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

Tracing the shifting fortunes and changing character of New York City's economic elite over half a century, Becker examines a chapter in the social history of the United States--the rise of the American bourgeoisie. Illustrations.

This book, first published in 2001, is a comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. This small and diverse group of Americans accumulated unprecedented economic, social, and political power, and decisively put their mark on the age. Professor Beckert explores how capital-owning New Yorkers overcame their distinct antebellum identities to forge dense social networks, create powerful social institutions, and articulate an increasingly coherent view of the world and their place within it. Actively engaging in a rapidly changing economic, social, and political environment, these merchants, industrialists, bankers, and professionals metamorphosed into a social class. In the process, these upper-class New Yorkers put their stamp on the major political conflicts of the day - ranging from the Civil War to municipal elections. Employing the methods of social history, The Monied Metropolis explores the big issues of nineteenth-century social change.

Introduction; Part I. Manners, Fortunes, Politics: 1. Accumulating capital; 2. Negotiating the New Metropolis; 3. The politics of capital; Part II. Reluctant Revolutionaries: 4. Bourgeois New Yorkers go to war; 5. The spoils of victory; 6. Reconstructing New York; Part III: 7. Democracy in the Age of Capital; 8. A Bourgeois world; 9. The rights of labor, the rights of property; 10. The power of capital and the crisis of legitimacy; Epilogue.

The first comprehensive history of the most powerful group in the nineteenth-century United States: New York City's economic elite. By the end of the Gilded Age upper-class New Yorkers had consolidated themselves into a self-conscious social class that put their stamp on the major issues of the day.