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Introduction
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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Introduction Simon Middleton and Billy G. Smith As a mode of historical analysis of early North America and the Atlantic World, class is dead—or so it has been reported for the last two decades. A combination of scholarly critiques and global structural changes has enervated a once vigorous historiography relating to class formation and struggles in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The academic focus on the importance of cultural rather than economic factors of historical causality and on the influence of language in constructing collective identities undermined class analysis as a mode of inquiry. At the same time, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and most socialist nations, the lurch of Western political parties to the right, the growing strength of global capitalism (and concomitant weakening of labor organizations), and the deindustrialization of wealthy nations all discouraged examination of the past (or present ) from a class perspective.1 This volume confronts the devaluation of class and seeks to reinvigorate its study. Although differing in their interpretative approaches and priorities, the contributors to this collection all agree that class analysis is indispensable to understanding early North America and the Atlantic World and to explaining the historical processes that marked the transition from the early modern to the modern eras. To appreciate why this collection is necessary and valuable, the introduction reviews how class emerged and flourished as a category of analysis in the twentieth century then lost its purchase in Anglo-American historiography in the 1980s and 1990s. Thereafter, the introduction evaluates the global structural changes during the past quarter century that have affected the theoretical approaches to class and that inform the departure point for the chapters included in this collection. Compared to other categories of difference—including race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and culture—class has become the least fashionable among historians.Yet, we believe that class matters vitally. Fortunately, during the past four or five years, class analysis of early North America and the At- lantic World is recovering from its wilted stage and enjoying a state of renewed growth.2 Indeed, the chapters in this collection point the way toward a variety of new methods and of new subjects for study that recognize the vital importance of class issues. Such a renaissance will benefit not only the writing of history , but also our understanding of our own world. Our goal, ultimately, is not to prescribe strict, dogmatic guidelines about one correct approach to class analysis, but rather, by considering various possibilities in this book, to water with interpretations, fertilize with ideas, and otherwise quicken the flowering of class studies that once again are beginning to take root. “Class” initially entered English usage in the seventeenth century as a description of the“order or distribution of people according to their several degrees .”3 During the next two centuries, class gradually eclipsed notions of estate and degree as the preferred term of social classification for different “sorts”of people who were distinguished by increasingly fluid considerations of status, manners, and wealth.4 For some scholars, the emerging preference for class in social description reflected a critical shift in economic relations, as interactions centered on subsistence agriculture and local markets mediated by long-established private and public obligations gave way to relations based on commercial agriculture, manufacturing, large-scale markets, and exchanges arbitrated by individual ambition and the cash nexus. Witnessing this transformation, and drawing upon a century or more of social and economic commentary, Karl Marx formulated his view of class as derived from the productive relations into which men and women have to enter in order to survive. He also posited an important distinction between class as an objective condition and class as a generative historical force with the potential to transform society. The first attribute reflected an individual’s relationship to the means of production. The second developed only as members of a given class realized the political and historical implications of their structurally determined position as subjects. Marx thus deployed class not only as a term of social description but also as an analytic category that explained the history of virtually all societies and even provided a guide for the future.5 In the first half of the twentieth century, class enjoyed a prominent position in historical debate; some scholars argued for the salience of class identities and class struggles, although others offered interpretations based on a liberal, consensual view of early modern Anglo-American history.6 At midcentury , one particular conceptualization came to...