Politics of property

The latter part of the nineteenth century--the "Age of Capital"--was marked by the rise of new transportation and telecommunication technologies and by unprecedented worldwide economic integration. This economic system was global in scope, but its imperatives were articulated, contested, and shaped in numerous localized settings. Americans approached this large-scale transformation, not as the immutable unfolding of modernity, but as a contingent process that they themselves could mold and influence. The formulation of political responses to the vicissitudes of the period became the subject of intense controversy. This dissertation examines the era from the vantage point of urban politics, attending in particular to a pivotal and deep-seated conflict between the bourgeoisie, led by merchants, bankers, and financiers, and the lower middle class, a loose but powerful coalition of shopkeepers, small manufacturers, and skilled workers. With Boston as its focal point, the project explores how the competing political-economic visions of the two groups clashed over fundamental policy questions such as municipal finance, tax reform, metropolitan integration, and the uses of urban space.

The lower middle class has long been depicted as backward-looking and even reactionary. This study belies this view. Lower-middle-class Bostonians in this period developed a broad metropolitan consciousness and outlined an ambitious political program for their city. Rather than merely adapt to large-scale forces around them, they articulated their own democratic, commercial, and urban vision of progress--a vision that revolved around the ideals of skilled labor, grassroots politics, and dynamic metropolitan development. This program was vigorously opposed by the city's business elite, who sought government policies that would establish Boston as a center of finance and long-haul trade. The debates over these issues at times appeared like local controversies, but they mirrored broader conflicts over the shape of the global political economy as a whole. These conflicts bring into sharp relief some of the political contingencies involved in the process of worldwide market integration.