ABSTRACT
THE internal development of the United States was by no means, as many American authors have sought to make out, a matter solely of American enterprise, American ideas, and American concern. Manpower and capital came extensively from Europe; the foundations of such measures as the National Bank Act and the Federal Reserve Act are to be sought where the Americans sought them—in European experience; above all, the pull of European markets exercised a continuous and most important influence on the direction and pace of change in the American economy—the earliest and most conspicuous example being with respect to the culture of cotton. The so-called ‘frontier thesis’, in fact, has done no greater disservice to the United States than to withdraw American attention from her contacts with the rest of the world, and to foster a notion that American history can be explained with little more than a glance outside America’s borders.
