Robert C.H. Sweeny's Books

Why Did We Choose to Industrialize?

Montreal, 1819-1849

By: Robert C.H. Sweeny

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Why Did We Choose to Industrialize?

Montreal, 1819-1849

By: Robert C.H. Sweeny

The choice to industrialize has changed the world more than any other decision in human history. And yet the three prevailing explanations - the technical (new energy sources), the Marxist (new social relations), and the neo-liberal (people became more industrious) - are inadequate in making sense of this fundamental change. In mid-nineteenth-century Montreal, as in other early industrializing societies, change occurred as a result of the choices people made when faced with unprecedented opportunities and constraints. Montreal was the first colonial city to industrialize. Its overlapping French and English legal traditions mean that people's actions were exceptionally well documented for a North American city. Robert Sweeny’s novel reading of sources like city directories, ordinance surveys, monetary protests, and apprenticeship contracts leads him to develop important critiques of both mainstream and progressive historiography. He shows how the choice to industrialize was tied to the development of completely new ways of thinking about the world on three inter-related levels: how should we relate to each other, to property, and to nature? In Montreal, as in all the other early industrializing societies, thought preceded action. Sweeny illuminates the personal and familial decisions that tens of thousands of people made by the mid-nineteenth century which already prefigured much of what industrialized Montreal would look like in 1880. At a moment when global conflict is tied to resources and climate change, Sweeny shows how fundamental decision making can determine widespread social change. Informed by four decades of scholarship, Why Did We Choose to Industrialize? Is a politically engaged argument about history, a sustained reflection on sources and method in historical practice, and a singular vantage point on the ideas that have shaped historical understandings of industrialization.

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Page Count

460

Publisher

McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP

Published Date

ISBN 10

0773584099

ISBN 13

9780773584099

Chicago's Industrial Decline

The Failure of Redevelopment, 1920–1975

By: Robert Lewis

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Chicago's Industrial Decline

The Failure of Redevelopment, 1920–1975

By: Robert Lewis

In Chicago's Industrial Decline Robert Lewis charts the city's decline since the 1920s and describes the early development of Chicago's famed (and reviled) growth machine. Beginning in the 1940s and led by local politicians, downtown business interest, financial institutions, and real estate groups, place-dependent organizations in Chicago implemented several industrial renewal initiatives with the dual purpose of stopping factory closings and attracting new firms in order to turn blighted property into modern industrial sites. At the same time, a more powerful coalition sought to adapt the urban fabric to appeal to middle-class consumption and residential living. As Lewis shows, the two aims were never well integrated, and the result was on-going disinvestment and the inexorable decline of Chicago's industrial space. By the 1950s, Lewis argues, it was evident that the early incarnation of the growth machine had failed to maintain Chicago's economic center in industry. Although larger economic and social forces—specifically, competition for business and for residential development from the suburbs in the Chicagoland region and across the whole United States—played a role in the city's industrial decline, Lewis stresses the deep incoherence of post-WWII economic policy and urban planning that hoped to square the circle by supporting both heavy industry and middle- to upper-class amenities in downtown Chicago.

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Page Count

271

Publisher

Cornell University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1501752642

ISBN 13

9781501752643

Doctrines of Development

By: Michael Cowen,Robert W. Shenton

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Doctrines of Development

By: Michael Cowen,Robert W. Shenton

Examines the history of the idea of development, and doctrines governments have employed to practice development policy. Beginning with the 19th century "invention" of modern development, the authors discuss Karl Marx's critique of development and the crea

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Page Count

554

Publisher

Taylor & Francis

Published Date

ISBN 10

0415125162

ISBN 13

9780415125161

Book's by Robert C.H. Sweeny

Why Did We Choose to Industrialize?

Why Did We Choose to Industrialize?

Chicago's Industrial Decline

Chicago's Industrial Decline

Doctrines of Development

Doctrines of Development

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