The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the Montreal Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896. (Reviews/Comptes Rendus).

Sven Beckert, The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the Montreal Bourgeoisie, 1850-1896 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001)

IN PART I of this masterful study, Sven Beckert argues, like historians before him, that merchant capitalists, blessed with a magnificent harbour, a bountiful hinterland, and a mushrooming population, dominated New York's upper crust before the Civil War. Beckert adds immensely to our understanding of this group, however. He clarifies how much the New Yorkers' wealth depended on shipping Southern cotton and financing Southern plantations, which made the merchants inherent free trade Democrats, hostile not only to protective tariffs and internal transportation improvements but to agitation against slavery. Yet they were also paternalists of an almost Federalist stripe who tried to deal with the urban poor through a combination of alms and stewardship -- moralizing plus education and the safety valve of the suffrage. Diverse by ethnicity, religion, and origins, therefore less clannish than elite Boston or Philadelphia, they could more easily absorb parvenus via social networks. Moving by mid-century into bankin g and real estate, they still shared the …