The Monied Metropolis: New York City and the Consolidation of the American Bourgeoisie, 1850–1896

by Sven Beckert

Tracing the shifting fortunes and changing character of New York City's economic elite over half a century, Sven Beckert brings to light a neglected--and critical--chapter in the social history of the U.S.: the rise of an American bourgeoisie. The Monied Metropolis is the first comprehensive history of New York's economic elite, the most powerful group in nineteenth-century America. Beckert explains how a small and diverse group of New Yorkers came to wield unprecedented economic, social, and political power from 1850 to the turn of the twentieth century. He reveals the central role of the Civil War in realigning New York's economic elite, and how the New York bourgeoisie reoriented its ideology during Reconstruction, abandoning the free labor views of the antebellum years for laissez-faire liberalism. Sven Beckert is the Dunwalke Associate at Harvard University. He is the recipient of several honors and fellowships, including the Aby Warburg Foundation prize for academic excellence, a MacArthur Dissertation Fellowship and a Andrew W. Mellon fellowship. This is his first book.

Genres: History, American History, The United States Of America, American, Nonfiction, New York, 19th Century

492 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

The Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University, Sven Beckert is co-chair of the Program on the Study of Capitalism at Harvard and co-chair of the Weatherhead Initiative on Global History. Professor Beckert researches and teaches the history of the United States in the 19th century, with a particular emphasis on the history of capitalism, including its economic, social, political, and transnational dimensions. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, among others.

Reviews

[Billy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sven Beckert’s The Monied Metropolis presents an illuminating look into the lives of New York City’s richest citizens from the 1850s until the 1890s. In it, Beckert argues that Gotham’s pre-Gilded Age bourgeoisie consciously began to remove themselves from public view. Subsequently this emerging, exclusive group of nouveau riche exerted an overwhelming amount of economic, social, and political power; in fact, this cliques’ influence surpassed that of any other social elite in the entire United States. But during the antebellum period, these upper-elites had no qualms with interacting with working class Americans. Yet by the Gilded Age the richest of these bourgeois elites completely separated themselves from the proletariat, creating a distinct new social class in the process. This separation added to the growing divide between capitalist and worker in New York. With their newfound exclusivity, New York’s hyper-elites attained a “structural domination” over America’s rapidly changing social landscape.
The soon overwhelming influence of these bourgeois set them apart from other businessmen, and wholly divided them from the working class. In time, these bourgeois adopted European aristocratic tendencies, abhorring hard labor and indulging in conspicuous consumption. With their separation from American society, they looked down on their countrymen, only to help out when the economy needed their services. Their separation from American society combined with growing worker disillusionment and resulted in the public’s acceptance that government intervention in the economy might not be so bad. Also, this consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few foreshadowed the growing trend of consolidation that would dominate the nineteenth century business world.

[Francis Kilkenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sven Beckert’s ‘The Monied Metropolis’ is an excellent history of the rising bourgeois class of late 19th century New York. Beckert describes the consolidation of this class and its consciousness of itself, from the middle of the century when merchants and manufacturers often found themselves on opposite sides of political and social issues to the end of the century when the monied elite acted collectively. While this work specifically describes the rise of New York’s bourgeoisie, Beckert successfully argues that New York became the pinnacle of the American national elite. This consolidation of this class had many reverberating consequences for American culture, society and politics including the rise of Corporate Capitalism.

[Maya]

I never know what to do with books that I read substantial parts of for class — maybe I’ll just log the most memorable and then the ones I’m not logging at all will compensate for the parts of these books that I’m not reading. Anyway! This was interesting — about how the merchants and industrialists of 19th century NYC went from two distinct elite classes to a consolidated bourgeois with the economic and political power to wield the might of the state against poor people (even if they didn’t quite manage to dismantle democracy)

[Julian Haigh · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beckert considers the changing nature of the richest Americans and the origin of the 20th Century 'business-man' as New York establishes itself as the capitalist center of the world. The trend from merchant to industry and banking to finance explains much of the confusing nature of politics from a bastion of republicanism supporting the union to the supporting of limited government with the democrats. This is a murky subject and Beckert brings well-needed and difficult scholarship to an important time in the growth of America from a quaint edge of empire to the center of it!

[AskHistorians]

Great study of class in the post-civil war era, focusing on New York.