The Monied Metropolis
Subtitle: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: March 19, 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 492
ISBN-13: 9780521790390
Subjects: American history: c 1800 to c 1900; Economic history; Urban communities; c 1800 to c 1900; History: American; History; United States - 19th Century; History - U.S.; New York (State); New York; Middle class; Social History; United States - 19th Century/Gilded Age; United States - State & Local - General; History / United States / 19th Century; New York (N.Y.)--Economic conditions; Elite (Social sciences); Social conditions; 19th century; Economic conditions; New York (N.Y.)
First sentence: In the fall of 1857, August and Caroline Belmont sailed into New York harbor, his four-year assignment as United States ambassador to The Hague complete.
Description: "Social classes, like fortunes, are made and remade, and invariably the two are linked. Tracing the shifting fortunes and changing character of New York City's economic elite over half a century, this book brings to light a neglected - and critical - chapter in the social history of the United States: the rise of an American bourgeoisie."

"How a small and diverse group of New Yorkers came to wield unprecedented economic, social, and political power is the story that Sven Beckert pursues from 1850 to the turn of the nineteenth century. Blending social, intellectual, and political history, his book reveals the central role of the Civil War in realigning New York City's economic elite, as merchants began to shed their old allegiances to slavery and the Atlantic economy and to cede a greater share of economic power to industrialists. We then see how in the wake of Reconstruction the New York bourgeoisie reoriented its ideology, abandoning the free labor views of the antebellum years for laissez-faire liberalism.

Finally, in the 1880s and 1890s, we observe the emergence of a fully self-conscious and inordinately powerful New York upper class." "Drawing on a remarkable range of sources - from tax lists to personal papers, credit ratings to congressional testimony - The Monied Metropolis provides a richly textured historical portrait of society redefining itself. Its reach extends well beyond New York, into the most important issues of social and political change in nineteenth-century America."--Jacket.