Manufacturing Advantage

"A pathbreaking, long-awaited study for scholars of the early republic. Manufacturing Advantage is well researched and well written."—John M. Belohlavek, University of South Florida, author of Patriots, Prostitutes, and Spies: Women and the Mexican-American War

"Manufacturing Advantage retells an iconic story in an unconventional way. By locating New England's nineteenth-century industrial revolution in a global context, Schakenbach Regele shows how public policy and the state shaped the business strategy of the region's leading small arms and textile manufactures—with consequences that reverberated not only across the region but also around the world."—Richard R. John, Columbia University, author of Network Nation: Inventing American Telecommunications

"Lindsay Schakenbach Regele's important book carefully chronicles the role of the federal government in managing the industrial development of the United States in its earliest decades. She shows how the state, in myriad ways, enabled, accelerated, and influenced the industrial economy of the new republic. This book does away with one-sided celebrations of the entrepreneurial genius of the Samuel Slaters and Francis Cabot Lowells and debunks the myth that the United States economy was ever in some exceptional and peculiar way devoid of powerful state interventions. While others have ignored the state, Regele sees the rise of a 'national security capitalism.' A must-read for anyone interested in US economic history."—Sven Beckert, Harvard University, author of Empire of Cotton: A Global History

"An engaging and timely examination of the connections between the federal government, national security, imperialism, and the domestic economy during the antebellum period."—Lawrence A. Peskin, Morgan State University, author of Manufacturing Revolution: The Intellectual Origins of Early American Industry

"Manufacturing Advantage is an important addition to the field of policy history and an equally important contribution to scholarship in several other historical disciplines, including business history, history of technology, and military history. Her analytical framework of "national security capitalism" offers an important new perspective for scholars in the above fields."—Vagel C. Keller, Pennsylvania History