{"product_id":"speculation-nation-land-mania-in-the-revolutionary-american-republic-hardback-9781512824483","title":"Speculation Nation; Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic (Hardback) 9781512824483","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eLand Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eMichael A. Blaakman (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9781512824483\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003eHardback, published 19 September 2023\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e432 pages, 25 halftones, 1 map\u003cbr\u003e22.9 x 15.2 x 3.1 cm, 0.804 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\"[A]n illuminating survey of an important and understudied aspect of the Revolutionary era.\" (Publishers Weekly) \"This brilliantly researched, provocative, and rich book deserves to be a landmark among the new histories of capitalism for its careful and serious examination of the often-opaque mechanics of transforming Indigenous homelands into financialized property...Blaakman's outstanding book should serve as both a model and an inspiration: it exemplifies how the exacting and difficult work of reconstructing this past can yield significant historical rewards.\" (American Historical Review) \"\u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e makes clear that the early United States' desperate efforts to make land a fiscal asset—a commodity that could be surveyed and sold by states for public revenue—created the conditions for a mania to occur...Authoritative and remarkably readable, the book deserves a wide audience among students and scholars alike.\" (The New England Quarterly) \"In his masterful \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e, Michael A. Blaakman delivers a fresh and compelling political and cultural history of the United States' earliest decades. Centered on the young republic's first major financial bubble of the 1780s and '90s, Speculation Nation reveals a nascent United States with a scarcity of land-hungry frontiersmen but plenty of speculators maneuvering to reap huge profits from Native territories.\" (H-Early America) \"Lively and persuasive, \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e deftly reveals how massive and reckless land speculation converted lands taken from Natives into the financial resources essential to American capitalist development.\" (Alan Taylor, author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850) \"Michael A. Blaakman provides a magnificent treatment of the power of land speculation in the United States from the eve of the American Revolution until the era of the Louisiana Purchase. \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e is a highly important book, rich in its research, clever in its prose, and provocative in its insights.\" (Gregory Evans Dowd, author of War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire) \"This marvelous multi-faceted account of the speculative land frenzy following the American Revolution argues that far from being a natural result of settler 'land hunger,' America's original land mania was the outcome of policies created by a people who staked the success of their Revolution on the seizure and sale of Indian land. Blaakman's fine study restores contingency to a vitally important but misunderstood narrative of U.S. history.\" (Amy S. Greenberg, author of A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico) \"In this stellar book, Michael A. Blaakman rethinks the American founding along its financialized frontier. \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e goes further to explain the contested and commodified terrain of the post-revolutionary United States than any account I've read in recent years. Highly recommended for its deep research, clear prose, and ambitious interpretive reach.\" (Seth Rockman, author of Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore) \"\u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation \u003c\/i\u003edelivers an ambitious, astute, cumulatively damning account of how the early republic built itself on the seizure of Native land. Written with propulsive verve and exceptional clarity, this is a major new interpretation of the revolutionary era which will stimulate anyone interested in the dynamics of property, finance, and race in America.\" (Maya Jasanoff, author of Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring the first quarter-century after its founding, the United States was swept by a wave of land speculation so unprecedented in intensity and scale that contemporaries and historians alike have dubbed it a \"mania.\" In \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation\u003c\/i\u003e, Michael A. Blaakman uncovers the revolutionary origins of this real-estate bonanza—a story of ambition, corruption, capitalism, and statecraft that stretched across millions of acres from Maine to the Mississippi and Georgia to the Great Lakes.\u003cbr\u003e Patriot leaders staked the success of their revolution on the seizure and public sale of Native American territory. Initially, they hoped that fledgling state and national governments could pay the hefty costs of the War for Independence and extend a republican society of propertied citizens by selling expropriated land directly to white farmers. But those democratic plans quickly ran aground of a series of obstacles, including an economic depression and the ability of many Native nations to repel U.S. invasion. Wily merchants, lawyers, planters, and financiers rushed into the breach. Scrambling to profit off future expansion, they lobbied governments to convey massive tracts for pennies an acre, hounded revolutionary veterans to sell their land bounties for a pittance, and marketed the rustic ideal of a yeoman's republic—the early American dream—while waiting for land values to rise.\u003cbr\u003e When the land business crashed in the late 1790s, scores of \"land mad\" speculators found themselves imprisoned for debt or declaring bankruptcy. But through their visionary schemes and corrupt machinations, U.S. speculators and statesmen had spawned a distinctive and enduring form of settler colonialism: a financialized frontier, which transformed vast swaths of contested land into abstract commodities. \u003ci\u003eSpeculation Nation \u003c\/i\u003ereveals how the era of land mania made Native dispossession a founding premise of the American republic and ultimately rooted the United States' \"empire of liberty\" in speculative capitalism.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eContents\u003cbr\u003e Introduction \u003cbr\u003e Part I. The Rapturous Idea of Property\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 1. Certain Unalienable Land Rights\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 2. What the West Could Fund \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Part II. Mania's Moment\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 3. The Logic of Land Mania\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 4. Paper Promises\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 5. This Dirty Business\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 6. Preemptive Property\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 7. Federal Dealing\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Part III. The Land of Speculation\u003cbr\u003e Chapter 8. Great Discredit\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Epilogue \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e List of Abbreviations\u003cbr\u003e Notes \u003cbr\u003e Index\u003cbr\u003e Acknowledgments\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Pennsylvania Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52685664452888,"sku":"9781512824483","price":40.67,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/speculation-nation-land-mania-in-the-revolutionary-american-republic-hardback-9781512824483","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}