| In 1795 New Castle County, Delaware was considered the "greatest seat of manufactures" in the United States. That flour manufacturing was the reason why is probably surprising. My dissertation shows how the flour mills, not only in New Castle County, but across the entire lower mid-Atlantic region between Philadelphia and Baltimore, became the most advanced in the Atlantic world between 1750 and 1815. It is a study of an era: a time marked by war, revolution, and nation-building, periods of abundance and periods of depression, crop failure, insecurity, and risk. Despite these challenges and sometimes because of them, I show how farmers, millers, and merchants in the lower Delaware River Valley refined the grain trade and transformed flour milling.;This study creates a fuller picture of economic and business life in early America and has broad ramifications for our understanding of the Atlantic economy, regional distinctiveness, relationships between local and regional economies, labor and entrepreneurship, environmental history, industrialization, the impact of war, and the rise of capitalism. Each chapter focuses on the relations between farmers, millers, and merchants, and links the entire production, distribution, and marketing processes from the fields through the mills to transatlantic markets. By broadening the scope of early American economic and social history, my dissertation bridges the gap between studies of the dynamic colonial economy and those that herald a market revolution in the nineteenth century. It also challenges the prevailing view of early American industrialization based on the New England experience. By bringing attention to the great variety of individuals participating in the grain trade and flour milling, I blur the categories of "farmer" and "merchant." In doing so, I present agriculture, industry, and commerce not as separate enterprises but as a single, united system during a critical period in early American history. |
