Counter-Currents
The Fountainhead of White America: Richard Bushman’s The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century
Spencer J. Quinn
2,756 words
Richard Lyman Bushman
The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century
New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2018
Most of us who are not farmers are tempted to take farming for granted. We certainly see the results of farming in the produce sections of our supermarkets. Beyond that, we have pleasant images of industrious country folk in denim overalls just doin’ their thing amid amber waves of grain.
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7 comments
I love these book reviews, Spencer J. Quinn! Keep ’em coming.
Thanks! I have few more waiting in the queue for the summer.
Looking forward to them. Cheers.
Thank you.
Outstanding review!
“South of a certain line, one could comfortably walk outside without shoes. And people knew exactly where this line was in many places because Charles Mason, Jeremiah Dixon, and others actually surveyed it.” Neat way to describe/teach the M-D Line.
My impression from *ahem* The Academy was that most intellectuals had no idea what “capitalism” meant (for many of them an economy was “capitalist” if people participated to any degree in a “market” and/or sold things for cash; “the marketplace” was a real buzz-word for those types). And no one could agree on what the economy of the Antebellum South was. That either says something about academics or about capitalism — maybe a little column A and a little column B. So, Jefferson’s and Washington’s thoughts on profit are interesting.
Anyway, loved the review.
Thank you so much, Kathryn.
I believe Bushman referred to farmers as pre-capitalists, like a halfway house between barter and capitalism. They cared more about staying in balance than turning profits. Money was a means to that, not an end in itself. I extrapolate from the book how farmers saw their farms as living, even holy, things that connected them to the land and the nation and formed their identity.
This is something higher than capital. It’s white America in its purest form.
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