At the outset of the nineteenth century, Boston was at its zenith as a maritime city even as New England was in decline. Many struggling farmers abandoned the area for more promising opportunities to the west. Yet by 1850, New England had been transformed into one of the most industrialized regions in the world. Former agricultural villages had become specialized manufacturing towns producing consumer goods for sale, and Boston merchant capitalists had established textile complexes that produced fabrics in huge quantities. Although Boston had been superseded by New York as a trading center, it thrived not only as a financial market but as an exchange hub in which these hinterland manufacturers acquired raw materials, capital, sales services, and transportation. With Boston at its metropolitan center, New England was transformed into an industrial geography that was unique nationally and internationally.

New England Metropolis demonstrates that, in contrast to the course of industrialization in other regions of the country, New England’s transformation was driven by entrepreneurs in hundreds of rural villages and towns and by and Boston merchant capitalists who recruited underemployed agricultural household members to produce consumer goods for sale beyond the region, including in the slave economies of the South and the Caribbean. As Boston merchants adapted commercial, financial and transportation infrastructure they had developed to serve overseas trade to the needs of the region's manufacturers, industrialization halted New England’s decline and, by 1850, had propelled it to prosperity.

About the Author

RICHARD GARVER is a fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where he produced a symposium on Boston’s development history in addition to the symposium on highway politics he organized with the Cambridge Historical Society. He was on the planning team for and was a leading contributor to The Atlas of Boston History.

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