Work

Shaping the Economy Through Public Debt: Statebuilding in Industrializing America

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The nineteenth-century U.S. state is often understood as a non-administrative state that purposefully shied away from intervening in the economy. This essay looks at the public debt amassed during the Civil War to explore how this instrument of finance and statecraft could be used to reshape the state and make it into an influential economic player without developing a large bureaucracy. Public debt served to build and maintain the financial infrastructure that would underpin the massive capitalist-industrial development of the United States in the half-century that followed the Civil War.

Source: Scienza & Politica. Per una storia delle dottrine

DOI: 10.60923/issn.1825-9618/24063

Author: Nicolas Barreyre

Institution: École des hautes études en sciences sociales

Language: English

Topic: Fiscal Policies and Political Economy

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: diamond

OpenAlex ID: W7127918201

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