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Reviews of Books and Films
"an arms control treaty" and "an alliance that parceled
out spheres of influence and nicely adjusted the continental balance of power"; and the larger constitutional settlement of the late 1780s (and beyond) is
most notable as a "reasoned response to a serious
security problem that espied a sequence in which
internal division and the intervention of external powers would create the same whirlwind in America that
had undone Europe" (p. 259). In sum, Hendrickson's
Constitution, as a peace pact, did not reflect any
fundamental conflict between aristocracy and democracy, to use the still-influential and largely inappropriate Progressive formulation of the key issues. Instead
it marked a new phase of the experiment in international cooperation through which Americans formalized the precarious interdependence of unionism, independence, and republicanism in their revolution.
Hendrickson's contribution goes considerably beyond his persuasive effort to get us thinking about a
heavily studied era in fresh ways. He also provides
detailed analyses of many specific topics, from Benjamin Franklin's "Albany Plan of Union" through the
tangled diplomatic negotiations during the war for
independence to the complex history of the Articles of
Confederation. He is at his best in his treatment of the
emergence of regional conflict in the years leading up
to the Constitutional Convention, and especially in his
analysis of its tentative accommodation at a critical
juncture of that gathering in a superb chapter entitled
"Commerce, Slavery, and Machiavellian Moment."
Here Hendrickson recurs in interesting ways to the
suggestive framework of Frederick Jackson Turner in
his long-neglected essay "The Significance of the Section in American History" (1932), while also building
on the much more recent work of such scholars as
historical geographer D. W. Meinig, theorist of international relations Daniel Deudney, and historian Peter
S.Onuf.
Hendrickson's book is interdisciplinary scholarship
at its best, opening up new avenues of inquiry and
reflection, especially for historians of preindustrial
America. His interpretive framework has striking and
obvious relevance to the history of the United States
during the early national and antebellum eras (a
subject that he will address in a forthcoming sequel).
Less compelling, perhaps, is Hendrickson's desire to
speak in this book to scholars in the discipline of
international relations whose approach is more abstractly theoretical-although the visual representations of his arguments, in the form of elaborate
diagrams in the lengthy appendix, should warm the
hearts of any fellow political scientists among his
readers.
DREW R. McCoy
Clark University
BRUCE H. MANN. Republic of Debtors: Bankruptcy in the
Age of American Independence. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press. 2002. Pp. viii, 344. $29.95.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
Debt creation and collection provide a keyhole, or,
rather, a wide window, through which one can learn
much about the values and power relations of a
society. The United States, with its current consumer,
corporate, and public debt amounting to thousands of
billions of dollars, and the number of bankruptcies
annually crossing an unparalleled 1.5 million, is remarkably suited to the study of the history of debt and
bankruptcy.
Bruce H. Mann's book deals with a crucial period in
this history, one that runs from late colonial times to
the early nineteenth century. This perplexing period
saw upheavals in the formal legal framework-the
bankruptcy clause of the Constitution, the passage in
1800 of the Bankruptcy Act and its repeal in 1803that reflect fundamental societal and political tensions.
Bankruptcy scholars and conventional legal historians
aim to capture these by directing their attention to
high legal texts and their framers' original intentions.
But for Mann, such documents serve only as points of
reference on a journey whose aim is to understand
contemporary cultural conceptions. Mann wisely identifies debtors' prisons, rather than legal texts or political discourse, as the path into his world. The prevailing religious-based view of non-payment of debt as a
moral vice was challenged by the reality of the debtors'
prison, where moral condemnation encountered the
impoverished, imprisoned debtors surrounded by disease and death, subject to worse conditions than those
of criminal prisoners and arguably also of slaves. Mann
uses the correspondence, memoirs, and pamphlets
written by inmates to portray not only their miserable
daily lives but also their cries for help.
New York's Society for the Relief of Distressed
Debtors and the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating of
the Miseries of Public Prisons established in 1787
exemplify the moral judgments of the period. Further
confusion was caused by the fact that not all imprisoned debtors fared alike. Well-to-do debtors' terms of
imprisonment were liberal; they retained their property and were often involved in trade and speculation
while in prison. Mann tells a fascinating story about
the social order created by imprisoned debtors in New
York's New Gaol. He uses the private papers of
William Duer, a prominent active debtor, to show that
such debtors did not view themselves as criminals but
desired to create a legalized constitutional order in
prison and be law-abiding citizens of the new repUblic.
Merchants and businessmen, who distinguished
themselves from other debtors, strove to exploit the
moral disarray and reshape the nature of their nonpayment. For them, laborers and others not making a
living were justifiably doomed to destitution. Entrepreneurs, however, were expected to assume risks, and
since their failure stemmed from market fluctuations
or external shock, they deserved protection from imprisonment and eventual discharge.
At times I would have liked Mann to engage in
quantitative social history. He has examined sources
that yield themselves to a structured analysis of the
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Canada and the United States
changes in numbers of debtors, their social origins, and
the nature of their debts. Clearly, authors can select
their favored methodology. But with respect to this
period, unfortunately we have no quantitatively oriented study to complement Mann's non-quantitative
study.
The growth of the public debt during the war, the
depreciation of paper money in the 1780s, and the fact
that American merchants' and plantation owners'
creditors were mainly British all contributed to legitimizing privileged debtors' discharge. In this setting, a
bankruptcy clause made its way into the Constitution
almost unnoticed. But after the ratification of the
Constitution, the playing field was reshaped. Land
speculation that ended in a chain reaction of collapse
across the country in the 1790s made the issue of
bankruptcy more visible and political. The 1800 Bankruptcy Act, amid controversy, narrowly passed. Mann
is the first to narrate its passage authoritatively. By the
time we reach this story, we are well positioned to
grasp the conflicts and sub texts involved. Merchants
and farmers, religious sentiments and risk management, the Federalist desire for a centralized and loyal
judiciary, and Republican protection of state-level
pluralism all played roles, but the conjuncture of 1800
was short-lived. The demise of the first Bankruptcy Act
paralleled the Federalist decline, and supporters of a
long-lasting bankruptcy act would have to wait until
1898. But the three years during which the 1800 Act
was in effect were sufficient for many well-to-do and
sophisticated debtors to initiate their own bankruptcy
litigation and achieve discharge of debts. The personal
stories of figures such as Duer, Robert Morris, and
John Pinard are masterfully interwoven with the general narrative, gracefully connecting the chapters to
each other and the personal to the political. They
make the book even more readable and appealing to a
wide range of readers.
RON HARRIS
Tel Aviv University
ROBERT E. WRIGHT. Hamilton Unbound: Finance and
the Creation of the American Republic. (Contributions
in Economics and Economic History, number 228.)
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood. 2002. Pp. xii, 230.
$62.95.
This is a frustrating book to read. Despite its title, it
has little to do with Alexander Hamilton, who appears
only in passing. The subtitle gives a better idea of the
scope of Robert E. Wright's work: there is actually a
good deal of scattered, useful information on banking,
credit, and investment in the early republic that, if
consolidated, could be a good-perhaps excellentarticle. But the book, as is, should never have been
published. There is no coherent theme. It is a collection of unrelated chapters, most propounding either a
far-fetched claim almost entirely unsupported by evidence or a painfully obvious point well established by
decades of previous historiography.
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
899
In an inauspicious beginning, chapter one wanders
through an explanation of how interest rates affect the
value of income-producing assets, usury laws and
colonial interest rates, the impact of imperial policy on
colonial assets, and a few other topics before concluding that one of the major reasons for the American
Revolution was the desire to gain control of monetary
policy. Unfortunately, Wright finds no evidence for his
claim. In the 203 footnotes for this one chapter, there
is not a single reference to anyone discussing independence as a means of achieving local control of monetary policy. Furthermore, the author commits several
errors of interpretation along the way: for example,
misunderstanding completely the cultural importance
of "honor" in a gentlemanly society and claiming that
the concept meant simply concern for one's business
credi t rating.
The second chapter swings to the opposite extreme.
Instead of proposing a far-fetched thesis with no
supporting evidence, here Wright spends thirty pages
proving the obvious. He painstakingly explains that the
U.S. and early state constitutions were constructed as
solutions to the "principal-agent" problem, which is
simply a jargonized way of saying that people wanted
to make sure that government was their servant and
not their master. This, of course, has been common
knowledge since before the Constitutional Convention, and Wright adds nothing new.
Chapter three, "Financial Development, Economic
Growth, and Political Stability," could have made a
real contribution to understanding the link among
these three factors in the early republic. Wright fritters
away his opportunity, however, giving us much detail
on the operation of financial and securities markets in
the early nineteenth century but without making the
important connection between those subjects and either the growth of the American economy or political
stability.
The next chapter is, for a political historian, the
most interesting. Here Wright argues that the Republican victory in New York City legislative elections that
swung the state's electoral vote (and hence the presidency) to Thomas Jefferson was due to Aaron Burr's
Manhattan Company extending credit to city artisans
when the Federalist banking system would not. But
again, he has no clear evidence that the ability to get
loans from Burr's bank led artisans to cast Republican
ballots. Until evidence replaces mere assertion, one
must continue to believe that larger fears about oppressive Federalist government (the direct tax, the
Alien and Sedition Acts, and the specter of Hamilton
as the new Caesar leading an expanded army) were
decisive.
Chapter five makes the claim that more organized
and rational methods of rating individual and business
credit-worthiness after 1800 were largely responsible
for the decline of dueling in the North. In the South,
older, more haphazard standards of credit assessment
prevailed and due ling continued to be popular. It
would require substantial evidence to convince histo-
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