Manufacturing Advantage: Boston Merchant-Industrialists and the Federal Government, 1790-1840

This project examines the process by which the federal government made possible the rise of the Waltham-Lowell system, the first integrated factory system in the United States. While this predecessor to modern industry is typically viewed as a product of merchant wealth and innovative entrepreneurship, it also benefited from federal support in the form of diplomacy, national expansion, and patent legislation. This research is part of her dissertation, which seeks to explain the early republican transition from merchant to industrial capitalism by analyzing the development of the New England arms and textile industries in the context of federal patronage and expanding U.S. geopolitical dominance in the Americas.