Humphrey, Thomas J

English

EngagedScholarship @ Cleveland State University

Cleveland State University
EngagedScholarship@CSU
History Faculty Publications History Department
Summer 2002
Review of Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The
Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson
River Valley, 1720-1850, by T.J. Wermuth
Thomas J. Humphrey
Cleveland State University, tom.humphrey@csuohio.edu
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Publisher's Statement
Copyright 2002 Cambridge University Press. Available on publisher's site at http://www.hbs.edu/
bhr/archives/vol76/vol76-2002summer.html.
Repository Citation
Humphrey, Thomas J., "Review of Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850, by T.J.
Wermuth" (2002). History Faculty Publications. 17.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/clhist_facpub/17
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Original Citation
Thomas J. Humphrey, "Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850, by
T.J. Wermuth," Business History Review 76 no. 2 (2002): 373-375.
Book Reviews / 373 
mid-century theorist of housework and architecture, tried to integrate 
work back into the centers of domestic space, but women's work re- 
mained hidden and separated. In that sense, the commitment to com- 
fort in middle-class households alienated women rather than making 
them more "comfortable" in their own homes. 
Richard Lyman Bushman, Gouverneur Morris Professor of History, 
Emeritus, at Columbia University, is author of The Refinement of 
America: Persons, Houses, Cities (1992). Currently he is writing a 
biography of Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet. 
Rip Van Winkle's Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in 
the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850. By Thomas S. Wermuth. Albany: 
State University of New York Press, 2001. 192 pp. Tables. Cloth, $54.50; 
paper, $17-95. ISBN: cloth o-791-45o83-X; paper 0-791-45084-8. 
Reviewed by Thomas J. Humphrey 
Early on in his thoroughly researched account of the rural economy in 
the mid-Hudson Valley from 1720 through 1850, Thomas S. Wermuth 
asks the fundamental question that has long inspired historians to 
delve into the debate over the transition to capitalism in the North 
American countryside. "To what extent," he inquires, "did the commu- 
nity structures within which these farmers lived, worked, and traded 
shape their economic activities" (p. 4). With this question, Wermuth 
compels historians concerned with rural social and economic life, and 
with markets, to focus more specifically on farmers. Wermuth concisely 
answers his complex question by breaking new ground in at least two 
directions. Much of the existing literature on farm production and mar- 
ket transition deals with either Massachusetts or Pennsylvania. These 
studies highlight either markets or the role of community in early Amer- 
ican economic life. Yet, farmers' motivations for participating in either 
markets or in neighborhood trade and labor systems, inside or outside 
of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, remain largely unexplored. Wer- 
muth fills both of these gaps with an important, tightly organized, and 
clearly written contribution to the literature. He situates his study in the 
mid-Hudson Valley and concentrates on farmers' specific behavior to 
explain how "individual households attempted to improve their living stan- 
dards while carefully negotiating community needs and demands" (p. 5). 
Wermuth divides his chronological study into two parts. In the 
first, which covers the period from 1720 to 1785, farmers aspired to 
achieve a "comfortable subsistence" (a phrase used throughout the book 
Book Reviews / 374 
to describe farmers' goals). These farmers lived in strongly intercon- 
nected heterogeneous communities that kept a strong Dutch orientation, 
but that revealed intercultural mixing as well. The inhabitants were also 
divided by wealth, rank, and status, and these divisions were regularly re- 
inforced on a variety of political, social, and religious festival days. In this 
community, the household was the basic unit of production, but not all 
households participated in markets for the same reasons. Some sought 
self-sufficiency; others sought profit or commercial involvement. Most 
households, roughly 70 percent, produced grain for local trade, but the 
other 30 percent produced a high proportion of the goods traded in re- 
gional markets. Access to local and regional markets did not necessarily 
change the goals of most of these farmers. Instead, "the most persuasive 
explanation for the economic behavior of Hudson Valley residents is that 
decisions about production and trade were just as often shaped by practi- 
cal social and family concerns as by market opportunities" (pp. 66-7). 
The American Revolution represented a turning point in the eco- 
nomic development of farmers in the mid-Hudson Valley. During the 
war, local revolutionary leaders regulated the economy to facilitate sub- 
sistence and to provide for the army that occupied the region. Crowds 
retaliated violently when anyone acted against the best interests of the 
community, and the crowds infused these riots with political meaning. 
They made economic protests patriotic. The war also temporarily sev- 
ered trade ties to Britain, forcing inhabitants of the mid-valley to ex- 
pand domestic manufacturing. Farmers responded by increasing the 
amount of spinning and dairying done in the household. The war also 
"compelled farmers to view their production and trade in market 
terms" (p. 89). At the end of the war, more farmers participated in the 
market, but for vastly different reasons. 
Between 1785 and 1820, farmers in the mid-Hudson Valley in- 
creasingly participated in the market revolution. Again, they did so for 
different reasons and in various ways. Poorer farmers, for example, had 
far less contact with paper money in the eighteenth century, but they 
altered household production so they could use the market to achieve 
subsistence. They tended to trade more locally and relied on goods for 
trade. By 1820, however, they had put more land under the plow, de- 
creased household manufacturing, and produced more specifically for 
commercial markets. These poorer and middling farmers increasingly 
used paper money and, by the end of the 1830s, conducted nearly all of 
their transactions in cash. Larger producers, on the other hand, contin- 
ued to dominate long-distance trading and relied on cash far earlier 
than their poorer neighbors. By 1820, most farmers in the region relied 
on "traditional methods of production and trade" but were also "alter- 
ing their production in response to the needs and demands of the mar- 
ket revolution" (p. 113). 
Book Reviews / 375 
If the American Revolution prompted farmers to change their rela- 
tion to the market, the transportation revolution changed the market it- 
self. Wermuth rightly notes that, by 1830, eastern farmers were forced 
to compete with farmers in the West, who sent their goods east and 
south via the web of canals and roads that crisscrossed New York. Com- 
petition forced mid-valley farmers to reevaluate their production after 
1820. Grain production had changed, and community economic consen- 
sus had disappeared. Political leaders no longer made decisions in the 
best interests of the community. Instead, economic leaders made deci- 
sions that affected the community, arguing that the public good was en- 
hanced through private interests and private gain. The point was driven 
home forcefully when a Pennsylvania coal company selected Kingston as 
the end of the line of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. After that, "the 
Kingston economy increasingly serviced the canal" (p. 123). The small 
agrarian community had become a burgeoning urban entrep6t. 
Wermuth's analysis draws on a wealth of complex sources. For in- 
stance, he studies markets over time through account records of local 
merchants. He summarizes a great deal of this material in nearly thirty 
tables spaced throughout the book. The tables are informative and eas- 
ily read, but the material is also incorporated into the narrative to pro- 
vide comparative analysis. Such material, and his keen analysis, would 
easily offer plenty of valuable information to anyone interested in the 
business practices of merchants in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- 
turies. More than that, Wermuth's book offers important insight into 
the motivations of farmers in a community undergoing dramatic social, 
political, and economic changes. 
Thomas J. Humphrey is assistant professor of history at Cleveland 
State University. He has written several articles on land rioting in the 
Hudson Valley in the eighteenth century and is currently finishing a 
manuscript on landlord-tenant relations and land riots in eighteenth- 
century New York. 
Northern Naval Superiority and the Economics of the American Civil 
War. By David G. Surdam. Columbia: University of South Carolina 
Press, 2001. 310 pp. Maps, tables, illustrations, notes, bibliography, in- 
dex. Cloth, $34.95. ISBN 1-570-03407-9. 
Reviewed by Heather Cox Richardson 
After enjoying tremendous popularity at the turn of the last century, 
maritime history suffered such a decline that it was virtually forgotten 
until the last decade. Finally water matters again, and we are beginning 


Review of Rip Van Winkle\u27s Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850, by T.J. Wermuth

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Review of Rip Van Winkle\u27s Neighbors: The Transformation of Rural Society in the Hudson River Valley, 1720-1850, by T.J. Wermuth

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