Geographical inquiry and American historical problems

Abstract

Presents a reexamination of American history's perennial problems from a geographical viewpoint, and thus reinterprets the central processes of the American experience - colonisation, regional development and sectionalism, slavery and freedom, urbanisation, industrialisation, and working-class politics - and the factors which shaped them. The first four essays, on the colonial period, reinterpret American colonisation and regional development. The second four essays disentangle the causes of north-south sectional differences during the early national and antebellum periods. The next three essays consider the American urban scene, highlighting the influence of agrarian society on the geography of labour and labour politics between the Civil War and WW I. The study concludes with an extended overview of the periodic structure of the American past. -after Author