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The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age Paperback – February 6, 2007

by Alan Trachtenberg (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars 41 ratings
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A classic examination of the roots of corporate culture, newly revised and updated for the twenty first century

Alan Trachtenberg presents a balanced analysis of the expansion of capitalist power in the last third of the nineteenth century and the cultural changes it brought in its wake. In America's westward expansion, labor unrest, newly powerful cities, and newly mechanized industries, the ideals and ideas by which Americans lived were reshaped, and American society became more structured, with an entrenched middle class and a powerful business elite. Here, in an updated edition which includes a new introduction and a revised bibliographical essay, is a brilliant, essential work on the origins of America's corporate culture and the formation of the American social fabric after the Civil War.

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  1. Print length
    304 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Hill and Wang
  4. Publication date
    February 6, 2007
  5. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.66 x 8.5 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0809058286
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0809058280
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Editorial Reviews

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“The Incorporation of America is one of those historical essays that not only illuminate their particular subject matter--in this case, American culture and society in the last half of the nineteenth century--but deepen our understanding of how we might think about the general question of 'culture' itself.” ―Warren I. Susman, Rutgers University

“This book realizes an ideal often mentioned as the goal of American Studies but seldom achieved: it is a truly 'interdisciplinary' account of American culture at a turning point in our history. Mr. Trachtenberg is not merely a scholar, he is a writer. Reading is a pleasure, not a duty.” ―Henry Nash Smith, University of California at Berkeley

“This graceful venture in cultural history provides a fresh and stimulating interpretation of American society during the last decades of the nineteenth century.” ―John M. Blum, Yale University

About the Author

Alan Trachtenberg is the Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American studies at Yale University, where he taught for thirty-five years. His books include Shades of Hiawatha and Lincoln's Smile and Other Enigmas.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hill and Wang
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 6, 2007
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ First Edition
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0809058286
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0809058280
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.66 x 8.5 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 41 ratings

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Alan Trachtenberg

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4.4 out of 5 stars
41 global ratings

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Customers find the book to be an excellent examination of the Gilded Age, with one review describing it as a thoughtful analysis. They consider it perfect for their studies and worth the effort.

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6 customers mention "Gilded age"6 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's coverage of the Gilded Age, with multiple customers finding it perfect for their studies.

"...Good to review history, though. I found this an excellent book in part because it was written 25 years ago." Read more

"...There are some real gems of insight in this book, you just have to have the patience to get to them...." Read more

"This book was perfect for my studies!" Read more

"Wonderful and thoughtful book on the Gilded Age, and how the society, culture, politics, and budding corporate world of that era has led to..." Read more

4 customers mention "Value for money"4 positive0 negative

Customers find the book worth the effort.

"...Good to review history, though. I found this an excellent book in part because it was written 25 years ago." Read more

"...This book is worth the effort if you are interested in the point in time that it focuses upon, the end of the gilded age...." Read more

"Wonderful and thoughtful book on the Gilded Age, and how the society, culture, politics, and budding corporate world of that era has led to..." Read more

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Joseph M Walters III
    5.0 out of 5 stars Old Gilded Age to New Gilded (silicon?) Age
    Reviewed in the United States on April 22, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Good overview of the issues of the "Gilded Age." History does not repeat itself exactly, but this book highlights issues confronted a hundred years ago and that we still confront today. Good to review history, though. I found this an excellent book in part because it was written 25 years ago.
    One person found this helpful
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  • J. Grattan
    5.0 out of 5 stars The beginnings of corporate domination over American life
    Reviewed in the United States on October 2, 2010
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    In this dense, highly illuminating effort the author explores the profound social and cultural impacts that accompanied the rise of huge corporations that increasingly came to dominate the US economy by the late nineteenth century. It is not the formal corporate structure that is the author's primary concern, although the distant, anonymous, and non-liable ownership is part of his theme. He focuses on the broad cultural mystification, obfuscation, manipulation, powerlessness, and exploitation that were a result of corporate-controlled developments in such areas as the rise of great cities, Western land utilization, the vast railroad network, colossal buildings, mechanization, communications, the political process, scientific management, advertising, retailing, etc. Much of this was only vaguely recognized at the time: the Gilded Age was a "period of trauma, of change so swift and thorough that many Americans seemed unable to fathom the extent of the upheaval."

    Corporations were once chartered to perform only specific tasks for the public good, but private, for-profit incorporation by the end of the Civil War had essentially become a right. However, according to the author "incorporation wrenched American society from the moorings of familiar values, ... the process proceeded by contradiction and conflict."

    Corporate-led developments essentially scaled daily life beyond the understanding and control of individuals. The independent artisan and farmer, considered essential to a Jeffersonian, virtuous political order, could scarcely contend. The idea of an individual rising on his own merits, by his own labor - the so-called free-labor ideology - gave way to internal corporate bureaucratic, hierarchical control and the exterior power to force compliance with corporate demands. Wage labor was no longer the "imagined nightmare of independent artisans, but was the typical lot of American workers." Ironically, the myth of the virtuous, deserving workman was preserved by the success of the captains of industry.

    The large, grandiose downtown department store is symbolic of the era. Workers and citizens, now designated as "consumers" in the new incorporated world, found themselves overawed, manipulated, and enticed by magnificent displays of goods for the home and personal use that sent the subtle message that those items were needed for a respectable middle-class life. The dazzling displays left little room to reflect on the labor or process to produce those goods, despite the fact the purchasers were themselves often laborers. The political process also was transformed into election "spectacles" orchestrated by corporate-backed political parties; again, an artificial emphasis obscured the actual workings of an institution or process. "Like advertising, the party system produced an illusion, which disguised its character, its alienation of political power from the very producers of the wealth that supported the system."

    As the author suggests, these extensive cultural changes in American life, combined with the economic deflation and depressions of the era, produced strong reactions from workers and farmers, at times violent - for example, the Great Railway Strike of 1877 and the Haymarket Square affair of 1886, a fall out from the eight hour movement. The Knights of Labor, the largest labor organization of the times, sought to counter capitalism through producer and consumer cooperatives. Perhaps the greatest reaction to the corporate control of the economy came from the Populists, who originated from the farmer alliances in the south and southwest and were the last and greatest of the third-party movements after the Civil War. They advocated for significant government oversight and ownership but were ultimately no match for the powerful forces arrayed against them.

    The author suggests that the "political battles and ideological campaigns in the Gilded Age took the appearance of struggles over the meaning of the word `America,' over the political and cultural authority to define the term and thus to say what reality was and ought to be." Furthermore, "In the antithesis between `union' and `corporation,' the age indeed witnessed an impassable gulf of troubling proportions, for it remained unsettled on which side lay the true America."

    The author concludes his analysis with an examination of the "White City," or the Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893. It was literally a glittering exhibition of the latest corporate technological developments. Its message was that a "beneficent" future could be had "through a corporate alliance of business, culture, and the state." It was evidently absurd that mere farmers and day-laborers could run such a complex and benevolent system. But not more than a year later, the huge Pullman strike beginning in Chicago shut down rail traffic throughout the nation. Pullman too was a planned community, where workers supposedly had access to amenities to which the rich were accustomed. But, in fact, with the pleasantness came rules and restrictions. One critic referred to the example of Pullman as "well-wishing feudalism" with the pretense of providing for the happiness of the people but with the real agenda of authoritarian control. At least in this instance, the cultural veneer proved to be insufficient in disguising the exercise of power and in teaching obedience.

    "The White City seemed to have settled the question of the true and real meaning of America. It seemed the victory of the elites in business, politics, and culture over dissident but divided voices of labor, farmers, immigrants, blacks, and women." "But the ragged edges of 1894 implied that even in defeat advocates of `union' over `corporation' retained their vision, their voice, and enough power to unsettle the image of a peaceful corporate order." The author is surely correct in pointing out that these tensions continued to resonate over the next four decades.

    As said, the book is a very tightly packed look at the rise of corporations in America and the cultural hegemony that they began to impose. It is well written but is slow going due to the very detailed analysis of the author. This review hardly touches on the many areas of life that the author demonstrates were impacted by incorporation. In the modern era, corporate culture and control are simply assumed - actually not even noticed. In the nineteenth century that was not the case. A significant minority in that era sensed that the future would be tremendously changed and not all for the good. And they were mostly right.
    19 people found this helpful
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  • canoeman
    4.0 out of 5 stars not an easy read but worth the effort
    Reviewed in the United States on September 26, 2020
    Verified Purchase
    When I first glanced at this book, after I had bought it, I thought, uh-oh, this is going to be a tough read.
    I resigned myself to read 10 pages a day and to finish it. I finished 10 days later, reading it much faster than I originally thought. This book is worth the effort if you are interested in the point in time that it focuses upon, the end of the gilded age. There are some real gems of insight in this book, you just have to have the patience to get to them. I liked this book much more than I thought I would after looking at the first few pages. Not for everyone, but worth the effort.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • S. Pactor
    5.0 out of 5 stars Classic of American Studies
    Reviewed in the United States on July 20, 2004
    Verified Purchase
    This is an early (well, mid year) front runner for best book I've read all year. It is also one of the first books I've read that I purchased solely based on an Amazon.com recommendation. Kudos to you Amazon.com, faceless computer program you may be, but you DO recommend good books. I'm quite sure I could have lived the entire rest of my life and never had any one recommend this book to me in causal (or non-casual) conversation.
    Trachtenburg, a Professor of American Studies, picks up where authors like Leo Marx and Henry Nash Smith left off: Trying to analyze the ways in which America became the nation it is today. Like Smith in "Virgin Land" and Marx in "The Machine in the Garden", Trachtenberg ranges across disciplines (literature, economics, sociology, etc.) to develop a nuanced thesis. Although he approaches his thesis ellipitcally (in true American Studies fashion), it is hard to deny the power of his observations. In its simplest terms, Trachtenberg attempts to show the way in which the corporation became the dominant force in shaping American identity.
    Importantly, he does not treat this development as a foregone conclusion. THrought the book, he develops the idea of a counter definition of America, one that draws on the tradition of Indian culture and American Populism, to show how much the corporation had to overcome in order to dominate America's definition of itself.
    Along the way, he tackles not only the history of the corporation itself, but the way business took over the political system and the way corporate america co-opted the artistic elite. It is this last observation, which Trachtenberg describes via his incredible analysis of the "White City" at the Chicago World's Fair, that I found most revelatory.
    Check this book out! And thanks to Amazon.com for recommending it to me!
    52 people found this helpful
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  • M. Burke Walker
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent examination of the CULTURAL impact of America's shift to ...
    Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2015
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    excellent examination of the CULTURAL impact of America's shift to a consumer economy during the seismic changes of the last third of the 19th century: the industrial/factory revolution, population shifts from country to city, the flow of immigration, the rise of "great cities", unprecedented technological innovations, and the rapid rise of middle-management class.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • cdon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Better than expected
    Reviewed in the United States on March 6, 2013
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    I was expecting it to be dry, a legal history of incorporation but I was happily suprised when it turned out to be a sort of social treatise on the affect. Highlighting the ironies, the counter ideas that stemmed from incorporation, Trachtenberg succeds in revealing the deep social and even conscious changes this movement had wrought and how deeply ingrained in our psyche it is. Like free wages, myths of ambition and so on etc.. the U.S. was turned into a class of consumers by force begining immediately after the civil war. His city definitely ain't got no heart.
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Frank
    4.0 out of 5 stars Perfect for my studies!
    Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2019
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    This book was perfect for my studies!
    One person found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • Oliver Hopkins
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 18, 2016
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    Great condition, great purchase!
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