The pursuit of order in revolutionary New York: surveyors, statesmen, and the making of a capitalist landscape, 1757-1796
Date
2018
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This study examines the transformation of land rights in New York from the late colonial era through the early republic. Situated broadly in the context of the revolutionary Atlantic World, it focuses on the expansion of property rights in the Hudson Valley and beyond, as these were shaped by a cadre of elected state officials, surveyors, and private contractors. Responding to the political and financial exigences of holding power during the revolutionary era, and drawing on classical republican notions of political economy, New York’s surveyors orchestrated the transformation of the borderlands region between the Hudson Valley and the Great Lakes. Basing this transformation on an inherited land patent system, economically interested and ideologically driven rising state leaders used their intimate knowledge of surveying skills and the landscape to shape political privileges and commodify lands absorbed into the new state. This small group created a public land market in the midst of the destruction and dispossession of the revolutionary period.
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Keywords
American Revolution, Capitalism, Clinton, George, Political economy, Public land, Surveyors, New York