The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History by Richard Lyman Bushman (review)

In this ambitious book, a distinguished historian sets out to characterize the "American farmer in the eighteenth century." This is a worthy goal since of course during the colonial and early national periods the population overwhelmingly lived and worked on farms.

The book begins with a broad introduction to what Bushman calls "Farm Thought." This part consists of two chapters, "The Farm Idea" and "How Documents Think." This is a very effective and imaginative strategy for setting up a framework for such a large undertaking. The author immediately establishes the book's main theme, that the "farm idea" everywhere in British North America focused on sustenance and continuation for the family. Family continuity and prosperity were achieved through both self-provisioning and market activity; these two enterprises, Bushman stresses, were not incompatible at all. In fact, "the market was not their [farmers'] enemy; it was a necessary component of their domestic economy" (x). The determination to achieve a comfortable livelihood and to establish sons on farmland drove every farming family's activities. Bushman considers the extirpation of Native Americans in light of these motivations; he finds that "the displacement of one population by another was not melodrama but tragedy" (20). He also shows clearly how profoundly unequal was the colonial farm family; patriarchal power over women and children was far-reaching and mostly accepted. In the second chapter of this part, Bushman lays out how such documents as deeds, promissory notes, and wills (among others) reveal ideas, cultural systems, and human purposes. "Courts made farms into texts," the author astutely observes (24).

A second two-chapter part offers a broad overview of North America from 1600 to 1800, considering "The Creation of Sectional Systems" and explaining how "A Population Explosion Ignites Conflict" in the late eighteenth century. The chapter on sectional systems places considerable weight on geography (long frost-free seasons) as a factor in the South's reliance on slave labor. Some readers will regard this explanation as skating a bit too close to geographic determinism. The chapter on late colonial crises is more successful, as it takes a broad view of population pressure and land hunger and their political ramifications throughout the colonies. This breadth allows for us to see local conflicts as particular expressions of a much larger-scale phenomenon.

The main body of the book consists of three more parts, which move simultaneously forward in time and from one place to another (Connecticut, 1640–1760; Pennsylvania, 1760–76; Virginia, 1776–1800). Though this approach simplifies a daunting task, it also shifts focus in a way that makes it difficult to comprehend the full extent of chronological change in each of the places, even allowing for the previous part's overview. In the part on Connecticut, the author uses close reading of diaries and ledgers to show how the exchange economy worked and how farming people passed on their knowledge to the next generation. Pennsylvania offers an opportunity to consider the mid-Atlantic "wheat culture," and to outline farmers' relationship to the independence struggle. A final chapter traces Abraham Lincoln's ancestors' movements to show how geographic mobility rose over time. These chapters show a masterful command of scholarship and ability to synthesize. The same is true for the next part on Virginia; it uses the well-known figures of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as entrees to themes of social stratification, slavery, and the persistence in America of the "farm idea" while British agriculturalists (like Arthur Young) were more fully embracing capitalism.

A final part looks forward to the nineteenth century with an overview of "American Agriculture, 1800–1862." Even in this era of rapid change, Bushman perceptively writes, "the improvement in markets did not lessen the commitment to family self-provisioning" (278). The Homestead Act (1862) marked government sanction for the "farm idea" while the simultaneous establishment of the US Department of Agriculture and...