Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630-1850.

As the title of this book suggests, Vickers deals with two different sorts of worker in one region of early New England. What follows is a beautifully balanced analysis that goes far beyond the simple connection of common time and place to locate both farmers and fishermen in long-term trends of social and economic change. Above all, the book consistently and convincingly discusses both forms of labor in terms of the social relations of ownership and production - in a word, power. The end result is the most effective local study of comparative labor systems available for preindustrial America.

The sections on farming should be familiar to anyone who has followed the …