Tales of Two Cities: Race and Economic Culture in Early Republican North and South America : Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Baltimore, Maryland - Brossura

Townsend, Camilla

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0292781695 ISBN 13: 9780292781696

Casa editrice: Univ of Texas Pr, 1999

Riassunto

With a common heritage as former colonies of Europe, why did the United States so outstrip Latin America in terms of economic development in the nineteenth century? In this innovative study, Camilla Townsend challenges the traditional view that North Americans succeeded because of better attitudes toward work—the Protestant work ethic—and argues instead that they prospered because of differences in attitudes towards workers that evolved in the colonial era.

Townsend builds her study around workers' lives in two very similar port cities in the 1820s and 1830s. Through the eyes of the young Frederick Douglass in Baltimore, Maryland, and an Indian woman named Ana Yagual in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she shows how differing attitudes towards race and class in North and South America affected local ways of doing business. This empirical research significantly clarifies the relationship between economic culture and racial identity and its long-term effects.

Su questo libro

Product Description

The United States and the countries of Latin America were all colonised by Europeans, yet in terms of economic development, the U.S. far outstripped Latin America beginning in the nineteenth century. Observers have often tried to account for this disparity, many of them claiming that differences in cultural attitudes toward work explain the U.S.'s greater prosperity. In this innovative study, however, Camilla Townsend challenges the traditional view that North Americans succeeded because of the so-called Protestant work ethic and argues instead that they prospered relative to South Americans because of differences in attitudes towards workers that evolved in the colonial era. Townsend builds her study around workers' lives in two similar port cities in the 1820s and 1830s. Through the eyes of the young Frederick Douglass in Baltimore, Maryland, and an Indian girl named Ana Yagual in Guayaquil, Ecuador, she shows how differing attitudes towards race and class in North and South America affected local ways of doing business. This empirical research clarifies the significant relationship between economic culture and racial identity and its long-term effects. Camilla Townsend is Assistant Professor of History at Colgate University in Hamilton, New York.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Univ of Texas Pr
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0292781695
• ISBN 13: 9780292781696
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Lingua: Inglese
• Numero di pagine: 320