Books by Paul A. Gilje

In this collection of essays, social and economic historians consider the rise of capitalism in the early American republic and demonstrate the centrality of common men and women as artisans, laborers, planters, and farmers in the dramatic transitions of the period.

Talks about what liberty meant to an important group of common men in American society, those who lived and worked on the waterfront and aboard ships. This book shows that the idealized vision of liberty associated with the Founding Fathers had a much more immediate and complex meaning than previously thought.