Provincial Lives: Middle-Class Experience in the Antebellum Middle West

ISBN-13: 9780521640923 / Angielski / Twarda / 1999 / 348 str.

Timothy R. Mahoney

Opis

Provincial Lives tells the story of the development of a regional middle class in the antebellum Middle West. It traces the efforts of waves of Americans to transmit their social structures, behavior, and values to the West and construct a distinctive regional middle-class culture on the urban frontier. Intertwining local, regional, and national history with social, immigration, gender and urban history, Mahoney examines how a succession of settlers from "good" society--farmers, entrepreneurs, professionals, and "genteel" men and women from the urban East--interacted with, accommodated, and compromised with those already there to construct a middle-class society.

Recenzje

"Mahoney's methodology (is) intricate and colorful...the more compelling aspects of the book is its appeal to social scientists outside the historical profession." American Historical Review

Spis treści

Acknowledgments; Introduction; 1. The structure of provincial society: Native American, French, and American interaction in the Upper Mississippi River Valley; 2. Family migration and social development on a 'Near Frontier'; 3. 'A Common Band of Brotherhood': migration, male subcultures, the booster ethos, and the origins of urban middle class; 4. The gentility system in the West; 5. 'Brethren of the bar': professional culture among lawyers and the regional process of elite aggregation; 6. Boosters and railroad men: constructing a regional society; Epilogue; Appendices; Notes; Selected bibliography; Index.