In her first book, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele has not only broadened our perspective on the early history of arms and textile manufacturing, but she has also underscored how government policies promoted the expansion of capitalistic enterprises from the Declaration of Independence to the Mexican American War. Instead of emphasizing what we already know about the storied successes of New England arms and textiles (stolen technology, family and local networks, interchangeable parts), she shows how what was happening in Florida, Oregon, California, South America, and China had a lot to do with making U.S. weapons and cloths sought after in the mid-nineteenth-century world economy. Her endnotes reflect extensive research in primary sources as well as a deep understanding of the last half-century of scholarship in business and diplomatic history.
Schakenbach Regele frames her arguments within the concept of “national security capitalism: a mixed enterprise system in which government agents and private producers brokered solutions to the problems of international economic disparities and war” (p. 2). The young nation's need for weapons and uniforms did not end with the victory over the British in 1783. Economic competition from England, France, and Spain and continuous confrontations with Native Americans on the country's expanding borders forced national leaders to find ways to increase output. Early on, tariffs and federal contracts directly subsidized industrial expansion. Insightfully, Schakenbach Regele argues that the bureaucratization of the executive branch enabled government agents to implement policies at home and abroad to support industrial growth.
Policies assisting industrial enterprise emerged first with arms production, followed later by textiles. As Schakenbach Regele notes, “In 1800, American industry had seemed incapable of supplying an entire army, but in 1815, the United States emerged from a war with a major world power [Great Britain] in which its soldiers had fought with American guns in their hands and at least some domestic textiles on their backs” (p. 83). Continued conflict with Native Americans and Spaniards in Florida after the War of 1812 shaped the evolution of national security capitalism; targeted spending expanded industrial output in the North to support military activity in Florida. It is here that the author makes one of her important insights: “If we step back from the local history of places like Lowell and view New England industrialization from Florida, the advent of New England manufacturing changes from one shaped by entrepreneurs and laborers to one shaped by geopolitical developments and federal patronage” (pp. 87–88).
Extending this insight, Schakenbach Regele shows how important government consuls were to expanding industrial competitiveness abroad, particularly in South America and China. Consuls were private-public agents appointed by the president; they were expected to engage in commerce, share their knowledge with others, and generally promote U.S. manufacturing abroad. Consuls helped settle shipping claims, draw up preferential tariffs, and promote arms sales (the independence movements throughout South America encouraged the latter efforts). They performed similar work for textiles, including reporting on domestic markets. For example, while U.S. cloths did not compete well with finer products from Europe, they were attractive to a broader market of poorer South Americans. Nimble diplomacy throughout Latin America, then, brought advantages for U.S. producers. Expanding markets encouraged expanding output.
Returning to North America, Schakenbach Regele eschews past and current views of Manifest Destiny that emphasize politics and regionalism to recast the era as one in which the national “government pursued expansion and national security through two channels: diplomatic negotiations and military violence” (p. 137). Weapons and textile producers benefited from government policies that included military campaigns (against Native Americans and Mexico) and negotiated treaties (opening Oregon for development and markets in China, and adding what is now most of the western United States). Direct, subsidized government contracts were not employed because they were no longer needed: the Ordnance Department had astutely concentrated engineering talent in the government's two main armories; private U.S. arms manufacturers, benefiting from earlier government support, had established themselves as world leaders.
Schakenbach Regele has packed a lot into a relatively short space. Her numerous insights are occasionally undermined by endnotes that should have been incorporated into the text. In the final analysis she shows how U.S. manufacturers gained advantages in world markets because of government assistance, and in doing that she joins such historians as Mark R. Wilson, Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Paul A. C. Koistinen, and William Becker (to name only a few) who have shown how the mixed economy of business-government relations has shaped the expansion of capitalism for over two centuries.
