Capitalism and the US State, 1865-2008

In recent years, capitalism and the American state have become hot topics of discussion. In 2015, the economist Thomas Piketty achieved rock star levels of fame and attention after his book Capital in the Twenty-First Century sold more than 1.5 million copies. Three years later, the former chair of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan released a co-authored tome, Capitalism in America. Meanwhile, prominent capitalists such as Elon Musk are reviled and revered in almost equal measure on social, print, and broadcast media. This surge of interest in inequality, activist government, entrepreneurial culture, and corporate responsibility means that discussing the Gilded Age and New Deal is no longer a conversation killer.

It is not just news junkies who have been talking about capitalism and the US state. Over the last two decades, historians of the nineteenth and twentieth century United States have lavished much attention on the history of capitalism and the state. This course examines these dynamic and vibrant inter-related subfields. In particular, it explores the US state’s role in shaping and reshaping the global economy between the late-nineteenth and late-twentieth century. Alongside studying the ideas, institutions, and policies that have structured the US and global economic system, we will scrutinise how social and cultural life has been affected and altered by state-economy relation, and pay special attention to moments of conflict, contestation, and contingency.