Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Central New York in the Nineteenth Century

by Thomas Summerhill

With an expert blend of political, social, and economic history, Thomas Summerhill's Harvest of Dissent investigates the character of agrarian movements in nineteenth century New York to reexamine the nature of Northern farmers embrace of or resistance to the emergence of capitalist market agriculture. Taking the long view, Harvest of Dissent brings together the events of nearly a century of agrarian radicalism in central New York, giving Summerhill the ability to understand everything from the Anti-Rent movement to the Grange movement as part of a whole.    

Based on exceptionally thorough primary research, Summerhill convincingly demonstrates how protracted and contingent the process of drawing farmers into capitalist markets actually was, and the ways farmers selectively and creatively resisted it. Rather than characterizing farmer political insurgencies as episodic responses to discrete crises (as they are often portrayed), Harvest of Dissent argues that agrarianism played a constant role in the major political, economic, and social transformations that marked the emergence of modern America.

304 pages, Paperback

First published May 18, 2005

Reviews

[Jonathan]

A good overview of economic change in three Central New York counties during the nineteenth century. Most of this book I would characterize as social or political more than intellectual history. That tends to dilute Summerhill's argument; Summerhill does show that New York agrarianism had conservative tendencies, but I'm not sure he fully shows that it was a conservative ideology.

On the other hand, I think it's already pretty obvious that agrarianism was a conservative ideology, unless maybe by "agrarianism" we mean an actual Greek-style movement to redistribute land holdings. Then again, I'm perfectly willing to accept that this is not obvious to everyone. (Historians get some really strange ideas about nineteenth-century reform.) So Summerhill has provided welcome evidence that we can't treat earlier nineteenth-century reformers as "progressives" in anything like our sense. Many of them were entirely comfortable in, or even passionate defenders of, a paternalistic landlord economy. Summerhill's reading is sensitive and persuasive, and he tracks the twists and turns of New York politics with exceptional care and clarity.

[Marie Mcentire]

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