Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers

Download or read book Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers written by Andrew Dawson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lives of the Philadelphia Engineers examines the emergence of a new class of industrial entrepreneur and the world they confronted and shaped. Historians have been reluctant to examine nineteenth-century American business leaders as a social group and this study helps remedy the defect. By examining nineteenth-century American business leaders as a distinct social group, it interweaves a history of the social and economic development of the largest centre of machine building in nineteenth-century America with the dramatic political narrative of sectional conflict, Civil War and Reconstruction. Crossing and re-crossing the boundary between industrial and political history it throws important new light on the process of industrialisation, the Civil War conflict, and the contested governance of nineteenth-century cities. While this study is firmly rooted in the experience of Philadelphia's machine builders, its historiographic significance extends to many important themes of mid-century American history.