American Economic History: American Exceptionalism Calculations

2025-02-26 We Econ 113: Some quick-and-dirty back-of-the-envelope Python-calculated numbers on the "Great Traverse" that was the long-run knock-on effect of the adoption of the Hamiltonian Program...

2025-02-26 We Econ 113: Some quick-and-dirty back-of-the-envelope Python-calculated numbers on the "Great Traverse" that was the long-run knock-on effect of the adoption of the Hamiltonian Program in the Federalist Era. The so-called “Great Traverse” is the transformation of the American economy from one focused on the conquest-resource frontier to one focused on very different “frontiers”: technology, investment, manufacturing, and education. How did this reörientation come to pass?…

---

A View of the “American Exceptionalism” Path:

Looking just at the biggest, grossest, economy-wide numbers on population and productivity…

In 1830, the United Kingdom still had twice the population of the United States, and it was poised—in a way that the United States was then not—to develop and then fully deploy the technologies for manipulating nature and coöperatively organizing humans that make up the Steampower Economy. The United States was still, primarily, a resource-based conquest-expansion economy, with those factors supporting its ability to stay in the ballpark of the UK given its rapid population growth.

So after 1830, the US pulled way ahead in population—not so surprising: one continent vs. a small island.

What is surprising is that, after 1880, the US pulled so substantially ahead in wealth and prosperity—and it was not because it continued to conquer and engross resources. By 1880 the westward conquest frontier was closed.