James Lemon

Early Americans and their social environment

Abstract Recent studies, cast in a more or less populist vein, underestimate the accumulative impulse among early Americans. As in England at the time, land was recognized as property and scarce, not neutral and free. The pursuit of status by leaders drew ordinary people into the commoditizing of land and labor. Many to their detriment materially and psychologically were unable to fulfill the call. Commodity markets, though not up to subsequent levels, were important. Early Americans came close to recognizing the free self-regulating quality of markets. Countervailing forces and institutions in religion, local government and families, however limited, held back the drive for accumulation and power. Yet, economic growth and areal expansion were the chief forces keeping these overseas British societies together.

Voyagers to the West: A Review Colloquium

Occasionally books appear that are broad enough in subject or methodology to afford scholars in various specialties a useful opportunity to look at the same material from different viewpoints. Like other documents, works of history tend to answer only those questions asked of them, and the juxtaposition of the questions important to readers of diverse scholarly backgrounds may be in itself illuminating. For this, the first in a continuing series of review colloquia, we invited a specialist in British population movements, a historical geographer, an economist who has done quantitative work in the field of colonial immigration, and an authority on the economy of British North America to consider Bernard Bailyns Pulitzer Prize-winning study.

Technological, Energy, and Organizational Limits to Material Progress: A Historical Perspective:

This article examines the social, technological, and energy limits to growth from a historical perspective. Various suggestions to surmount these limits are evaluated and found to be wanting, especially in the face of a rapidly evolving energy crisis as the era of oil comes to an end. It concludes that there are genuine reasons to be concerned about the human prospect.