Blackwell Reference Online

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The impact of immigration on economic and business history in the United States has often been recognized as a phenomenon of the nineteenth century, especially during its second half when 15 million immigrants came to America seeking new opportunities generated by industrialization, urbanization, and westward expansion. Immigration patterns, however, began to shape the central institutions of economic development in the colonial era and were involved continuously in the transformation of economic culture. The role of immigration in the economy can thus be profitably studied in a comparative cultural context that is chronologically framed in a long-term perspective. Four major factors – land, collective brief, labor, and entrepreneurship – played critical roles in shaping the linkages between the economy and immigration. These formative factors underwent different stages of metamorphosis themselves and, as such, constitute the focal points of the following historical discussion. The imperial economies of colonial North America centered upon land, yet landowning systems varied significantly from region to region. Soon after the fall of the Aztec empire, Spanish conquistadors installed the encomienda system that gave them extensive controls and privileges over the land and its residents. Hernando Cortés, for example, was allowed to own 22 towns and control 23,000 Native Indians as ... log in or subscribe to read full text