Comparative Approaches from Germany: The 'New Nation' in Advanced Industrial Capitalism,
1860-1940 -- Integration, Stabilization and Reform," Reviews in American History 14 (December 1986):ú614-628.
Jürgen Kocka, "German History before Hitler: The Debate about the German Sonderweg,"
Journal of Contemporary History 23 (1988): 3-16.
Comparative Methodology
Marc Bloch, "Toward a Comparative History of European Societies," in Frederick C. Lane and Jelle C. Riermersma, eds.,
Enterprise and Secular Change: Readings in Economic History (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1953), pp.ú494-521.
William H. Sewell, "Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History," History and Theory 6 (1967): 208-218.
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers, "The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry,"
Comparative Studies in Society and History 22 (April 1980): 174-197.
Charles C. Ragin, The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quanitative Strategies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987),
pp.1-84.
February 7 - Comparative Economic History
Douglass North, "Industrialization in the United States (1815-1860)," in W. W. Rostow, ed.,
The Economics of Take-Off into Sustained Growth (London: Macmillan & Co.; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963), pp.ú44-62.
Walther G. Hoffmann, "The Take-Off in Germany," W. W. Rostow, ed. The Economics of Take-Off into Sustained Growth (London: Macmillan & Co.; New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963), pp.ú95-118.
Richard Allen, "International Competition in Iron and Steel, 1850-1913," Journal of Economic History 39 (December 1979): 911-37.
Rainer Fremdling, "Railroads and German Economic Growth: A Leading Sector Analysis with a Comparison to the United States and Great Britain,"
Journal of Economic History 37 (September 1977): 583-604.
February 14. Comparative Business History
Alfred D. Chandler, Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Belknap Press, 1990),
pp.1-233, 393-628.
February 21 - Comparative History of Technology
Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983), selections.
February 28 - Comparative Institutional History (first paper topic handed
out)
Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Mirror Images: Political Structure and Early Railroad Policy in the United States and Prussia,"
Studies in American Political Development 5 (Spring 1991): 1-35.
Colleen A. Dunlavy, "Political Structure and Organizing Interests: Early Railroad Associations in the United States and Prussia." Ms., July 1991.
Peter Lundgreen, "Measures for Objectivity in the Public Interest: The Role of Scientific Expertise in the Politics of Technical Regulation: Germany and the U.S., 1865-1916," in idem,
Standardization, Testing, and Regulation: Studies in the History of the
Science-Based Regulatory State (Germany and the U.S.A., 19th and 20th Centuries), Forschungsschwerpunkt Wissenschafts~forschung (Bielefeld: B. Kleine, 1986),
ca. 110 pp.
Jonathan Harwood, "National Styles in Science: Genetics in Germany and the United States between the World Wars,"
Isis 78 (1987): 390-414.
March 7 - Comparative Political History (first paper due)
Kenneth Barkin, "A Case Study in Comparative History: Populism in Germany and America," in Herbert J. Bass, ed.
The State of American History (Chicago, 1970).
Richard Rubinson, "Political Transformations in Germany and the United States,"
Social Change in the Capitalist World Economy, Political Economy of World-Systems Annuals
1 (1978).
David Peal, "The Politics of Populism: Germany and the American South in the 1890s,"
Comparative Studies in Society and History 31 (April 1989): 340-62.
John A. Garraty, The Great Depression (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1987),
pp. 182-211 (Ch. 8, "New Deal and Nazi Reactions").
March 14 - Comparative Social History
Ann Taylor Allen, "'Let Us Live with Our Children': Kindergarten Movements in Germany and the United States, 1840-1914,"
History of Education Quarterly 28 (1988): 23-48.
Tom Taylor, "The Transition to Adulthood in Comparative Perspective: Professional Males in Germany and the United States at the Turn of the Century,"
Journal of Social History 21 (1987-88): 635-58.
Jürgen Kocka, "White-Collar Employees and Industrial Society in Imperial Germany," in Georg Iggers, ed.
The Social History of Politics: Critical Perspectives in West German Historical Writing Since 1945
(Leamington Spa: Berg, 1985), pp. 113-36.
Jürgen Kocka, White Collar Workers in America, 1890-1940: A Social-Political History in International
Perspective, trans. Maura Kealey, SAGE Studies in 20th Century History, Vol. 10 (London and Beverly Hills: SAGE Publications, 1980),
pp. 1-91, 251-367.
March 21 - Comparing Landed Elites: Planters and Junkers
Shearer Davis Bowman, "Antebellum Planters and Vorm„rz Junkers in Comparative Perspective,"
American Historical Review 85 (1980): 779-808.
Shearer Davis Bowman, "A Comparison of Antebellum Southern Plantations and Contemporaneous East Elbian Ritterguter," in Sue Eakin and John Tarver, eds.
Plantations Around the World, Proceedings of the First World Plantation Conference, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, October 2-5, 1984
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, 1986), pp.
28-41.
Shearer Davis Bowman, "U.S. Plantations and the Development of Capitalism," in Sue Eakin and John Tarver, eds.
One World, One Institution: the Plantation, Proceedings of the Second World Plantation Conference, Shreveport, Louisiana, October 6-10, 1986 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Agricultural Center, 1989),
pp. 7-19.
Shearer Davis Bowman, "Honor and Martialism in the U.S. South and Prussian East Elbia during the Mid-Nineteenth Century," in Kees Gispen, ed.,
What Made the South Different? (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1990),
pp. 19-48 (including commentary by Edward L. Ayers).
April 4 - Comparative "Working-Class Formation" (second paper topic out)
Amy Bridges, "Becoming American: The Working Classes in the United States before the Civil War," in Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg, eds.,
Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 157-96.
Jürgen Kocka, "Problems of Working-Class Formation in Germany: The Early Years, 1800-1875," in Katznelson and
Zolberg, pp. 279-351.
Victoria Hattam, "Economic Visions and Political Strategies: American Labor and the State, 1865-1896,"
Studies in American Political Development 4 (1990): 82-129.
Mary Nolan, "Economic Crisis, State Policy, and Working-Class Formation in Germany, 1870-1900," in Katznelson and
Zolberg, pp. 352-93.
April 11 - NO CLASS - Second paper topic due.
April 18 - Comparative Labor Politics
Gary Marks, Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany, and the United States in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), complete.
April 25 - Comparative Women's Labor History
Julie A. Matthaei, An Economic History of of Women in America: Women's Work, the Sexual Division of Labor, and the Development of Capitalism
(New York: Schocken Books, 1982), Part II.
Barbara Franzoi, At the Very Least She Pays the Rent: Women and German Industrialization,
1871-1914, Contributions in Women's Studies, No. 57 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985), complete.
May 1 - Comparative History of the State
Henry W. Broude, "The Role of the State in American Industrial Development, 1820-1890," in Harry N. Scheiber, ed.,
United States Economic History: Selected Readings (New York, 1964),
pp. 114-135.
Wolfram Fischer, "Government Activity and Industrialization in Germany (1815-1870)," in W. W. Rostow, ed.,
The Economics of Take-Off into Sustained Growth (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1963),
pp. 83-94.
Lance E. Davis and John Legler, "The Government in the American Economy, 1814-1902: A Quantitative Study,"
Journal of Economic History 26 (1966): 514-52.
Richard Tilly, "The Political Economy of Public Finance and the Industrialization of Prussia, 1815-1866,"
Journal of Economic History 26 (1966): 484-97.
Guy S. Callender, "The Early Transportation and Banking Enterprises of the States in Relation to the Growth of Corporations,"
Quarterly Journal of Economics 17 (November 1902): 111-162.
W. O. Henderson, The State and the Industrial Revolution in Prussia (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1958),
pp. 119-47 (Ch. 7, "Rother and the Seehandlung, 1810-48").
Merritt Roe Smith, "Army Ordnance and the 'American System' of Manufacturing, 1815-1861," in
Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience, ed. Merritt Roe Smith (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1985),
pp. 39-86.
W. O. Henderson, The State and the Industrial Revolution in Prussia (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1958),
pp. 96-118 (Ch. 6, "Beuth and the Technical Institute, 1810-45").
Jürgen Kocka, "Capitalism and Bureaucracy in German Industrialization Before 1914,"
Economic History Review, 2d ser., 34 (August 1981): 453-468.
May 8 - Summary Discussion
* * * Final Papers Due May 16 * * *
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