237from self-sufficient family farms and local small-scale produc-
tion of goods to an interdependent system of trade, factory
production, and speculation. The suddenness of this “revolu-
tion” made its social repercussions all the more unsettling. In
the frenzy to make money, the new capitalists turned their
backs on family and community. The “market revolution” the-
sis has provoked many debates, not the least of which is
whether it was a good thing. Sellers was sure that its effects
were harmful.“Capitalism commodifies and exploits all life,”
he declared. But the only judgment that matters was that of
the people such as those depicted here. If the steamboat cap-
tain had offered them higher wages and steady work, would
they have accepted?
Christopher Clark, originally a supporter of the “market
revolution” hypothesis, argues in Social Change in America
(2006) that the most crucial transformation of the economy
was into a fateful sectionalism which would ultimately lead
to the Civil War.I
n this 1847 painting by George Caleb Bingham, a steamboat
in the distance has run aground. The men in the flatboat are
considering, perhaps, whether to help lighten its load. They
smile contentedly. They are not soot-begrimed wage slaves
who shovel coal into smoke-belching machines. They work
when and where they wish, moved only by the pull of the cur-
rent and the sweat of their muscles. And yet the viewer
senses that their satisfaction will be fleeting. The steamboat
will get going again. George Rogers Taylor (1951) proposed
that the key factor in the transformation of the economy dur-
ing the early nineteenth century was a “transportation revolu-
tion,” the development of a system of canals, steamboats, and
railroads. But in the 1990s other scholars suggested that the
“transportation revolution” was merely a component of a
larger and more powerful process: a “market revolution.” The
thesis was proposed by Charles Sellers (1991), Harry Watson
(1990), and others. They argued that early in the nineteenth
century some well-connected entrepreneurs used public
funds to establish banks and corporations and to construct
the nation’s transportation infrastructure. This transformed
craftsmen into factory workers and subsistence farmers into
petty capitalists. In just a few decades, the economy shifted
DEBATING THE PAST
Was There a “Market
Revolution” in the Early 1800s?
Source: George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution(1951); Charles
Sellers,The Market Revolution(1991); Harry Watson, Liberty and Power(1990);
Christopher Clark, Social Change in America(2006).