The Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America by Darwin H. Stapleton

Abstract

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 685 But Steele is careful to qualify his findings. The English Atlantic, he concludes, was shrunk primarily by the growth of oceanic merchant shipping and not by “dramatic technological innovation” (p. 213). Curiously, he does not appear to consider either newspapers or the posts as technologies—a conclusion Innis might have found surprising. Perhaps the most intriguing implication of English Atlantic is its contribution to our understanding of the origins of the American Revolution. Steele persuasively demonstrates that the Atlantic Ocean did not make the war inevitable. As a consequence, the war emerges once again as a “revolutionary achievement” (p. 273). Stressing that familiarity can breed discontent, Steele reminds us that improvements in communications need not result in better mutual understanding— a conclusion with obvious implications for the American Civil War, not to mention contemporary U.S.-Soviet relations and the continuing crisis in the Middle East. The greatest achievement of English Atlantic, in fact, may well be its considerable success at bridging the yawning gap in communications history between empiricism and metatheory. Along with Coming Over, it belongs on that small but growing shelf of indispensable books on communications in colonial America. Richard R. John, Jr. Mr. John is an instructor in history and literature at Harvard University. The Transfer of Early Industrial Technologies to America. By Darwin H. Stapleton. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1987. Pp. x + 215; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $18.00. With this publication, yet another student of Eugene S. Ferguson adds to the literature on the transfer of technology. In part 1, Darwin Stapleton summarizes recent research. Accordingly, he relies on the work ofJames Mulholland for the transfer of iron technology and of David Jeremy for information on the textile industry. European influence on the construction of early gasworks and waterworks is duly noted, and there are passing references to transatlantic linkages in the pharmaceutical business and in the production of photographic materials. Stapleton reminds the reader that, not only did early American technologists travel abroad, but also “the annual number of immi­ grants . . . increased twenty fold from 1825 to 1850” (p. 18). Further­ more, many came with specific skills such as weaving. The other great source of information was the technical journal, with the Journal of the Franklin Institute (1826) and the American Railroad Journal (1831) being the most noteworthy. Recognition of this westward­ moving current of technical information destroys “the concept of 686 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Yankee ingenuity as an organizing principle for the history of American technology” (p. 2). Stapleton identifies circumstances common to four case studies that follow—beyond the obvious but critical point that all transfers took place within a “commonality of culture” or the North Atlantic community. The common circumstances include: (1) the proved quality of the technology to be transferred—as opposed to borrowing something in a developmental stage; (2) the extensive social support provided by government, the financial community, and merchants; and (3) “The particularly American receptivity to technological inno­ vation . . .” (p. 29). All of this aided America’s technological maturity such that by 1850 really significant industrial innovations had an even chance of occurring on either side of the Atlantic. Part 2 presents case studies from the mid-Atlantic region. In “William Weston, Benjamin Henry Latrobe, and the Philadelphia Plan for Internal Improvements,” the author notes that 18th-century leaders Robert Morris and John Nicholson gave extensive thought to a transportation plan that would ensure the trading supremacy of Philadelphia. Over many years this was carried out, in part through the efforts of two English-born civil engineers, Weston and Latrobe. Projects such as the Philadelphia & Lancaster Turnpike, the Conewago Canal, the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal, and the Union Canal proved vital in schooling a generation of civil engineers. Ironically, to the extent that Weston- and Latrobe-trained engineers went on to construct the Erie Canal, the Philadelphia Plan indirectly undermined the Quaker City’s economic primacy. Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, trained at the Régie des Poudres et Salpêtres (Agency for Powder and Saltpeter) in Paris, came to America in 1800 convinced he could improve on the dismal state of black powder manufacture here. (Stapleton...