Home Search Sitemap Contact Bookmark

Free Dissertations - Economics Dissertations

The North Had Won Due To Its Greater Industrial Strength And Its Better - ...

The North had won due to its greater industrial strength and its better - developed railroad systems that had allowed more effective military campaigns had won the American Civil War. The completion of the railroad network meant that it only took a week to travel from the east to west coast, quicker than horse drawn stagecoaches or the risky alternative of sailing around South America to go by sea (Hobsbawm, 1975 p. 52).
North America obviously covers a much greater land area than Western Europe which, meant that the completion of railroad systems was definitely beneficial for the expansion of domestic industries, as well for improved transport and communication infrastructures in the North Atlantic countries. In the USA prior to the building of a railway network it would take weeks to travel from the east coast to the west coast, or from the north to the south. The completion of the railroads would mean that the USA had an economy that acted as a whole market, and it helped to make the country a single economic, social, and political entity (Brogan, 1999 p. 245). The USA had great industrial potential yet that had been constrained by slow transport and communication networks, the Mid Western states had barely been explored or settled whilst the Southern states remained overwhelmingly agrarian in economic terms. The USA for instance only produced a third of the iron that Britain did, despite its greater natural resources (Hobsbawm, 1962 p. 52). Only in the Northern states had any degree of industrialisation taken place, and that lagged behind what had been achieved in Britain, France, and Germany. However, the USA would not stay less productive than Britain for too much longer after the railroad system had been fully completed (Brogan, 1999 p. 288). The completion of the railroad system was highly significant for the patterns of economic development in previously lightly populated states such as Nebraska and Wyoming. The location and proximity of the railroad meant the difference between newly established towns either booming or ceasing to exist, as their populations would migrate en masse to where jobs and future prospects were in most plentiful supply. The cattle ranchers of Texas would be amongst the groups that best exploited the cheaper transport costs and greater size of the domestic market that the railroad system made available to them. However the railroad system was important in speeding up the transformation of the USA from being a mainly agrarian and rural country. Instead the USA became a country that was highly industrialised and predominantly urban in character in the Northern states, and in the larger cities of the Southern states (Brogan, 1999 p 379).
In the long-term the biggest impact upon the patterns of the USA economic development was the huge boost it gave to the industrial sector of the American economy.


Thanks