Shaun S. Nichols is an Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. He is a native of Fall River, Massachusetts.

• Acknowledgments


• Preface


• Introduction


• Part I: From Farm to Factory, From Ship to Loom


• Chapter 1: The Irrational Revolution: The Failure of Early Massachusetts Industrialization


• Chapter 2: Economies in Motion: Crisis and Industry in the Whaling City


• Chapter 3: Labor in Motion: The Peopling of Industrial Massachusetts


• Part II: From Cloth to Clothes, From Crisis to Prosperity


• Chapter 4: Un-Making Industrial Massachusetts: Labor and Capital in an Age of Deindustrialization


• Chapter 5: Cut from the Same Cloth: The Remaking of Industrial Massachusetts


• Chapter 6: Towards Free Migration: The Reopening of Industrial Massachusetts


• Part III: From the Needle to High Tech, From Massachusetts to the World


• Chapter 7: Towards Free Trade: Globalization from the Ground Up


• Chapter 8: Reconstructing Industrial Ascendance: Massachusetts and the Reordering of American Capitalism


• Chapter 9: Industrial Twilight? Massachusetts and the Reordering of Global Capitalism


• Chapter 10: The "New" Economy: Making High-Tech Massachusetts


• Conclusion


• Notes


• Bibliography


• Index

Manufacturing Catastrophe tracks the history of industrialization, deindustrialization, and globalization in Massachusetts over the past two centuries. It is a history of wrenching economic transformation as told from the perspective of everyday people: European peasants traveling the oceans in search of industrial work, runaway factory owners venturing out in search of cheaper labor abroad, and harried local policymakers trying to recover from repeated bouts of economic cataclysm. For those concerned about the future of American industry in the face of global competition, it provides critical lessons on how some of America's pioneering industrial cities have weathered the tempests of economic upheaval and industrial rebirth.