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Scott Miller

The Menard Family Initiative is hosting guest speaker Scott Miller. Dr. Scott Miller earned his BA from Vanguard University of Southern California, followed by an MA from George Mason University and a PhD in History from the University of Virginia. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in economic and business history at the Yale School of Management’s International Center for Finance. He is currently an economic historian at the Darden School of Business and the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia.

Below is a blurb of what he will be discussing while on campus:

Over the past 300 years, new post-colonial nations have a consistent track record of economic stagnation after independence. In many cases, these countries pursue a path-dependent reversion to their colonial economic models of extraction and export reliance, only to find those systems cannot work without the superstructure of empire providing markets, capital, and politico-economic stability. The British Empire created just such a system in its north American colonies. British authorities systematically structured the colonial economy to keep Americans locked into an extractive model, serving as a source of raw materials for British industry and trade, while stifling any move toward higher value-added production or economic diversification. Through a mix of subsidies, bounties, and credit manipulation, Britain incentivized colonial participation in a system that fostered short-term prosperity while ensuring long-term developmental stasis. 
 
This lecture will explain the means by which the American economy avoided the fate of most post-colonial developing economies, and laid the groundwork for future prosperity. Fifteen years of political and economic crisis between 1775 and 1789 nearly sundered the nascent Republic, but it also created profound opportunities. The trials of Revolution and the subsequent Depression of the 1780s then solidified a new economic reality in the United States, forcing commercial actors to alter their businesses or face insolvency. Of course, the volatility of the Napoleonic era opened many opportunities for Americans, resulting in distinct successes and profound disappointments. Nevertheless, the constant experimentation, innovation, failure, and reinvention contributed to a broader capitalist culture defined by dynamic and specialized entrepreneurialism. Despite all the variance, fragmentation, and disfunction of the Revolutionary era, the American economy of 1810 looked little like its colonial forerunner. The American economy had become truly American, and the components that comprised that evolution laid the groundwork for nearly three centuries of economic dynamism.

When

  • 1 to 2 p.m. Friday, April 24

Where

TBD

TBD

If you go

  • Free, no registration needed

Contact

For questions about this event or to request disability accommodations , contact Kali Ysquierdo at 608.785.6653 or kysquierdo@uwlax.edu.

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