ABSTRACT
The history of rural America has been one forever connected to places far from rural America. From dependence on foreign markets for importing labor and inputs, to dependence on foreign markets to which to export American agricultural products, the international context of agriculture has important and formative effects on the experience of rurality in the United States. When considering this topic, many scholars and other interested parties perhaps would first think of the grain trade with the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and what that meant for agricultural development in that decade, or the trade in agricultural goods with Mexico and Canada as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) that opened markets in the 1990s. But there is a long and rich history of international connections of American agriculture that connected rural America to vast global trade networks that predate these more recent agreements. This chapter seeks to understand the historical context of these international webs. Focus will be placed on discussing transnational agricultural connections to meet rural labor needs, and the dependence on foreign sources for imports and exports that accelerated rural development in many parts of the United States.
