Western Settlement and the Price of Wheat, 1872–1913

1978 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 865-878 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Knick Harley
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
American West ◽  
The United States ◽  
Commodity Markets ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Price Signals ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Price Responsiveness

The expansion of staple agriculture into the American West after the Civil War was an important event in the economic history of both the United States and the world. This migration of commercial farmers transformed the world's commodity markets. We would expect to find that these farmers were responding to price signals in a commercial fashion. Curiously, the existing literature has failed to detect a price responsiveness in western expansion. This failure appears to stem from a lack of appreciation of the importance of the spatial distribution of prices in the late nineteenth century. This study shows that when this factor is considered, the expansion of western cultivation clearly is connected to the prevailing local price of wheat.

The Telephone Patents: Intellectual Property, Business, and the Law in the United States and Britain, 1876—1900

2008 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-601
Author(s):  
Christopher Beauchamp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Economic History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Strategies ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
Telephone Industry ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
New Perspective

This dissertation summary introduces a new perspective on the legal and economic history of patents in the late nineteenth century. Through a case study of the early telephone industry in Britain and the United States, the dissertation explores interactions between business strategies and national legal regimes, and proposes a revised view of the multi-layered relationship between patents and industrial organization.

Anglospheres: Empire Redivivus?

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Bell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
American Union

This chapter will explore the similarities and differences between late nineteenth-century debates on the British settler Empire and more recent visions of the Anglosphere. It suggests that the idea of the Anglosphere has deep roots in British political thought. In particular, it traces the debates over both imperial federation and Anglo-American union from the late nineteenth century onwards into the post-Brexit world. I examine three recurrent issues that have shaped arguments about the unity and potential of the ‘English-speaking peoples’: the ideal constitutional structure of the community; the economic model that it should adopt; and the role of the United States within it. I conclude by arguing that the legacy of settler colonialism, and an idealised vision of the ‘English-speaking peoples’, played a pivotal role in shaping Tory Euroscepticism from the late 1990s onwards, furnishing an influential group of politicians and public intellectuals, from Thatcher and Robert Conquest to Boris Johnson and Andrew Roberts, with an alternative non-European vision of Britain’s place in the world.

Land Transportation

2021 ◽  
pp. 311-350
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Fehring ◽  
Terry S. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
First Generation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Long Distance Transport ◽  
Primary Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Distance Transport

The engineering involved in transportation provided one of the points from which the modern mechanical engineering profession in the United States emerged. The shops that produced the steam engines for river boats and the locomotives for railroads had, by the 1840s, become a leading training ground for the first generation of professional mechanical engineers. As railroads became the primary means of long-distance transport for goods in the late nineteenth century, they also became a leading employer of mechanical engineers. Not surprisingly, the Rail Transportation Division was one of the original eight divisions created when ASME in 1920 adopted a divisional organization; it remains among that organization’s most active divisions. Unfortunately, despite the rail industry’s importance to American history and to the history of mechanical engineering, few articles dealing with the history of this form of land transportation have appeared in Mechanical Engineering magazine over the past fifty years. None were selected for this volume.

Soil and Biodiversity

Earth Matters ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Bardgett
Keyword(s):  
Soil Fertility ◽  
Nitrogen Supply ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Agricultural Field ◽  
Soil P ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Diversity Of Life

One of the most striking things about soil is that it harbours a remarkable diversity of life. A handful of soil from any well-kept garden, forest, or agricultural field, can contain literally billions of individual organisms and thousands of species. In some cases, as much as 10 per cent of the soil’s total weight could be alive, although in most cases it will be 1–5 per cent. The bulk of these organisms are microorganisms, which aren’t visible to the naked eye: the bacteria, fungi, and algae. But the soil is also home to many animals, including microscopic nematodes and protozoa, and large faunas such as springtails, earthworms, spiders, and even moles. The diversity of all these organisms is vast, with some scientists estimating that soils probably contain as much as one-quarter of the living diversity on Earth. The importance of soil organisms for soil fertility has long been known. The philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) referred to earthworms as ‘the intestines of the earth’, and Cleopatra (69–30 BC), the last pharaoh of Egypt, declared them to be sacred because of their contribution to Egyptian agriculture. Darwin detailed the importance of earthworms for soil fertility in his last book, published in 1881. He commented: . . . It may be doubted whether there are many other animals which have played so important a part in the history of the world as have these lowly organized creatures. . . . Also, the benefits of leguminous plants for soil fertility and crop growth have been known since Roman times. But it wasn’t until the late nineteenth century that it was discovered that nitrogen fixation is down to microscopic bacteria (Rhizobium) that live in small modules in roots. Around the same time, it was also discovered that bacteria that live freely in soil, outside plant roots, also fix nitrogen from the atmosphere and boost nitrogen supply to soil.

“Groaning for the Latter Day”

2021 ◽  
pp. 212-246
Author(s):  
John Howard Smith
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Movements ◽  
New Religious Movements ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Inequities ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Two new religious movements, Mormonism and Millerism, established a foundation upon which a heretofore invisible, gloomy eschatology that had long occupied the margins of American Protestantism stepped out into the limelight in the late nineteenth century. Gaining popularity during and after the Civil War, dispensationalist premillennialism posited that the world is fundamentally fallen, and that only Christ’s personal intervention could bring on the Millennium. To some among this growing band of radical evangelicals, the United States’ spiritual failings, political corruption, and social inequities meant that it was beyond redemption. Others still clung to the belief in America’s millennial destiny, arguing that only the United States may stand against the Antichrist at the latter day, joining with Christ and his angels in the final assault against Satan in the inevitable Battle of Armageddon.

Porfirian Commercial Propaganda: Mexico in the World Industrial Expositions

1977 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Latin American ◽  
World Trade ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
The United States ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The World ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Latin American Countries ◽  
Trade And Investment

Students of late nineteenth century history have long dismissed the world industrial expositions as glittering, but not highly significant reflections of the gilded age. What emerges from the literature of the period, however, is a sense of the overriding commercial importance of these exhibitions. Nineteenth-century observers consistently linked the fairs to the general growth of world trade and to the expanding commercial hegemony of the United States. More specifically, contemporaries agreed that the expositions served to develop trade and investment ties with Latin America. Among the Latin American countries represented in the expositions, Mexico was the most important and consistent participant.

Health

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arna Bontemps
Keyword(s):  
Social Services ◽  
The United States ◽  
Mortality Rates ◽  
Health Conditions ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Training School ◽  
Tuberculosis Patients ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The University

This chapter looks at the history of Provident Hospital, which had been started by Negro doctors in the late nineteenth century to address the poor health conditions among Negroes in Chicago, with particular emphasis on its role in addressing the high mortality rates due to tuberculosis on the South Side during the period. It begins with an overview of Provident Hospital, which opened in 1891 with thirteen beds and the first training school for Negro nurses in the United States, and considers some of its doctors, led by Dr. Daniel Williams. It then discusses Provident's alliance with the University of Chicago that established the hospital as a recognized educational center, along with its affiliation with the city's important social agencies through its Social Services Department. It also describes Provident's initiative to solve the problem of proper hospitalization of tuberculosis patients in Chicago through its Department of Medicine in collaboration with white physicians and social workers.

American Foreign Policy

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Clash Of Civilisations

This book brings together international relations scholars, political theorists, and historians to reflect on the intellectual history of American foreign policy since the late nineteenth century. It offers a nuanced and multifaceted collection of essays covering a wide range of concerns, concepts, presidential doctrines, and rationalities of government thought to have marked America’s engagement with the world during this period: nation-building, exceptionalism, isolationism, modernisation, race, utopia, technology, war, values, the ‘clash of civilisations’ and many more.

Fiscal Incentives for Regional Development

1976 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 357-378 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis J. Mahar
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
Amazon Basin ◽  
Tropical Rainforest ◽  
Rubber Market ◽  
Fiscal Incentives ◽  
The World ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Monopoly Position

Intermittent cycles of boom and bust based on one product have long characterized the economic history of Brazil. In this respect, the immense tropical rainforest comprising the Amazon Basin has been no exception. Economic activity reached its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when this region held a virtual monopoly position in the world rubber market. Manaus, strategically located at the confluence of the Negro and Solimões (Amazonas) Rivers, became the hub of the rubber industry and was transformed from an obscure river town of 3,000 inhabitants to a prosperous, cosmopolitan city of 50,000 in less than forty years. Due to an influx of Asian plantation-grown rubber, though, world prices started declining after 1910 and the Brazilian monopoly was broken—between 1910 and 1934, the Amazon's share of the world rubber market fell precipitously from 60 percent to 1 percent (Andrade, 1950: 23).

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